Syrian Liberation Army POP-UP

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I’m running Windows 8.1 with Avast Free Antivirus.

I got a popup saying “You have been hacked by the Syrian Liberation Army.” From what I’ve been able to discover, it’s a group that has mostly vandalized site opening screens.

What now?

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Run a full scan with Avast. Try a scan with the free version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware[/url].

Joe

--Joe

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I think it only means you’ve visited one of the web sites affected (e.g. The Independent, OK Magazine, The Telegraph, London Evening Standard, America’s National Hockey League, The Chicago Tribune, Forbes, or NBC.com):

When landing on the pages of the affected websites, the visitor receives a pop-up message saying “You’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA).”

Major Online Publications Suffer Attack from Syrian Electronic Army

Bruce

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I think it only means you’ve visited one of the web sites affected (e.g. The Independent, OK Magazine, The Telegraph, London Evening Standard, America’s National Hockey League, The Chicago Tribune, Forbes, or NBC.com):

When landing on the pages of the affected websites, the visitor receives a pop-up message saying “You’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA).”

Major Online Publications Suffer Attack from Syrian Electronic Army

Bruce

I got the same pop-up that is mentioned above. Scanned with AVG and 1 detection was found having to do with client.exe. It was ‘healed’ and removed to the vault. Then I was able to get into the site where I’d been when I first saw the pop-up. Tonight, I went back to site, and got it again (it’s a ‘shopping’ site for groceries), and now it shows, in my tray, AVG with one of those warning signs, and when I open AVG it says I’m not progected: email scanner is not fully functional. I don’t use email that is connected to my isp. I have an online email.

first, would the shopping site be one of the ‘infected’ sites (and should I notify them?), and I just ran another AVG scan, and there were no threats found this time, so I’m thinking that the client.exe problem wasn’t what caused the pop-up, or if it was, AVG is compromised? I can’t tell if AVG is actually working because it looks like it’s been disabled, yet I can open it.

Any advice is appreciated.

silkoak

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…when I open AVG it says I’m not progected: email scanner is not fully functional…

The email scanner in AVG does not really do anything useful. You can avoid that error by going to Control Panel/Programs and Features then click on AVG in the list of programs, then click on the “Change” button above the list of programs. The AVG installer dialog will load, click on the “Change” button (to the right of “Add/Remove features”), then click “Next”, then un-tick the “Email Protection” checkbox, then click “next” and let it do its thing.

I have “Email Protection” enabled in my AVG because it hasn’t caused any problems; but I have had to disable it on several customers’ computers because of the same problem you describe.

According to the experts email scanners don’t do anything useful, and that has been my experience; I have yet to see AVG’s email scanner detect an infected email (any infection will be in attachments which are inaccessible to any “email scanner”).

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I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Is AVG just showing disabled because you haven’t set up the email part? You could tell the shopping site about their popup though.

Bruce

I tried to access the site I’m getting the message on, through another computer in the house, and I was able to get on it without that same pop up. Does that mean the problem for that site is specific to my computer? Is there any way to remove that from my system? The AVG scan I did took care of that client.exe problem, and it stopped for a brief time, but I’m not sure they’re related.

Thanks for helping me out here

The email scanner in AVG does not really do anything useful. You can avoid that error by going to Control Panel/Programs and Features then click on AVG in the list of programs, then click on the “Change” button above the list of programs. The AVG installer dialog will load, click on the “Change” button (to the right of “Add/Remove features”), then click “Next”, then un-tick the “Email Protection” checkbox, then click “next” and let it do its thing.

Good to know. And thanks for the how to avoid the message info.

Edited: when I followed your instruction, I got the following:

Setting of firewall registry keys failed

Severity: Error
Error Code: 0xC0070643
Error message: General internal error.
Aedditional message MSI Engine: Failed to install the product.
@AVGMSI_error27025
Setting of firewall registry keys failed (0xE001003D)
Context: Installation of AVG Core, MSI action failed

Please advise.

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I tried to access the site I’m getting the message on, through another computer in the house, and I was able to get on it without that same pop up. Does that mean the problem for that site is specific to my computer? Is there any way to remove that from my system?

Perhaps the site just got fixed? Could you tell us which shopping site it is?

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Perhaps the site just got fixed? Could you tell us which shopping site it is?

Peapod. It still won’t work on my computer, but on computer’s from other family members, it works.

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…when I followed your instruction, I got the following:

Setting of firewall registry keys failed

Severity: Error
Error Code: 0xC0070643
Error message: General internal error.
Aedditional message MSI Engine: Failed to install the product.
@AVGMSI_error27025
Setting of firewall registry keys failed (0xE001003D)
Context: Installation of AVG Core, MSI action failed

Please advise.

Have seen that AVG error on a couple of customers’ computers. I’m guessing that the AVG installer tries, but fails, to overwrite protected registry keys.

In each case AVG continued to work without further problems. You could report the error to AVG support.

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I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Is AVG just showing disabled because you haven’t set up the email part? You could tell the shopping site about their popup though.

Bruce

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This was reported on the BBC website

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30232899

Reading that article suggests that any problem won’t be local to your PC, perhaps flushing your DNS cache may help?

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Have you tried Ctrl+F5 to force a refresh of their home page, or deleting your temporary internet files cache?

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Have you tried Ctrl+F5 to force a refresh of their home page, or deleting your temporary internet files cache?

The popup won’t let me refresh, not even with ctl/f5. I click ok, or just click the x to close, but it pops back up, and I can’t close out the browser unless I do an end task from task manager.

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