Forums General Discussion angelfire.com?

the line "http[/b]://www[/b].angelfire.[/b]com/az3/xthecyber/q_auths.zip Q-AUTHS!" is comming up every 8 - 9 min. - its a virus or a worm. Is it in mirc? and how to get it out off the system.

The best way to [keep] a virus out is to not let it in. Don't click on URL's advertised on IRC. Don't open emails that you cannot verify as virus-free. Don't visit warez or porn websites. It's not exactly advisable to post a possible infected site on forums either.

One other thing and I know some liberally minded individual will cut me down for this but the last websites on earth I would visit these days are those on free webhosts as they are most likely to have this sort of infection, whereas a site like mine for example, hosted in a highly regulated environment with a domain name in a namespace with probably the highest regulation of any are more likely to be trusted. Being linked from a national ISP helps too.

In addition to the above, if you have become infected (sending that message out) then you might want to see the Trojan resources post which contains a lot of advice and links related to getting clean of an assortment of nasties. It's a good idea to use more than one (2-3 should do) and use both a virus and trojan scanner. The reason for using more than one is that no ONE virus scanner can detect absolutely everything, they all scan in slightly different ways.

As recap of the good advice Watchdog gave, and to just add a few more to that list:

- NEVER accept files from people on IRC. Only accept files from trusted friends, 'trusted' meaning you've known them for months if not years, not because they've been nice to you for a few hours.

- NEVER go to URLs (website addresses) which are advertised to you on IRC. This includes "Free" pornography, free pictures of Britney Spears in the nude, pictures of people etc. "Free" websites are often very absusive, including angelfire, freewebs, geocities etc, but fully registered domains can contain viruses too, so the best thing to do is just steer clear!

- NEVER type suspicious things that people tell you to type, especially if they contain //write $decode or any other long form of what appears to be a jumble of letters and numbers.

- ALWAYS have an antivirus installed on your computer. If they have auto-protect features then have it enabled. Some ideas can be found in the link to the post above.

- ALWAYS have the latest updates from www.windowsupdate.com.

- ALWAYS have the latest version of your software. mIRC is an important one to have updated to avoid any exploits that may be found. You can always get the most up to date version at www.mirc.com/get.html.

- ALWAYS have a Firewall installed on your computer. It's best not to have more than one as they can clash and cause problems. Again, see the Trojan resources post (link above) for an explanation as to why Firewalls are good to have and links to quite a few good downloads!

Watchdog: Nope, I totally agree, free websites happen to be particularly abusive and have quite a lot of viruses/trojans/backdoors/etc uploaded to them. As I said in the list above, angelfire, geocities and freewebs are often the most abusive.
I have sent abuse emails to those hosts before, I find Angelfire to be very responsive, always email me back with a "Thank you" and let me know they've taken the website offline. I've never reported anything with freewebs, and geocities is notorious for being unresponsive :/, sometimes not doing anything about the website.

And yes, it's not a good idea to post a URL on the website - thankfully that website is now down, but if it wasn't, people browsing the board may well click it and get infected.

Happy chattin', stay safe, and have fun!

Regards,

even tho i try not to make generalizations, i have to agree with you Watchdog. its not a given that established sites are safe, and free webhosts arent, but the odds are sure high enough to avoid those free ones.