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My PC has a virus

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  • 13-10-2019 3:09pm
    #1
    muffler
    Registered Users Posts: 45,820 ✭✭✭✭


    Hey guys, while browsing the local Councils website I clicked on a link and it installed a virus on my desktop PC. The virus is called becauseshineisbetter and even though I have scanned with Malwarebytes it's still there. Googling the removal of the virus seems to bring up loads of links to Spyhunter...just wondering if there's a connection.

    Has anyone come across this before and is there any simple way to get rid of it or some free programme that would do the business?


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  • Options
    #2
    Joe Exotic
    Registered Users Posts: 565 ✭✭✭Joe Exotic


    muffler wrote: »
    Hey guys, while browsing the local Councils website I clicked on a link and it installed a virus on my desktop PC. The virus is called becauseshineisbetter and even though I have scanned with Malwarebytes it's still there. Googling the removal of the virus seems to bring up loads of links to Spyhunter...just wondering if there's a connection.

    Has anyone come across this before and is there any simple way to get rid of it or some free programme that would do the business?

    Try restarting in safemode and running malware bytes from there

    Are you sure its the county council website that is the source
    Have you notified them?
    IF not, Can you DM me the web page and link, i will notify them.


  • Options
    #3
    muffler
    Registered Users Posts: 45,820 ✭✭✭✭muffler


    murphk wrote: »
    Try restarting in safemode and running malware bytes from there

    Are you sure its the county council website that is the source
    Have you notified them?
    IF not, Can you DM me the web page and link, i will notify them.
    Thanks very much for that. Since my original post I ran MWB again last night and it did detect another virus. It had previously detected quite a few things and I quarantined them but whether the one it found last night was the culprit I dint know. No pop ups appearing today and I took your advice and started the PC in safe mode and ran MWB again but thankfully it came back clean so the panic seems to be over.

    I was in touch with the local Council and they have said "no viruses on our site, you must have ads popping up as a result of a virus on your own computer". The guy picked up a typo (I typed ad instead of and) and read the whole thing wrong. Safe in the knowledge that the virus is now gone I went back to their website and clicked the same link but it simply redirected me to the Ordnance Survey website which it is supposed to do.


    When I was on their website the other evening and clicked on the link to the OSI website a little message popped up inviting me to click on it (think its called a Captcha) to prove I wasnt a robot or something like that. Thinking it was a security feature I did click on it. I actually clicked on that planning map link 3 times just to be sure and got the same pop up message each time. After that I wasn't redirected to the OSI website but to a chrome search engine page and then started to get pop up messages such as Norton is out of date even though I never had Norton installed at any stage

    Anyhow it seems to have sorted itself now :)


  • Options
    #4
    Alun
    Registered Users Posts: 21,418 ✭✭✭✭Alun


    The OSI website appears to have been hacked a few days ago, see first post in this thread ...

    https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058022454


  • Options
    #5
    muffler
    Registered Users Posts: 45,820 ✭✭✭✭muffler


    Alun wrote: »
    The OSI website appears to have been hacked a few days ago, see first post in this thread ...

    https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058022454
    Ah! That would explain my issues so.

    Thanks for posting that.


  • Options
    #6
    mcmoustache
    Registered Users Posts: 7,237 ✭✭✭mcmoustache


    I'm trying to think of ways to avoid this happening in future but I'm drawing a bit of a blank. I'm assuming that this was a windows machine which has a decent built-in antivirus. You probably have an adblocker there too. A hijacked website can do a lot of damage.

    I'm curious if anyone here has any suggestions on reducing this risk when using Windows. For example, are there browser settings or plugins that could help?


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