Two days ago, I started getting warnings from Avast when I clicked on sites I regularly visit (including my blog) that an infected site had been successfully blocked. When I clicked on the ‘Details’ link, there was reference to dust-cat.com robots.txt. On googling for that, I was automatically directed to a MS page on ‘deceptive viruses’.
I did everything suggested on the MS page, could not identify any programs that I did not recognise, ran Avast, Superantispyware and Malwarebytes, and no infections were detected.
For a while, all seemed ok, then yesterday I again started receiving the same warnings from Avast re malicious malware being present on my blog and other familiar sites, along with the dust.cat reference - with some variations, but always including ‘dust-cat’. Again, clicking on URLs brought up in Google redirected to unrelated sites. Copying and pasting the URLs directly into the browser seemed to be an effective workaround. At first I thought this redirect stuff was only happening with FF, but IE9 started behaving similarly as I began using it more.
I asked my web host to check my blog for viruses, and they replied that nothing was evident, and that they were not experiencing anything abnormal when accessing the site through Google. I concluded that the issue, whatever it is, is local to my computer.
One further thing that may be significant. When this first started happening, I could not bring up my blog page or the other URLs that were supposedly infected. Instead, I’d be redirected to other pages that I didn’t take note of, but some seemed to be advertising URLs and others were apparently random legit sites, including some mainstream newspaper sites I regularly peruse.
Fearing a rootkit, Last night I ran TDSSKiller and Hitman Pro - again, no infections picked up.
Today, so far, none of the problems are present.
Anyone able to shed some light on what has been happening, please?
Cheers
Ross
