Do I have a Browser Virus?

I mainly use Ubuntu Linux, but I do have Windows dual boot on my laptop, and a Windows 7 desktop for my son. We don’t have Norton Internet Security or McAfee installed on either computer. Mainly because it slows systems down, and is not necessary in our house – we’re all technically minded and haven’t had an infection in 10 years.

Over the last month something weird has happened – when we visit web sites another tab will open via popup in Firefox with some type of ad, usually with video and sound – and it seems to be triggered by certain keywords. Things like “ebay”, “amazon”, “spyware”, and other trigger keywords. You’ll go to shut down the ad tab and you always get the javascript prompt “are you sure you want to do that”.

At first I thought this was a bad “addon” or toolbar that was installed to Firefox. We do have one little one in the house, and he doesn’t yet know the difference between ads and content. There are some really sneaky, shady (and slimy) marketers that put out both toolbars and addons that “enhance” your web pages with popups, ads, and then can even contextually link content on a web page to spam sites and sales pages. Instead of “infecting” your computer, they just convince you to click and install a toolbar or Firefox Addon under the guise of “providing incredible deals” or “helping your surf faster”, or some other garbage. So if you think you have some kind of redirect or popup virus – the first thing you can check is whether you have any toolbars or addons installed in Firefox under “Tools->Addons”. Remove all addons that you don’t need, or don’t know what they are, and restart Firefox.

It’s not a Firefox Addon or Toolbar – Am I Infected?

The next thing I did was visit Housecall.Trendmicro.com. I’m not in love with Trend Micro security, but they have an online scanner you can use without installing anything. It works just as good as Norton or McAfee. I let it run, and it didn’t find any virus, trojan, rootkit, malware, spyware, adware, or other kind of infection – NOTHING!

Now I was stumped, I fully expected it to turn up something. I googled, and I googled, and I googled some more. It turns out that there are some widespread infections with the Firefox browser – and they’re all for popups or redirects. McAfee and Norton can’t find them, and they’re NOT installed through an addon or Toolbar.

The Firefox Browser Redirect Popup Virus

This Firefox browser redirect popup virus infection is usually one of the following:

- an infected Firefox profile
- an infected Firefox “hosts” file
- an infected Firefox browser cache

How do you get rid of the Firefox popup redirect virus? For me, the fix was as simple as pie. It turns out that I had an infected profile, and this is what fixed it:

1. You start Firefox in “SAFE Mode”

Look in your start menu as in the image above for the Firefox safe mode link – and click it.

2. Reset EVERYTHING in Firefox

Then check all the boxes and restart Firefox. This will dump the cache, all settings, reset the profile – and adds are (like me) once the browser is restarted your redirection and popup infection in Firefox will go away.

If you still have problems, most likely your hosts file is infected, google how to remove it, install a fresh one, and restart your computer.

Back in the day (like 10 years ago) I remember when we used to download all kinds of Windows utilities to do handy things, and there was this thing called a “password revealer” that I used to have. When you ran a small executable file it would open a “loupe” (fancy word for jewelers maginifying glass). When you moved the “loupe” over a password field it would turn the dots or asteriks into their real letters, numbers, and characters revealing the real password. w00t!

Now today I wanted to find this utility or a very good reason – I wanted to figure my own password out. Unfortuantely there are people out there who would want to use this tool for ill gotten gains, like hacking your myspace password, breaking into your hotmail account, or for an easy way to steal your yahoo password. What I’m saying is, I’m going to give you a tool you can use to reveal most saved password, but it would be in your best interest to uninstall when you were done to keep prying eyes from getting into your business! Like I said – there’s a reason that less than 100 people per month search for “password revealer”, but more than 2,000 each search for “hacking myspace password”, and “hotmail password stealer”?!?

When your dealing something like looking for a “password revealer” tool – a lot of the search results are spammy or trying to get you to buy some piece of software to solve your problem. I was lucky enough that Lifehacker saved the day (again) with their post Recover Lost Passwords. They linked to a site and post I forgot about – Snadboy’s Revelation 2.0, which is course is a freeware password revealer. It worked for me! If it doesn’t work for you, try some of the other tools on the Lifehacker page, and report back here what works and what doesn’t!

Were you one of the 11 million people who downloaded Firefox 3 during the first 24 hours it was available? They (tenatively) set the record for the most people downlading a single application within 24 hours. I have to admit – I was one of those people. But I didn’t download it for the guiness book of world records. I did it because (as much as I love Firefox) I wanted the performance improvement.

I’m known for having a dozen or more tabs open, and on a Toshiba notebook running Vista on 2GB of Ram that’s not much of a problem most of the time. However, Firefox 2 has been known to “eat all it can” memory wise. Over time, it gets worse and worse, and sometimes you just have to shut it down and restart the computer. I had read in severa pre-release blog posts Firefox 3 had a smaller footprint, and promised to be quicker when rendering pages. Hmmm…

I first put Firefox 3 on the notebook, and most of my extensions didn’t work – so they were disabled. I just uninstalled them and kept only the compatible ones. Pages do load pretty quick, and opening tabs is faster. The new address (smart location) bar is kinda cool, but takes longer to lookup autocompletes for URL’s and titles – so it’s cool but slower. The one thing I find very annoying is the fact that sometimes when a load heavy page opens, while it’s “loading” the other tabs won’t do anything and FF kinda locks up until that page finishes what it’s doing. Other than that my experience was pretty good.

I work on another PC with is a 2Ghz Celeron with 1.2GB of Ram. On that PC I use a flash drive and run Firefox on Portable Apps. I upgraded that to Portable Apps as well. On this PC I have all kinds of issues with Firefox 3. They are mainly the same issues as my laptop, only it happens more often and Firefox is slower. I can’t open more than 5 tabs without waiting 3-5 seconds for everything, and if two or more tabs are loading anything – FF locks up until it’s done. Also, when using the right scroll or backspace in the URL or any form field, it will freeze for 5-10 seconds, and then be fine. I only have google notebook, del,icio.us, and download statusbar as extensions – everything should function fine. Expecially with 1Gig+ of Ram. I almost wished I hadn’t upgraded that Firefox.

Here’s some firefox 3 reviews of the new features from around the web:

If you’re looking for a visual review of all the new features Mozilla Links has just what you’re looking for. Check it out, it’s a very through Firefox 3 Review. For those of you that like to read, the WinSuperSite has a Firefox 3 Review that’s very (wordy) in depth as well.

How do you like the new Firefox 3?

So I’m watching “Attack of the Show” the other day and they showed this new site called “InstantAction.com“. They hailed it as “Xbox live for the PC”, and if someone is ballsy enough to make that kind of claim – well, I just have to check it out. When they showed it on t.v. they said it was “social gaming network”. When you get an account, of course you’ll have an “inbox”, a “profile”, and a list of “friends” to play whenever you logon. The service is free (for now), and they have 4 full games that you can play in a web browser. There’s one game coming they showed on tv that’s not on there yet that looked an awful lot like a Metroid Prime ripoff. I don’t care if it’s a ripoff or not, as long as it’s free to play and cool.

So, I went to instantaction.com and created a new account. I logged in for the first time and just picked a random game to try. “Think Tanks” was the first game I checked out. It’s pretty simple, you can “start a game” or “join a game” (and of course play with others). You start with a little “My Party” box on top right where you can in effect “host your own room” and invite friends to play.

I decided to try “single game” – I mean, who wants to get slaughtered by real people the first time they play? I took about 3-4 minutes to download the game on broadband cable the first time, but once you have it – it loads right up. Also – I used Firefox, and it had to install a game launcher “add-on” extension and restart the browser the very first time. There are 12 worlds or “levels” you can play, I just opted for the default level 1 “Medulla Mesa”. When the game started I was impressed with the detail of the terrain. Your player is a short and stout little tank with turret on top. The arrows move you around the level, and your mouse aims the crosshairs of the turret, the mouse button fires. There are 7 other thanks, and you basically roam around the level and shoot at them and take them out before they do you. When you die, you come back after 3 seconds. This fact, and how the other players are shown on the map reminded me sooooo much of Halo it wasn’t funny. There are “powerups” throughout the level. I had a lot of fun playing, but really sucked because of the fact that I was on my laptop. You really need a real mouse and not a touchpad to stand a chance in this game. Here’s a snap of the gameplay action:

So the next game I tried was “Marble Blast” which was of course a blatant ripoff of Marble Mania. Neverless, a fun game in which you navigate your marble through different levels by avoiding pitfalls, jumping, and trying not to fall off ledges and down holes. In this game you have an “individual challege” where you “beat the clock” – or you can do the “realtime multiplayer”, which seems like it would be kind of weird for this kind of game. I guess you race other players when you play that way. If this type of “maze game” is your bag, you’ll love Marble Blast, especially ’cause it free! Here’s a pic of the action when I completed level 1:

The third game I tried was “Cyclomite” – which I don’t really have anything to compare it to. Seems pretty original. You control a wheel in the center of the screen that has spokes, and each half is a different color. From the outer edges of the screen come these “meteorite” things that you have to “intercept” with the wheel. If the color of the meteor matches the color of the “spoke” in the wheel it touches, it is absorbed, otherwise, it “stack” on the edge. If you get the wrong color stacked too high – game stops and you lose. I’m sure there’s more to this game once you get going, but I didn’t play it much longer than to figure out how it worked. Here’s a pic of “Cyclomite” during gameplay:

All in all Instant Action wasn’t a bad experience, and it does say “beta” on their logo. If they think they’re going to build up a community of “free” games and then douse a membership fee on it like gasoline, they’re just doomed for failure. Also – they’re going to have to step it up a bit to be able to compete with Xbox live and online console gaming. They may need to get more servers too, I never did get to play “Screw Jumpers” at all, since it would never fully load. It’s either the most popular game, or it was just bogged down from their mention on G4 TV. In any event, you’ll have some downtime over the holiday weekend – you should check out these “free online games” when you’re at the relatives house with nothing to do! They should work just as well in Internet Explorer if they don’t have Firefox where you’re going….but if they don’t – install it for them!

“The Smorgasbord list of Top 10 New Firefox 3 Features“!!

1. One Click Site Info: Just click the little favicon pic next to the URL in the address bar and see who owns the site — cool!
2. Easier Password Management: Thank god! It’s time to have more than the basic options we’ve had for years. The “dialog” box will be replaced by an info bar.
3. New Download Manager: I’ve been using Firefox for years and I’m really used to it saving everything to the desktop. But I always wondered when they would be making this a bit better. Looks like I’ll get my wish!
4. Tab Scrolling and Quickmenu: I always thought that if I had 3 dozen tabs open the layout could be managed better than a “forever” scroll to the right. A ‘quickmenu’ allowing me to ‘go to end’ or jump quickly would be great. Depending on what will be on this menu – I’m thinking that this will be good for me!
5. Full Page Zoom: I have always lauded the ability to zoom way in and out in a PDF – and now we will finally have that ability in a browser!
6. Improved bookmarks: Some great things here, like one-click bookmarking, you can “tag” your bookmarks to categorize them (vastly improved from “folders”), and a ‘smart places folder’ with your recent bookmarks and tagged pages
7. Location bar auto-complete: I will frequently type in the first few letters of a domain in the address bar to let it complete and quickly go to a site. But NOW, you can type either the first few letters of the web page name, or even the ‘tags’ you used when bookmarking the page. I think that this will prompt people to bookmark a lot more pages just to use this feature. Bookmark your online banking and tag it so you can just type “bank” in the address bar when you want to go to it, very handy!
8. Reliability: This is a behind the scenes one, but if your system of browser crashes, your bookmarks, cookies, preferences, and history is stored in a transactionally secure database format preventing data loss. What does this mean? No more corrupted config files!
9. Web Forgery Protection: Yes, this was already mentioned in other places, but I need to state why it’s cool. Email programs started long ago not displaying images until you click to “load” them because of spammers and phishers using them to entice you to click. Now, forged web pages will do the same and not display content to you – keeping people from being fooled. An awesome feature, you can test it here.
10. Malware Protection: Also already mentioned, but I think this feature will be good because it will keep many people from adding third party plugins and what-not for malware into their browser. I know, it’s not perfect keeping a “blacklist” constantly updated with “bad” web sites, but at least it’s a start – and we can build from there. You can also test this one here

After looking at this list – I think that what is coming in the new Firefox 3 is really something to look forward to!! Now I just have to install it on one of my PC’s to personally test the beta. Have you been testing it? What do you think? Comment now below!

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

So, no I’m going to describe how I use Portable Apps and you can apply it to best suit you. First of all, I needed a new thumb drive. You may have one already. I had several, but they were only a few hundred megabytes. I knew I wanted one at least 2GB or more, and I didn’t want to spend more than $20 or $30. I did what I usually do – I looked on Amazon. You could get one on eBay, but I didn’t want to fool around with that this time (waiting or an auction to end). I wanted my drive in a few days. And I didn’t do TigerDirect or NewEgg simply because I didn’t feel like paying $6 shipping on such a low cost item. I went over to The Smorgasbord Store, and I did a search for USB Flash Drive 2GB. Right away I found many in the $20 price range. I picked one I could get free shipping on and place the order.

Three days later I had my new 2GB thumb drive, a good Kingston one with a eyelet for my keychain. I plugged it in and installed the full version of Portable Apps. Once installed, there is an autorun file – so when you plug in the drive to your computer the menu should load automatically, but if it doesn’t just go to “My Computer”, find your thumb drive, open it, and click on “StartPortableApps.exe”.

Now, you’re going to get a menu that looks just like this one:

[photopress:portable_apps.jpg,full,pp_image]

Wow! Your own customizable start menu just for your portable drive! You get many applications pre-intalled (depending on which version you downloaded). You get Firefox, an IM client, the Open Office Suite, and more! Think about what you’ve got here for a minute. You can open and edit just about any version MS Office doc from your drive. You can use your own portable Firefox, take your bookmarks with you wherever you go, save your own password in Firefox Password Manager, you have your own cache, your own Firefox extensions, everywhere you go you have a customized browser just the way you like it! At work, at the Library, at your mom’s house, on any computer in your house – it’s all with you every time! You can IM using any messenger service with GAIM, and you’ll never have to worry about installing YIM, AIM, or MSN again! There is also a built-in backup function on the menu, so you can backup everything on your drive to your main computer anytime you want.

Be Organized: There are links on the menu to “Documents”, “Pictures”, “Video”, “Music” – and each link opens a folder on your drive that you drag and drop stuff into. Wow, you can keep your important docs on the go, pictures from your digital camera, your favorite mp3′s, or video clips! The bigger your external drive, card, or stick – the more stuff you can take with you!

Get More Portable Apps: In my opinion, some of the greatest portable apps you’ll need to add. On the menu, just click “Options” and “Get More Apps”. Download the ones you like, then go back to the menu “Options” and “Add New App”. You can remove apps the same way. Now, I maintain web sites, write code, edit video, audio, and edit graphics as well. So, I downloaded and installed “Notepad++ Portable” (text editor), “Nvu Portable” (web editor), “Gimp Portable” (graphics editor on a par with Photoshop), “Filezilla Portable” (FTP client), “PuTTy Portable” (SSH telnet client), “Audacity Portable” (Audio Editor), “MPlayer Portable” (movie and media player), “VirtualDub Portable” (Video Editor), “Sumatra PDF Portable” (PDF Viewer), “7-Zip Portable” (zip and unzip stuff), “Eraser Portable” (erase files securely), “KeePass Password Safe” (keep an encrypted password db), and last “Toucan” (an advanced backup utility).

Wow! So now, I can do web editing, graphic editing, audio and video editing, I can FTP or telnet, view PDF files, zip and unzip stuff, I can securely store all my password, securely delete files – and EVERY single program is COMPLETELY FREE as is PortableApps itself! You cannot ask for a better bargain!! I want to talk about “Toucan” for a sec too. Portable Apps has a backup function, but with Toucan you can schedule backups, filter out things to backup (just these kinds of files from these folders), you can compare folders, update files newer than a certain date, etc.

OK – that’s my review! I love Portable Apps and I know use it and my new 2GB thumb drive every day! It has saved me tons of time, and everything is with me everywhere I go now! Do you have an app that has saved you time? Do you know of other portable or thumb drive utils? Please, comment now and share with everyone!

Oh – and this is the flash drive I have and installed portable apps on – and I love it!

Kingston Data Traveler II Plus – Migo Edition – USB flash drive – 2 GB ( DTII+M/2GB ) (Retail Package)

oh – and you can get flash drives at very reasonable prices on eBay as well:

You’ll see in the video step by step instructions, but in case you miss something, here they are written out (for firefox):

1. Type about:config in the address bar of firefox
2. In the “filter” box type “network”
3. doubleclick network.http.pipelining and set it to “true”
4. doubleclick network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and change it from 4 to a higher number like 10

that’s it!!

Lightning Fast Browsing Trick For Internet Explorer And Firefox – video powered by Metacafeoriginal post: 2006-12-18 02:08:51 -0400

Firefox Hacks: Tips & Tools for Next-Generation Web Browsing (Hacks)

Hacking Firefox: More Than 150 Hacks, Mods, and Customizations (ExtremeTech)

These are my favorite firefox extensions of all time:

Colorful Tabs: I don’t know how I ever did without this one. It makes all the tabs you have open a different color, and the one you are on at any given time has bold red text in the title. This is a very helpful extension.

Googlebar: The google toolbar for firefox. I use it all the time for quick searches, pagerank, and more. If you use google – get this extension now.

AdBlock: Just right click, and block the ad. That simple, that easy, that good.

Session Saver: Session Saver has saved my ass more than once. If you ever had the browser crash and lost your open tabs – you need this extension now. It preserves your browsers tabs and pages exactly as you left them. Next time you open firefox – voila, everything is as it was! You go get a burrito, and wife says from your computer chair “can I close this?”, and you just say “sure, why not”. Session Saver’s got your back.

Copy All URL’s: How many times did you have many tabs open and just wanted to copy down the URL’s or send them to someone in email? Problem solved.

del.icio.us: If you use del.icio.us, you must have this extention.

DownThemAll!: Down them all is a nice little utility that lets you download all of just about anything (pictures, audio) from a web page, all at once. No right clicking, no fooling around – it just does it. I tried Flashgot, and Downthem all was definitely better for me.

One thing that I should tell you is something that I’ve not read on the web anywhere regarding extensions – use them in moderation. I have read dozens of “best” and “top” extensions articles, and not a single one lists extensions that they had problems with over time, or how many extensions are safe to install total. Remember – your mileage may vary!! Depending on how much memory your pc has and how many tabs you have open at once in firefox – you may not want more than 10-12 extensions installed at any given time! I installed 20 and found that firefox greatly slowed down and surfing the web took more time that it was worth. It even crashed from time to time, so I pared down to the list above.

The two extensions that I had the most problems with were IE Tab and All in One Sidebar. The all in one sidebar just was too cumbersome for me. It took up browser real estate and had too many options in one place. I hated it, and it seemed to take too much memory for my liking. I have no test to prove this, it just seemed to slow the browser down. IE Tab was a great idea for an extension, and it worked for me about 6 out of 10 times, but ultimately would crash my browser 4 out of those 10. I don’t use IE often, and then idea of opening a page rendered in IE through firefox with one browser open was noble. But, I used it on 3 different computers in Windows and Linux with the same (crashing results). Try extensions yourself, remove the ones you don’t use or like, and try to keep the installations to a minimum unless you have GB’s of ram handy.

I have installed and used XUL applications as well from the mozilla update site, but they sucked quite a bit of memory for my liking. I used FireFTP and CodeTech editor for a bit, but ending up going back the standard tools to do these things.

Last but not least, while you are enhancing your Firefox, be sure to update your search engines by adding ones you will use. You get a few by default, but add the ones for wikipedia, webmd, amazon, free dictionary, IMDB, gracenote, and more. Better search, better use of your time!

Please, post a comment listing your favorite extensions (and why) for firefox.

originally posted: 2006-01-19 02:06:48 -0400

Now – as soon as I installed Dapper Drake 6.06, I installed all the flash things I could find in Synaptic. I installed what I thought was the most obvious – libflash-mozplugin. I guess this is the open source version of the flash plugin. I think it’s some kind of emulator. I’m no expert, but I can sure tell you that it just won’t allow you to view any modern (version 6-7) flash content.

Next – I looked up how to install flash plugin on Ubuntu linux (dapper). I went over to the guide at easylinux.info like I always do (first), and tried what it said. It said the same thing I found in all kinds of forums posts, run this code:


sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
sudo update-flashplugin


If you already have it – you’ll get the “already the newest version” message. Chances are though – you get the “installation failed” message like I did. So I read some more in the forums, and some said you could get the plugin direct from Macromedia.

I found this is true. You can visit www.macromedia.com (www.adobe.com) and just click on the “get flash” button to go directly to the download page for the linux version of the flash 7 plugin (official version from Macromedia). All you have to do is download this to your desktop, open terminal and go to that directory, and run:


$ sudo ./flashplayer-installer


The only thing you really need to know is the path or location of your Mozilla Firefox. You can run “which firefox” in terminal to find that out. For most Ubuntu (dapper) users it’s going to be /usr/lib/firefox. Then, just follow the prompt of the Macromedia installer to install.

But WAIT! After I did this – my firefox flash plugin STILL didn’t work (and boy was I pissed!). I must have read 4 dozens posts in ubuntuforums.org without a single answer. I did get this fixed just today – but I didn’t find this fix posted anywhere – I figure it all out on my own. If you have tried any one (or all) of the install options above, and firefox flash plugin still doesn’t work – try this:

1. In synaptic package manager, completely remove libflash-mozplugin. Make SURE you use the “completely remove” option, that gets rid of the gstreamer-ugly and couple other packages.
2. Download the latest flash plugin from www.adobe.com.
3. Unzip it to a folder on your desktop.
4. In terminal cd to that dir and sudo ./flashplayer-installer
5. follow the prompts, and make sure the path to your plugins is right

Then see if flash works in a browser – it should work just fine now on all the sites. You won’t be able to use flash 9 content (yet), but you should be able to view most things with no problem. I hope this helps some people, I couldn’t find this fix anywhere on the web.

originally posted: 2006-06-14 23:15:17 -0400