LOLCats hacked

[WanderingOak]

Well, it looks like one of my favorite humor sites has been hijacked by Scan Antivirus 2009. Whenever I tried to go there this morning, I get redirected to a fake Windows alert screen, telling me that I have a virus (on a Mac? Yeah, right). When I close that window, the LOLCats tab in FireFox is taken over by a fake virus scan, which DEMANDS that I download their bogus antivirus software. I've heard tell that this will actually give false positives whenever I go online, so that I will HAVE to buy their paid version. Hopefully, the LOLCats people will be able to fix their website. Unfortunately, not everybody knows about this particular piece of MalWare, so there is no telling how many people are going to be infected because of this.

Does anybody know how websites wind up being infected to become a 'carrier' for this type of trash? This type of garbage is definitely making the internet a worse place.

[WanderingOak]

Well, it looks like LOLCats is back up. A bit more research turned up an accusation that "Scan Antivirus 2009" has been distributed by the Motigo webstat counter. I'm guessing webmasters should beware...

[WanderingOak]

Well, it looks like the Webmaster at LOLCats is gone for the holidays, because they are infested with Scan Antivirus 2009 again. This is extremely annoying. With the holidays here, it will take a few days for them to get everything fixed. There has to be a way to stop these website hijackers, to keep them from trashing the internet.

[Zwynd]

I'm not seeing anything other than the website. But then I have NoScripts on Mozilla.

What's the virus about? Keylogger maybe? I'd laugh as it'd be the perfect place to start keylogging gamers.

[WanderingOak]

I saw it this morning, the first time i went there. Apparently some ad hosts don't screen their content overmuch. I put the latest patch on Mozilla this afternoon. Perhaps that filters the fake virus warning out, because i can't see it anymore.

What the actual "scan antivirus" program does is have you computer give you fake virus warnings every time you go online. You are also bombarded with popups telling you to register the software (for a hefty fee). It may include keyloggers, and other malware as well, I dunno. One of the reasons why I use a Mac is so I don't have to worry about viruses, etc.