Virus hack attempt

   I have been getting a lot of Trojan Horse hack attempts.  They only happen when I come and play my email chess games.  My Norton security tells me these are a "High Security Risk". These attempts only happen on this site.  I hope my Norton Security is getting them all.  Am I the only person having these problems?

   Is is possible that there is some kind of a problem with this site being hacked?

warrenj

No, I am not getting viruses. 

   Thanks for the fast replies.  I know that other people do not like Norton, but our last computer was 7 years old and we never had a virus problem.  That is why we still use Norton.

   I will look at the on-line scanner that you recommend.

 I totally agree with the comments concerning not using Norton, about using NOD32 instead, and about the danger of clicking on promising-sounding popups that really are hidden malware. I own a laptop that is totally useless for accessing the Internet because of incurable infection. (It does have an early version of Rybka, though.)

Thanks, I actually have a nasty virus on a different computer, I was going to reformat it and just assume the virus would be gone, but obviously computers don't destroy data, just erase the tag used to find it (or whatever you call it) so this is useful to me.

A few weeks ago I opened this site and my anti-virus software was set off.  It might have been a coincidence, or even a false alarm, but I wonder whether it was one of the ads here.  I know that people have previously complained about the Chess.com ads triggering their AV software.

For what it's worth, here is a screenshot of the item in my AV software history:

http://i39.tinypic.com/103hnag.png

I got a virus on my computer at work, I know it's from visiting this site because at work that's all I do online.  My computer at home has been attacked several times too but Norton contains the threat.  They use Sophos at my work with XP.  I'm using Vista with Norton.  I think XP is a bit suspect nowadays regardless of what OS you use. 

I don't believe it's a case of this site being hacked.  It's something to do with the popups.  I'm sure I've seen this thread before and Chess.com stated that they have not been hacked and if you're having problems it's because of something else that is already on your computer. 

I've never had any problems with viruses on chess.com

I'm using Avast! as my primary scanner and I haven't had any problems with it yet. I used to have Avira but that crap let 3 different viruses on my computer. Luckily I check regularly what processes are running on my PC. When I find one that I don't know what it is, I just google it. There are a lot of pages that can tell you what it's supposed to do and if it's dangerous or not.

It's kinda funny that I've had more problems with DRM than any viruses

And just a little advice. Never ever click on a popup or believe anything you see online even if it looks safe. Scammers are sneaky and they can trick you if you don't watch out.

   I would really like to thank those who have commented to this topic.  I would just like to remind everybody that the only time I get a hack attempt is when I come to this site.  I have never gotten a hack attempt at any other web site.

Could be that your software is just overreacting on something. If you use firefox, you could just get Adblock. If the hack is caused by the ads, that should take care of it. And you get rid of all the ads without paying

I can also confirm that I've received viruses from chess.com. It's not the site itself, but the shady advertisements allowed at times. The "online virus scan" one got me eventually. It automatically redirects you to another site. I thought simply going back to chess.com would be fine, but eventually I got infected in the short time that the window popped up. Now I simply CTRL+ALT+DLT and kill the browser process when it tries to pop up. The only website that I've ever encountered to have that wonderful "ad" is chess.com. Thankfully I haven't seen it here anymore as of late so I'm guessing the ad company running the offending ad or chess.com axed it. Unfortunately it did cause me to have to spend a day trying to remove the virus, and eventually reformatting.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were more ads popping up on this site with trojan horses and the like. This website isn't exactly on my top list of "Safest websites to visit".

Adblock takes away all the problems... and shady ads in any site. That's probably the reason I've never encountered these problems.

Just out of curiosity, ShinobiAC, did you click/download anything before getting infected, or was the infection automatic?

In my case, I didn't click anything (I just went to chess.com/home), and my AV software popped up a "malicious file accessed" dialog.

No comment from Chess.com?  With quite a few reports, this seems to be quite a serious issue.

   I only play chess against one other person.  We have decided to use "Red Hot Pawn" after our games are done here.  I do not want to risk being infected by a virus by just playing chess.

I've been on Chess.com since 2007, and I've never had a problem.  But then, I'm a premium member, so I never see any of the ads.

I spent the weekend getting rid of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Antivirus Virus. I'm sure it came from one of the ads on this site.

Just block the ads and you don't have to complain anymore. It's not that big of a deal anyway

There have been comments from Erik in other threads regarding this issue.  To help determine exactly what ad(s) are causing it, you need to take screenshots and send them to Erik if you get a virus message while on this site.

It may just be your NORTON acting up. I do not like NORTON at all. It does that all the time.