191
A Linux user's nightmare: the machine was wiped clean with one click
(www.mikrobitti.fi)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
191 points (94.0% liked)
Technology
59080 readers
3438 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I know this story is more-so about a trojan in a trusted place, and not general security, but I have an anecdote to share.
So, time to fess up here. I previously complained about Google trapping me in captcha-hell for enabling Ublock Origin.
I was wrong.
Turns out that I had visited a movie streaming site a while before to watch a season of some show, I forget which. Without any downloads or noticeable input on my part. My Linux box apparently got hacked/malware. All I did was click the occasional "I am a human" box on the website, and sit back with popcorn.
I found out when my ISP starting blocking IP addresses some time later. I checked my modem's logs, and they showed some unexplained traffic to impossible "unassigned" IP addresses afterward. I didn't notice for a while.
I was stupid. Even worse, my phone also started behaving badly after that. I think I watched the last few episodes in bed, so must have infected that too.
Don't assume any system is automatically safe.
I really doubt anything escaped the browser, but websites can make nefarious connections, sure.
I hope so. It's more likely something infected Firefox itself, and didn't get into the OS. But when I checked the modem logs, it happened up to a couple of months after the fact. That's worrying.
What's even more worrying is that a couple of websites told me I had an IP address that didn't match my home IP, but would provide the correct one if I refreshed the page a couple of times. So some kind of covert proxy or VPN type of thing was happening.
I ended up just wiping everything, to be safe. Still a bit paranoid though.