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Today, I was somehow redirected to a porn site and upon closer inspection of my browsing history, I see four URLs which I did not intentionally visit but may have been a redirect from one to the other to the other until it landed on the porn site.

I believe the initial link I clicked on was from a known travel site.

The first questionable URL in my browser history was http://pqvut6v6b9yfpvpdjpe2hw7.12voltenerji.com/index.php?s=Z2lvdnJ1ZD1oaXkmdGltZT0xNDA3MjIyMTM0MzY1ODA1MjUyNCZzcmM9MzIyJnN1cmw9d3d3LndpbGRwbGFuZXRhZHZlbnR1cmVzLmNvbSZzcG9ydD04MCZrZXk9RTNEQUM0RUMmc3VyaT0vZGVzdGluYXRpb25zLyUzZmNvdW50cnk9cGVydSZ0cmlwPXVsdGltYXRlLXdpbGRsaWZlLWFtYXpvbi1tYWNodS1waWNjaHUtMTMtZGF5

The s= parameter in the URL can be base64 decoded to:

giovrud=hiy&time=14072221343658052524&src=322&surl=www.wildplanetadventures.com&sport=80&key=E3DAC4EC&suri=/destinations/%3fcountry=peru&trip=ultimate-wildlife-amazon-machu-picchu-13-day

I believe www.wildplanetadventures was supposed to be the resulting site but it was not where I was taken. Browsing history looks clean otherwise (before the incident and after the incident).

I was also not able to reproduce the problem by retracing my clicks on the original travel website. Subsequent attempts to follow the same link that I thought was bad brought me to the right travel site and not a porn site.

Scans with Microsoft Security Essentials found nothing on my computer.

What more can I do to determine whether it was my PC that was compromised or if the travel site I visited was compromised?

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  • Microsoft Security Essentials is not designed to find malware and more importantly adware. You are infected with adware Learn to use the appropriate tool for the job.
    – Ramhound
    Jul 23, 2014 at 3:31

2 Answers 2

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They are several types of infections :

  • viruses are the most famous one. They can prevent your computer to boot or make it reboot. A good antivirus protects against viruses, hence its name, but not always against other infections.
  • adware are an other type. Their goal is to make money from ads. They are often obtained when installing some software in order to generate some income. It can be toolbars, extensions and more.
  • there is also malware and many more which I'm not going to describe here

the behaviors described corresponds to adware. To remove such threats you'd better use adwcleaner in addition to your antivirus (which should be changed to a better one as well)

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Not really answering here, but adding to the answer above. What you have is probably as stated by previous answer is adware, although it is possible it could also be some other form of malware (or even a combination of different kinds). To protect myself against malware, viruses, spyware, adare, etc. etc. I use Malware Bytes, which has an active protection version that can be paid for but also a free version that only has a scanner and remover (doesn't automatically block malware), adblocker on my browsers, and of course Microsoft Security Essentials Suite. I bought the premium version of Malware Bytes, and it is constantly removing malware, as well as providing a limited firewall like service. Its targeted more towards malware, adware, and spyware, but it has respectable anti-virus capabilities as well. Adblocker is also very useful (sometimes too useful, actually blocks advertisements that are normally presented in video in some cases). That setup has served me very well. With that said, here is the basics of what software you need to protect yourself: a firewall service (can be a substitute or in addition to router firewall, or you can just use the router firewall, but I reccomend an extra layer of protection), anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-adware, and some sort of rootkit detector and removal tool. Many of these are bundled together in some cases, such as malware bytes, but not always. Google Chrome has a version of adblocker available, and I highly reccomend it. Its free, although it does ask for donations for the developer.

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