macs and trojans and puppy dogs tales

I found some information on this creature. Yes, many people on both PCs and MACs have encountered this whilst visiting the NY Times site.

Funny that it shows up on MACs and presents itself as a Windows thing. It has been reported that, yes, it will not let you shutdown normally. On a PC you would use task manager to shut it down. Not sure what works on a MAC.

The following was found on one site:

Malware Description:
Best-antivirus03.com is a new perilous hijacker of the ransomware program called Personal Antivirus which has been probably the biggest cyber threat of its kind within the last few months. Since Best-antivirus03.com hijacker has such a malicious origin, it appears to be jeopardizing targeted systems in an aggressively invasive way. Having unleashed stealthy trojan viruses to attack one’s PC, Personal Antivirus attains multiple redirections to Best-antivirus03.com domain without any preliminary user notification. Eventually, Best-antivirus03.com will keep displaying deceitful ads that pop up in the most unexpected and inconvenient moments when you are online and claim to report security risks and signs of other malware on one’s computer. Having drawn the user’s attention, the fake alerts from Best-antivirus03.com get clicked and lead to a bogus scanner page with the same URL (i.e. Best-antivirus03.com). When the scan procedure is completed, Best-antivirus03.com will state that your system has some odd infections on board and list them in the separate scan report GUI. In this way, Best-antivirus03.com attempts to win your trust and make you believe your computer is indeed under the risk of malware. Having done that, Best-antivirus03.com will surely ask for a payment in exchange for removing the allegedly detected parasites. Please, do not believe Best-antivirus03.com as it aims to sell rogue anti-spyware Personal Antivirus. You should immediately remove Best-antivirus03.com hijacker after it gets detected on your PC. Additionally, it’s recommended to check your PC for Personal Antivirus and other affiliate viruses.

I haven't even finished reading your post, Intrepid, and I leap to thank you. (breathes)
Ok, back to what you were saying.

OK, very yaaaaacky. I appreciate your fast and useful information.
Ah, now what should I do, if anything or a lot? Back with my old browser/OS, this all seemed to go away once I shut down my computer. Naturally, I don't trust that. Opinions?

Hm, I never have had this happen with my MAC and I am all over the internet.
What OS do you have, osso? Did you deactivate the firewall or other
security devices. Why are you going back to your old browser? Don't you have
Safari 2.0 or 3.0?

I have mac os 10.5.8, up to date as of a few days ago, just installed. I am not going back to my old browser, I'm just talking about it. I am startled that with my cleano machine that I have this bit of **** happening and want to know why.
My safari is Version 4.0.3 (5531.9), as I said, pretty up to date.

Not sure, but I don't think it would affect MAC. Also, if it was trying to download/upload anything, shutting the machine off would negate that.

Run a good virus/malware program and have a brandy or something and relax. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Worry is the interest you pay on trouble, before you have it.

P.S. - Users of Safari have reported the problem

The last thing I'd do is deactivate some firewall, CJ. Trust me, runs off giggling.

Your first sentence was gold, intrepid. Past that,

"Have a good brandy or relax" - on another thread Set is after me as a goofy lush.

What can I do but smile? His argument position re the thread is flailing.

I do drink too much once in a while. Mostly not. But I admit I do occasionally and sound ridiculous if I post.

Anyway, thanks.

I just got this today. They're telling me that there are so many trojans on a disc that doesn't exist? I downloaded the 'fix' to my desktop and then trashed it. Bogus.

'k, eoe, or I hope so. As I used to say, ai chihuahua.

I just got another one this morning. This time I clicked cancel and then tried to close the window but it didn't close. When I clicked okay, surprisingly, the window did finally close.

The only way I was able to get rid of a similar nusance on my PC that kept re-infecting no matter how many times I went through the procedure at Major Geeks to clean the PC of malware, was to finally switch to Firefox and use their ad blocker add-ons.

Haven't seen any sign of the malware since doing that. It may still be there on my PC waiting for IE to be used again, but I'm not seeing it at all anymore with Firefox.

Thanks, butrflynet - it seems I did get firefox along with safari with my new system, but I haven't tried it yet. The tech at the mac place said he liked the latest safari better. We'll see. So far I haven't gotten a second visit by this virus scan scam thing.

If you're still reading, eoe and calamity, are you using firefox?

I use both interchangeably. Why? I honestly can't remember. I use Firefox as browser with A2K and Safari with Facebook. After that, I move back and forth between the 2 all day long.

So when you got the aggravating virus scan thing, do you remember if you were on safari? I have to look back at what Intrepid posted, maybe it's already clear that it's a safari connected problem.

According to the Huffington Post, the New York Times is associated - by error I trust - with the malware, and it says to not click on it but to restart your browser.

Here's the HuffPo link -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/13/new-york-times-malware-ba_n_285064.html

The HuffPo clip -
"AllThingsD:
Here's a front page story the New York Times (NYT) would rather not be running: The paper is warning readers to be aware of bogus ads running on its Web site.
The paper says "some readers" have seen unauthorized pop-up ads promoting antivirus software on NYTimes.com, and warns visitors who see the ad not to click on it but to restart their browsers instead."

Here's a fuller story on AllThingsD (which I take as part of a separate website from HuffPo and NYT ) -
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090913/home-delivery-the-new-york-times-serves-up-some-malware/
This goes on about how it can take over your computer..
and says that the NYT has a warning on it's front page about it.

I quickly looked at the present NYT homepage and didn't find a comment about the malware but I may have somehow missed it.