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Random porn pages on iOS Safari

I have the same problem.. It started yesterday and I've seen 5 pop ups now.
It seems a **** site opens up when I visit a site that I found on google, doesn't matter what kind of site, it can be a official site with no adds. It didn't happen to me (yet) when I visited a bookmarked page.
It's weird that if you go back to that page the pop up doesn't pop up again. It pops up random after a few seconds on a random website.

Hope someone knows a solution 'cause this can be quite embarrassing when I'm at work and this happeneds...

By the way, I own an iPad 3, and it happened in iOS 5 and 6. Never had it jailbroken..
 
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While I'm no Apple expert I know my way around the internet well enough and reckon what is probably happening is that some advert server has been compromised and is serving dodgy adverts once in a while. This is why it appears to be random, and attached to any page that is usually legitimate. You don't see these adverts on your PC because most people have installed a better ad blocker like AdblockPlus on Firefox (you did, didn't you?) so this is filtered with all the other junk.

If this is the case then it's quite unlikely that any DNS filtering will do the job as the porn is being served from a valid server with all the other stuff. Of course Safari on the iPad being restricted so heavily by Apple doesn't have the possibility to install an ad blocker, so we're all a bit stuck for a solution. I've set the firewall to log all URLs the iPad requests now so if it happens again I may be able to say who the evil server is, but for the time being it seems we're stuck with third party browsers and hoping for Adblock for Safari on the iPad.
 
In case this interests anyone here are the firewall logs I just captured when Mrs. Angel tried to use Google to cheat at Scrabble and got served something entirely less honourable:

21:37:38 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/images/template6/rating.png
21:37:38 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/images/template6/search-white.png
21:37:37 192.168.1.21 http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?
21:37:37 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/images/movies/medium/389/Sexspiele-am-Bahnhof.jpg
21:37:37 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/images/customs/2557/logo_nonadult.png?
21:37:37 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/images/template6/play.png
21:37:37 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/images/template6/list-video-arrow.png
21:37:37 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/images/movies/medium/382/Blondes-Babe-im-Gebirge.jpg
21:37:37 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/images/movies/401/Sex-im-Freien.jpg
21:37:37 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/images/template6/back-white.png
21:37:37 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/images/template6/background-white.png
21:37:37 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/images/movies/medium/386/Geile-Action-im-Park.jpg
21:37:36 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/css/style.css?
21:37:36 192.168.1.21 http://uporno.sv1.mobi/de/movie/details/401/Sex-im-Freien?
21:37:35 192.168.1.21 http://c.statcounter.com/t.php?
21:37:35 192.168.1.21 http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?
21:37:35 192.168.1.21 http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js
21:37:35 192.168.1.21 http://b.scorecardresearch.com/b?
21:37:35 192.168.1.21 http://mobile.juicyads.com/service_async.php/serveAd?
21:37:35 192.168.1.21 http://optimized-by.rubiconproject.com/a/9077/15347/33771-9.js?
21:37:35 192.168.1.21 http://d1.openx.org/lg.php?
21:37:35 192.168.1.21 http://b.scorecardresearch.com/b2?
21:37:35 192.168.1.21 http://b.scorecardresearch.com/b?
21:37:34 192.168.1.21 http://d1.openx.org/ajs.php?
21:37:34 192.168.1.21 http://92.61.254.226/rubicon/px/aid:62200e8f4b5e0b1a21d73a0a0d266ffcee95882d;c:138BDAE18B0...
21:37:34 192.168.1.21 http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-01nD5uD1pGDW2.gif
21:37:34 192.168.1.21 http://b.scorecardresearch.com/b2?
21:37:34 192.168.1.21 http://optimized-by.rubiconproject.com/a/9077/15347/33771-15.js?
21:37:34 192.168.1.21 http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?
21:37:34 192.168.1.21 http://b.scorecardresearch.com/b?
21:37:34 192.168.1.21 http://tap-cdn.rubiconproject.com/partner/scripts/rubicon/alice.js?
21:37:34 192.168.1.21 http://tap2-cdn.rubiconproject.com/partner/scripts/rubicon/emily.html?
21:37:33 192.168.1.21 http://optimized-by.rubiconproject.com/a/9077/15347/33771-2.js?
21:37:33 192.168.1.21 http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?
21:37:33 192.168.1.21 http://www.scrabblecheat.com/
Click to expand...

It's pretty obvious the sites you need to block to remove this particular ad, but I wonder if anyone else can find more?
 
Baumi said:
Hi,

I did something stupid yesterday. I got a semi-obvious phishing mail with a PDF attachment, and opened the mail on both my iPhone 4 and my iPad (believing myself to be safe since AFAIK there are no known viruses for non-jailbroken iDevices) – and when they tried to display the PDF, it was obviously broken.

Shortly afterwards, random porn pages popped up in Safari on both devices every once in a while – the whole page would be redirected to a porn page.

So far this only happened on two domains: berlin.de (official webseite of the city of Berlin) on the iPhone and cumhuriyet.com.tr (major Turkish newspaper) on the iPad, so this could be merely a coincidence and not related to the spam mail at all, e.g. a compromised ad network randomly dishing out porn, although at first glance the sites don't seem to use the same ad providers. I didn't yet see this behavior on my computers or an iPhone 3GS that didn't open the PDF. (Which, admittedly, doesn't prove much, since the pages only pop up every once in a while and I do most of my browsing on the two devices in question.)

Both devices are running the latest iOS with no JB. I tried rebooting them – no change. I'll probably try a restore next to see if that stops it.

I couldn't find any reports about something like this on the web. Did anyone else here ever experience something similar (with or without opening strange attachments first)?

Thanks for any insight.

Baumi
Click to expand...


Hmmmm, you got it from an attached email :rolleyes:

mr-bean-i-know-what-you-mean.jpg
 
I also have this issue on my new iphone 5. Not jailbroken...i guess it has to be a ad from google or something. I hate this issue!
 
i also have had this issue today...i was on the train this morning on a english newspaper site, with ads down the side, when i was redirected to a site http://m.xxxiporn.mobi???

very strange....in the process of restoring Iphone4s now...downloaded IOS 6 last night as well!
 
Baumi said:
I got a semi-obvious phishing mail with a PDF attachment, and opened the mail on both my iPhone 4 and my iPad (believing myself to be safe since AFAIK there are no known viruses for non-jailbroken iDevices) – and when they tried to display the PDF, it was obviously broken.
Click to expand...
I know you send it to an anti virus company; not sure if they respond already. But it might be also a good idea to send the attachment to Apple (in a secure way) with a description of what happen.

eMail: product-security@apple.com (from https://ssl.apple.com/support/security/)

There were samples in the past when the pure reading of a PDF file compromised the security of iOS and lead to jailbreak the system (I tried it once some years ago and was impressed that a PDF can be so harmful).

It might be an early stage of a new variant.
 
Im pleased to say i didnt see this happening the last 7 days. The ad center probaly cought the abuser^^
 
Well, I am having this exact same problem on my iPhone 4, running iOS 6. Mine mainly redirects from thechive.com, which I frequently waste time on. It will sometimes happen as soon as I click on a link to view a post on the site, sometimes it will happen halfway through loading the page, and sometimes it will happen a couple minutes after a page has been loaded and it will automatically redirect to one of these porn ads, most commonly badoink dot com, without me clicking on anything. Other times, it will be a page which is loaded already, and I'll close Safari and reopen it a few hours later, and by reopening this page, it will refresh the page and automatically take me to one of these NSFW ad pages.

I have tried everything I can think of, and everything that was suggested here as well as on other message boards, as this seems to becoming a more and more common issue.

I have tried the following:

1) Cleared all cookies and data, closed all apps and did a hard reset
2) Turned on "Limit Ad Tracking" in settings>general>about>advertising
3) Reset network settings in settings>general>reset, just for fun, knowing this wouldn't do anything
4) Erased all content and restored through iTunes, using an older saved backup from July that was saved on my computer
5) Erased all content and restored by iCloud, using my most recent iCloud backup
6) Erased all content and set up as a new iPhone, restoring through iCloud only my contacts, calendar, reminders and notes

I am still having this problem even though this has been set up as a new device. I am really desperate for help at this point.

It has not happened to me in Chrome yet, but Safari's reading list is one of my most-used features, plus there is no way to make Chrome my default browser, and it's annoying to switch between 2 browsers all the time.

**As a side note, disabling JavaScript doesn't seem to work. As a temporary fix, I have been able to prevent this from happening when I change "Accept Cookies" to "Never," instead of "From visited" which I would prefer not to have to change.

There has to be some deeper root cause of this problem somewhere.
 
It's happening to me as well when I visit thechive.com. Never had it happen to any other site, so I never get on there anymore but only to see if it still happens. It does as of 5 minutes ago. I wrote them a email but not surprisingly I didn't hear a response. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one having this problem.
 
This is happening to me, too, on my non-JB iPhone 5. I've tried everything - including restoring it to factory settings, and it's not going away. I have an appointment with the genius bar tomorrow.

I first figured out there was this issue when my six year old son was playing on my phone - so I am NOT happy he found it first. :mad: I thought he had done something shady at first, but then I pretty quickly figured out it was totally random.

----------
shaneplaysgolf said:
Well, I am having this exact same problem on my iPhone 4, running iOS 6. Mine mainly redirects from thechive.com, which I frequently waste time on. It will sometimes happen as soon as I click on a link to view a post on the site, sometimes it will happen halfway through loading the page, and sometimes it will happen a couple minutes after a page has been loaded and it will automatically redirect to one of these porn ads, most commonly badoink dot com, without me clicking on anything. Other times, it will be a page which is loaded already, and I'll close Safari and reopen it a few hours later, and by reopening this page, it will refresh the page and automatically take me to one of these NSFW ad pages.

I have tried everything I can think of, and everything that was suggested here as well as on other message boards, as this seems to becoming a more and more common issue.

I have tried the following:

1) Cleared all cookies and data, closed all apps and did a hard reset
2) Turned on "Limit Ad Tracking" in settings>general>about>advertising
3) Reset network settings in settings>general>reset, just for fun, knowing this wouldn't do anything
4) Erased all content and restored through iTunes, using an older saved backup from July that was saved on my computer
5) Erased all content and restored by iCloud, using my most recent iCloud backup
6) Erased all content and set up as a new iPhone, restoring through iCloud only my contacts, calendar, reminders and notes

I am still having this problem even though this has been set up as a new device. I am really desperate for help at this point.

It has not happened to me in Chrome yet, but Safari's reading list is one of my most-used features, plus there is no way to make Chrome my default browser, and it's annoying to switch between 2 browsers all the time.

**As a side note, disabling JavaScript doesn't seem to work. As a temporary fix, I have been able to prevent this from happening when I change "Accept Cookies" to "Never," instead of "From visited" which I would prefer not to have to change.

There has to be some deeper root cause of this problem somewhere.
Click to expand...

I've tried all those things too - and it hasn't resolved anything for me, either. :(
 
Anything's worth looking at, I'll check that.

On the site where the porn pops up, I posted to see if anyone else was getting it - and one person on an iPhone 4 and one on an iPad have reported getting it too (one of which was from the UK and is getting the same porn site mentioned here). They're going to report it to the board administrator.

Pretty rotten my kid was exposed to that. :mad:

I just went to General:About:Advertising, and turned Limit Ad Tracking on - I wonder if that'll help??
 
IrishBlue, please keep us updated to what Genius Bar has to say. I don't live close to one and would like to hear what they suggest. Thanks!
 
Pug72 said:
Check there's no dodgy Profile installed in Settings-General.

Worth a look.
Click to expand...

I didn't see anything that looked out of the ordinary.

I canceled my genius bar appointment because I want to see if switching that advertisement tracking will help. If not, I'll re-schedule and then let you all know what happens. Appointments are easy to get.

In the meantime, I would suggest making the change that I mentioned earlier and see if that helps.
 
First of all, I suggest that the board admin disable all the hyperlinks in post #53, because as I was flicking thru the long list I inadvertently activated one of them and then had to quickly cancel the page that began loading.

Re. My experience with this issue:

I have been suffering this problem on both my non JB ipa3 and iph4s since late summer, usually when I visited Cult of Mac dot com (but also 1 or 2x on iirc daily mail dot com too), I was redirected to "vod dot sexhunter dot tv" from both sites.

Every time I suffer one of these redirects, I make a screen shot (simultaneously press sleep/wake and home buttons, screen will flash white and datestamped pic will be saved to your camera roll).

I have never used my iOS or Mac to visit any porn-like sites. Nobody else has access to these devices either.

I always immediately install the iOS updates as they become available, browse exclusively with safari, limit cookies to the default "sites visited" setting, and have set "limit ad tracking" to on.

Thought I solved the problem by clearing both cookies and cache, on all ios devices, and was good for about a month, but yesterday, on the iph4s, Cult of Mac dot com again redirected me to the sexhunter site and then to the download page for "Mobloader" in the iTunes Store. for 3.99$ lol, like I would ever d/l any app that I became aware of by being so redirected, lol).

The landing page for sexhunter offers one free entry for registering via ones mobile number lol, so I presume this is a phishing site trying to harvest mobile numbers.

The Mobloader app landing page in iTunes looks like it is just trying to sell an app for 3.99 but it still makes me nervous that the perps behind this redirect scheme, besides trying to get click revenue, or harvest phone numbers, may be some how trying to harvest iTunes ID and p/w credentials via either the iTunes purchase of Mobloader, or possibly malware within Mobloader itself.

I'm glad I found this discussion and intend to keep monitoring it. I think I will also send a link to my posting here to the apple security link someone posted above.
 
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