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General discussion

NEW! From MSN HOTMAIL! MALWARE (data miners) by MEDIAPLEX!

Mar 14, 2004 5:48AM PST

For the first time in the five years that I've had Hotmail, they've gone beyond annoying pop-up ads inserted while at Med. Security as required for sign-in. Starting Sat.Mar13th(and each visit since) they've allowed Mediaplex(pop-ups) to include SPYWARE (data mining cookie) in forced download. Worse it's in MALWARE as it damaged files including AVG!! After it's install on next boot-up lower right start bar was missing both the AVG (control center was disabled) and scheduled tasks Icons and disconnected desktop shortcut and content of a game (ZUMA by popcap). This is new and completely unacceptable. Seems as if MS & cronies don't have enough class action suits to keep them busy! If you have Hotmail run ADAWARE for yourself and see. After removing malware and scan-disking I was able to recover game, AVG,and sched.tasks. Had I not noticed, I may have been on net without AV! Angry

Discussion is locked

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Re:NEW! From MSN HOTMAIL! MALWARE (data miners) by MEDIAPLEX!
Mar 14, 2004 6:54AM PST

I am finding nothing of the things you describe. Finished with an Ad-aware scan that comes up clean as a "whisle". Have you checked further for malware?

If you find an answer please post the results. This is very puzzling!

Glenn

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Re:Re:NEW! From MSN HOTMAIL! MALWARE (data miners) by MEDIAPLEX!
Mar 14, 2004 9:51AM PST

I read my Hotmail email yesterday (March 13) and just ran a scan on Adaware today, after installing the latest update. However, my pc came up clean. I really doubt Microsoft would sneak malware into Hotmail, despite some of the dumb things the company has done in the past. Could you have picked up the malware from somewhere else?

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Confirmed
Mar 14, 2004 12:08PM PST

Just want to add. No Mediaplex as per SSD and Ad-aware after accessing hotmail pages using IE.

I remember receiving alert from Spybot S&D last time for Mediaplex (try to download) but not with Hotmail pages.

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Follow-up response of tobeach
Mar 14, 2004 4:13PM PST

Further seeking has revealed:
Expiry date of Dat Miner cookie 2009 (5 years)
Reboot after cleanout showed "please wait while reconfiguring files". Apparently this went in and unchecked AVG CC and Taskmon (scheduled tasks) from Config> Start up... explaining their disappearance from bar.
Still don't know why clock disappeared possibly connected to Task Shed?

I appreciate all your replies and have considered.

Reasoning: Immediately before closing for the night Fri, ran AVG, Adaware & Spybot scans because of so many new definitions added. All reported completely clean and all were updated in previous 24 hours.
Lady of the house went on puter and swears she only played (local machine(old)) games, and visited Hotmail only. Dwnloaded nothing, installed nothing. Temp Int. Files & off line(cleared before scanning) showed only 1 site visited: Hotmail which constantly pops-up Ads from Mediaplex. I have not noted Mediaplex from any of my other frequented sites. Cookie showed Mediaplex and creation date of Sat. mar13. (she never deletes Temp Int. files).
After clean up , I went to Hotmail on Sunday then ran scan and there it was again but with Sun.14th date!

As for others not getting: ??? Noted on my 98SE security offers only Med. for Hotmail but my daughters XP Pro (didn't get) has a MEDIUM-HIGH setting into Hotmail which may have excluded this problem.

I don't KNOW if Mediaplex is actually MS(N) or only pays MSN for featured access. MSN might claim they didn't know and Mediaplex 'til now, never was caught in such an act. I certainly haven't. I suspect MSN has the same info coming to them already in Log in cookie (ASH-X File?).
Basically I felt this a major change in threats associated with Hotmail, as opposed to usual Virus (I caught 2 from Hotmail , AVG Fixed) that their McAfee seems to miss including one that had been in circulation for over 1 year. Do they really up-date?? Or only in the Pay MSN 8??!! Initially, I thought this was a virus due to attacking & disabling AVG. Since many use scheduled tasks to run their Adaware/Spybot scans, this was also logical attack venue to avoid discovery.
I normally run scans frequently but now, I guess ,daily or at least after every Hotmail visit.
Just wanted to alert everyone who would have no reason to suspect.

Posted by: tobeach Posted on: 03/14/2004 11:36 PM

http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-7598-0.html?forumID=51&threadID=15620&start=0

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Re:Follow-up response of tobeach
Mar 14, 2004 4:28PM PST

tobeach,

When I visited hotmail.com the other day, there's no spyware installed and no alert from Spybot S&D. Today, after reading your follow-up response, I visit hotmail.com again and SSD alerted me that Spybot S&D has blocked the download of "Avenue A, Inc"!

This is an advertiser which is known to Spybot as tracking cookies just like MediaPlex.

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Re:Re:Follow-up response of tobeach
Mar 15, 2004 12:09AM PST

Thank you DONNA!! I thought I was seeing things as I have also received Spybot warning about "Avenue A, Inc." several times in the past while accessing my Hotmail acct; but, not since I ran the immunize function of Spybot.