What is this? Mac spyware?

[bluebomberman]

This happened to me while trying to read the article about Jon Woo's newest movie on The New York Times: (see attachment)

What's going on? What should I do? The New York Times doesn't have this stuff happen normally.

FYI, running fully updated (not snow) Leopard and Safari, plus all security updates...

 

[iPhone 62S]

Did you have any other sites open at the time? If not, NYT has been hacked.

 

[bluebomberman]

Did you have any other sites open at the time? If not, NYT has been hacked.

Sounds like you're on the money. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10197120 Beware unsolicted .exe files!

I guess I'll read the paper later. I should email the Times first, though.

 

[iPhone 62S]

Sounds like you're on the money. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10197120 Beware unsolicted .exe files!

I guess I'll read the paper later. I should email the Times first, though.

NoScript on Firefox is very good at stopping those things BTW, and I think there's a thing for Safari that does the same too.

It basically only lets sites you authorise to run scripts, so that dodgy site it redirected you to wouldn't have done anything.

 

[Thorbjorn]

Strange virus alert

Weirdly, this has happened to me a couple of times over the last two days:
I'm browsing through the NYTimes online, click on a link to one of their stories, and an alert window pops up with the Safari logo in it and a message that runs something like "Virus activity has been detected. Click 'choose' to run Personal Anti-virus." (I'm paraphrasing 'cause I'm outta there so fast I've yet to really read the message carefully.) The alert window gives me the option of "Choose" or "Cancel."

The first time it popped up from the Book Review front page. I clicked "Cancel" but a full-screen window opened anyway with some "antiviral" website, hijacking my screen, and with the beachball spinning there seemed to be activity going on. It took me a few tries to quit Safari. I shut down the Mac and rebooted. Yesterday I installed Snow Leopard and its update, hoping that would take care of things.

This morning I clicked on a NYTimes magazine article and the damned thing popped up again! This time I was able to quit straight from the alert window, didn't click either of the buttons, but even so that full-page hijacking had started right up in the background.

So what is this? So far it hasn't happened from any other site. Is it something to worry about or just a sophomoric effort to hijack a website? Is reading the NY Times dangerous to my health?

 

[markojug]

And the NYTimes website did this? It's not you, it's the site. Can't you just force quit safari?

 

[Tumbleweed666]

T
What's going on? What should I do?

Chill out and not be so paranoid ? Why immediately assume there is something wrong with your computer rather than the Times'?

 

[old-wiz]

Goes to show how greedy the NY times is for ad revenue - they even let spyware companies advertise to infect readers computers. Maybe they get a cut? Spyware company charges you $ 35 to scan and install spyware, and the NYT gets $ 10? And reading the NY times can be dangerous to your health too.

 

[iPhone 62S]

Goes to show how greedy the NY times is for ad revenue - they even let spyware companies advertise to infect readers computers. Maybe they get a cut? And reading the NY times can be dangerous to your health too.

More often than not, ads will be managed by a third party, so that company will have some explaining to do.

This has happened to loads of sites such as Symbian-Freak and I Can Haz Cheezburger.

To be fair, you can't check and catch every site on the web that advertises, and they could have very easily changed the site to include spyware after getting the ad deal sorted.

 

[bluebomberman]

Chill out and not be so paranoid ? Why immediately assume there is something wrong with your computer rather than the Times'?

I didn't assume. I asked. Some provided helpful feedback (thanks for the NoScript tip, iPhone 62S, got it on Firefox now, but won't bother with Safari because Apple likes breaking addons), some provided unhelpful snarky answers to boost their egos.

I switched to Macs primarily to get away from the massive spectrum of malware. If I wasn't a bit paranoid in the first place, I would have stayed with Windows.

 

[chatnoir1]

Same problems

I ran into the same issue with Firefox yesterday. Updated the browser and system. Thought problem was resolved until reading the NY Times this morning and same thing occurred. Impatient, I forced quit and launched Safari to finish reading the article and ran into the same issue.

At this point I doubt it is browser related and inherent with the NY Times.

 

[emt1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/business/media/13note.html?_r=1&hp

 

[Thorbjorn]

And a bit more info from NYTimes:

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/what-to-do-if-you-saw-an-antivirus-pop-up-ad/?hp