Possible virus?(Firefox)

Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 41 points –

I opened firefox After about an hour of the system being in standby and in theSponsored Links row there were 2 new entries

http:/ /bom07s30-in-x03. 1e100. net/ (I dismantled the URLs to prevent accidental clicks)

pnbomb-ac-in-x0e.1e100

I right clicked and searched in Google and it showed up as this

pnbomb-ac-in-x0e.1e100 Sponsored it disappeared after a while, just to be sure I ran sudo lsof -i and noticed firefox was connected to this url

maa05s15-in-x03.1e100.net

I am not sure if am infected or this is just a glitch(I obviously didn't click on the links)

34

Others have answered your question. I would like to add that when you want to "dismantle" the URL, there is a practice in cyber security called URL Defanging. Protocols are escaped, such that http becomes hxxp. Other significant symbols that are :// becomes [://] and . becomes [.]

Combining these, your URL becomes: hxxp[://]bom07s30-in-x03[.]1e100[.]net/

Which will be safer for others to navigate. It will take an extra effort to revert it back to the functional URL. Tools like CyberChef can perform this action if you seek a more streamlined solution.

TIL. I didn't know there was a standard, and I've never seen "hxxp", although the rest is familiar looking.

Search 1e100, it's a google thing

Yes but why did it show up In the Sponsored links row?

From mozilla. I'm guessing that the links were hosted/owned/etc. by google. When your system resumed it only partially loaded the sponsored links and you were left with the text of the url.

Your system is fine security wise, but privacy wise pinging google servers everytime you open a new tab is not ideal. This type of stuff is why I use Librewolf. Of course it's up to you how much it bothers you. You can disable alot in vanilla firefox too.

Thank you, but is there anyway I can check whether i am infected or not just for peace of mind?

Install clamav and run a scan. You will probably get false positives.

For instance the gnome polkit agent has a "malicious" image that it tries to load at start and if it succeeds it kills the program before it can run. This is to keep an actually malicious icon from being used. I spent days on that one lol

But isnt clam AV only for detecting Windows viruses?

Depends on the malware database you use, but out of the box it'll catch wide range of stuff, even linux malwares (which is rare but exists and mostly infect vulnerable web servers).

Not with 100% certainty outside of nuking your system. You’re probably fine.

Antivirus programs are generally the go-to method...

Note that anti-virus can only assert that you are infected, not the opposite.

You're saying even if you're not confirmed as infected, you're not necessarily confirmed as not being infected. In other words, you're talking about false positives.

Am I understanding you correctly?

The opposite. Not found negatives. Anti-virus software can only tell you that it didn't find a virus, not that there aren't any.

Yeah, what you just said is what I said I thought you said. (@_@)

We're on the same page; it's just that wording is hard.

Also, you all were right; I was wrong. Admission given. 👍

I think you're on the same page, but mean false negatives not false positive.
False negatives being the potential that you have the virus, but the scanner wasn't able to identify it so returned a "you're all clean" when in fact, you've got a dirty virus and should have listened in health class.