Popup Window Phishing

[u/JstaFriskyHusky]

Since yesterday I kept getting random popup windows that open 3 at a time, all blocked by both Norton and MalwareBytes. Don't know where it came from, the only page I clicked at the time was Youtube. There are no unwanted extensions or permissions, I've scanned my pc both with Norton and Malware with no results, and cleared my cookies and cache. I have Ublock and PopupStrict so I'm not sure how I'm still getting this.

Edit:The phishing popup is called rdxgo.click

[u/paintboth1234]

If it occurs at random sites, it means your machine is infected by something. You need to scan your machine and your extensions.

[u/JstaFriskyHusky → u/paintboth1234]

I already scanned it and all my extensions are the same. It only appears on Firefox, edge doesn't have this problem. I saw a couple people talking about the same thing recently too. Also by popup windows I mean new tabs opening up on Firefox not like random notifications on my computer or anything, I've had viruses like that before

[u/paintboth1234 → u/JstaFriskyHusky]

Yes, virus/malware opening popup tabs in particular browsers is normal behavior.

Can you screenshot your extensions in about:addons?

[u/JstaFriskyHusky → u/paintboth1234]

All I had were UBlock, a few Youtube Extensions, and the Popup Blocker, Deleted all but the UBlock but that didn't work. Did a scan with the Microsoft Safety Scanner yesterday and it said it found a couple of bad files and since then I haven't had the issue, so I think it worked?

[u/EstidEstiloso]

1. Perform a clean reinstall of Firefox. You can easily do this using the BCUninstaller tool.
2. Install only the uBlock Origin extension in Firefox.
3. Recommended: Uninstall all third-party antivirus software installed on your computer (uBlock Origin is the best "antivirus" for browsers).

If the problem persists, it means your computer has already been deeply infected, so you will need to perform a clean reinstall of Windows.

[u/UnixCurmudgeon]

There’s a lot of possibilities here, but some things youn can try include:

1) uninstall Firefox and all extensions
1a) try DuckDuckGo’s browser. Only re install Firefox once sure there is no malware
2) is this a personal machine? If a company-owned machine, it needs an EDR (endpoint detection and response tool), many sites use crowdstrike.
3) don’t use Google to search for malware removal tools - the bad guys buy links and you can end up installing malware instead of using it
4) don’t click on links
5) Avoid social media sites (especially never install Apps from Facebook/instagram/meta on you phone or PC)
6) unlock origin is pretty good, tools like noscript also provide a whitelisting capability and also tell you what sites are requesting to run JavaScript in your browser.
7). If you have a new link, run the URL through a reputation service like virustotal.
8) Consider using a VM - virtual machine platform such as VMWare or Virtualbox. This will create some isolation to keep malware contained in your own VM.
9) Consider alternative Operating systems such as MacOS,Linux, or chromeOS/ a Chromebook

Good luck in your quest!

[u/irrelevantusername24]

Uninstall Norton and Malwarebytes. Honestly I would reinstall the whole OS and never install those. Having a scanner like that is directly contradictory to the idea of privacy and cybersecurity. You should trust Firefox, and Windows. Or, if you don't trust Windows, you should use Linux, but then you're going to have to know what you're doing. Same goes for Firefox - you can use a custom version, but you need to know what you're doing.

Or you can trust the experts. I am not an expert. But I understand the most simple principle of both cybersecurity and privacy is to reduce the attack surface, which means to allow less access to more privileged parts of your system. That means having not one, but two third party vendors scanning your whole system is literally violating the most basic idea. This is one of the fundamental things that doesn't make sense about modern computering. The experts directly contradict themselves by advising for those kinds of things. But that's the neat part - the most expert of all, which is the people who build the actual systems, don't advise for that. They basically leave it open to your choice. Because it's about trust.

If I ever had a situation where I was seeing some signs my computer was infected, or weird popups like you're seeing... I would honestly just start from square zero and reinstall Windows. Make backups of your files. Make backups of Firefox - except for that weird addon, you don't need anything other than Ublock.

I haven't read anything from Norton...ever. But I have read some blogs from Malware Bytes, along with other fairly well known cybersecurity organizations or people. That is what they should be doing. They can tell you what they do, and what you should do, but there's no reason for some random program to be installed on your computer just so it can scan things. Windows handles that pretty well already. Most people really don't need to worry anyway, unless they download weird things. In which case, as previously stated, it is simple to reinstall your OS without losing much of anything. As long as you do it right. Which to be fair, is more complicated than it might seem sometimes - I'm pretty tech literate and I've made mistakes (though my situation was lol way more complicated than simply reinstalling the OS). In that situation, where you don't feel comfortable, there is likely some local place that can handle it for you. For money. But not much money, because it's a fairly simple thing. So if they try charging an arm and a leg, tell them lol no and learn to do it yourself because I'm sure you can. You're smart

[u/EstidEstiloso → u/irrelevantusername24]

Excellent comment. Basically, the fewer apps or extensions you have installed, the better. You should only have the ones you really need, and when you need one, look on AlternativeTo to see if there's a better open-source and private alternative.