Can just visiting a website cause a virus or malware on your system?

OnlyAlex · 19 Sep 2023 at 19:29

I visited a website called processchecker.com earlier which seemed a bit dodge to me, I didn't download anything but I am a bit of a noob and am worrying whether just by visiting a website it can cause a virus or malware on your system? Thanks! I have Chrome up to date and have anti-virus installed.

Donnie Fisher · 19 Sep 2023 at 19:43

Whilst nothing is impossible, reality is it’s unlikely. Browsers are pretty tight on ring fencing what a website runs/does to stay apart from other parts of the system.

At most it might have places cookies on the computer which other websites can track. Deleting your history and cookies would clean that up though.

The majority of infections (for lack of a better umbrella term ) would come from users downloading or clicking to run something, which in this case you say you haven’t done.

OnlyAlex · 19 Sep 2023 at 20:33

Donnie Fisher said:
Whilst nothing is impossible, reality is it’s unlikely. Browsers are pretty tight on ring fencing what a website runs/does to stay apart from other parts of the system.

At most it might have places cookies on the computer which other websites can track. Deleting your history and cookies would clean that up though.

The majority of infections (for lack of a better umbrella term ) would come from users downloading or clicking to run something, which in this case you say you haven’t done.

Okay, thank you so much - yes, I didn't download anything and I was using Incognito at the time. Would you suggest I do anything else? I ran a security scan. Do I need to reset Windows?

Donnie Fisher · 19 Sep 2023 at 23:27

No. I think you're over thinking it. You're most likely fine.

FloppyPoppy · 20 Sep 2023 at 07:49

In theory yes, in reality no.

there are so many layers of protection in place that the majority of people don’t know are happening.

Firewall/Defender are simply the last chances for something to be caught.

There are other things happening such as your browser will most likely have its own protections.

UAC (the box that comes up saying are you trying to install this software from this company? only the admin can approve.

Web hosts will have protections so if that site is being hosted by square space for example they would also be checking everything going through them as they don’t want a headline of “square space site hosts viruses”

just be careful going forward on what you click on, especially from emails and anything that is trying to get you to download something. It is possible to get a virus on a system without choosing to download something but with things like uac and firewalls it’s extremely difficult and unlikely to happen as people spreading these are smart and use social engineering instead of hoping on stuff like this.

OnlyAlex · 20 Sep 2023 at 09:42

Donnie Fisher said:
No. I think you're over thinking it. You're most likely fine.

Thank you for your help.

OnlyAlex · 20 Sep 2023 at 09:47

FloppyPoppy said:
In theory yes, in reality no.

there are so many layers of protection in place that the majority of people don’t know are happening.

Firewall/Defender are simply the last chances for something to be caught.

There are other things happening such as your browser will most likely have its own protections.

UAC (the box that comes up saying are you trying to install this software from this company? only the admin can approve.

Web hosts will have protections so if that site is being hosted by square space for example they would also be checking everything going through them as they don’t want a headline of “square space site hosts viruses”

just be careful going forward on what you click on, especially from emails and anything that is trying to get you to download something. It is possible to get a virus on a system without choosing to download something but with things like uac and firewalls it’s extremely difficult and unlikely to happen as people spreading these are smart and use social engineering instead of hoping on stuff like this.

Thank you so much.

Blackjack Davy · 22 Sep 2023 at 15:11

Its mostly compromised ad servers in my experience but as others have stated you'll get a popup warning from UAC

OnlyAlex · 22 Sep 2023 at 20:47

Blackjack Davy said:
Its mostly compromised ad servers in my experience but as others have stated you'll get a popup warning from UAC

Thank you for your help.

mysticsniper · 27 Sep 2023 at 18:08

Most modern exploits such as drive-by and 0-day attacks have been created in such a way that they avoid UAC by not escalating privileges high enough for a UAC prompt to be necessary. They have a lot of tricks (root-kits etc) they use to infect systems and do their damage without having to trigger UAC.

OnlyAlex · 27 Sep 2023 at 19:13

T

mysticsniper said:
Most modern exploits such as drive-by and 0-day attacks have been created in such a way that they avoid UAC by not escalating privileges high enough for a UAC prompt to be necessary. They have a lot of tricks (root-kits etc) they use to infect systems and do their damage without having to trigger UAC.

Thank you, do I need to be concerned about the website even though looking online it’s been around for many years and my antivirus found no malware?

mysticsniper · 27 Sep 2023 at 20:56

OnlyAlex said:
T

Thank you, do I need to be concerned about the website even though looking online it’s been around for many years and my antivirus found no malware?

A good place to start is looking at your processes running and on startup. Are you seeing something that doesn't look right?

Modified Host files are another good indication as well.

VirusTotal is a good place to scan the Website.

VirusTotal

www.virustotal.com

Zefan · 27 Sep 2023 at 23:03

mysticsniper said:
A good place to start is looking at your processes running and on startup. Are you seeing something that doesn't look right?

Probably need a bit of software to check processes, if only a piece of software existed...

Pawnless Endgame · 27 Sep 2023 at 23:15

As other said, it shouldn't be a problem with modern browsers. Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari etc.

In the brief time that I was using MS IE though (2001), I visited someone's personal web page (Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod etc) and it was fairly slow and I thought it was downloading some banner ads. Then about a minute later, I had a prompt telling me to restart my PC. I ignored the prompt and realised that my mouse cursor has changed. Turns out the site did a drive-by installation of Comet Cursor. Spyware! Promptly removed.

OnlyAlex · 28 Sep 2023 at 06:27

mysticsniper said:
A good place to start is looking at your processes running and on startup. Are you seeing something that doesn't look right?

Modified Host files are another good indication as well.

VirusTotal is a good place to scan the Website.

VirusTotal

VirusTotal

www.virustotal.com

Thank you, Virus Total came back with no concerns, a few community comments said the website was useless and if you downloaded the program would track you. I didn’t download anything.

OnlyAlex · 28 Sep 2023 at 06:27

Zefan said:
Probably need a bit of software to check processes, if only a piece of software existed...

Haha, process checker ?

OnlyAlex · 28 Sep 2023 at 06:28

Pawnless Endgame said:
As other said, it shouldn't be a problem with modern browsers. Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari etc.

In the brief time that I was using MS IE though (2001), I visited someone's personal web page (Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod etc) and it was fairly slow and I thought it was downloading some banner ads. Then about a minute later, I had a prompt telling me to restart my PC. I ignored the prompt and realised that my mouse cursor has changed. Turns out the site did a drive-by installation of Comet Cursor. Spyware! Promptly removed.

Okay, thank you. I don’t think it downloaded anything and nothing changed in terms of cursor or pop ups. Looking online it seems safe in terms of virus, but that it may track what your PC does when you download the software. I didn’t download anything though.

Gammawolf · 29 Sep 2023 at 17:42

I just want to say that yes it can be done and no, just because software is "modern" doesn't make mean its not a problem. For example this is something that did the rounds just this week and affected most major browsers as well as heaps of other software using webp

https://www.tenable.com/blog/cve-2023-41064-cve-2023-4863-cve-2023-5129-faq-imageio-webp-zero-days

OnlyAlex · 29 Sep 2023 at 18:38

Gammawolf said:
I just want to say that yes it can be done and no, just because software is "modern" doesn't make mean its not a problem. For example this is something that did the rounds just this week and affected most major browsers as well as heaps of other software using webp

https://www.tenable.com/blog/cve-2023-41064-cve-2023-4863-cve-2023-5129-faq-imageio-webp-zero-days

So are you supposed to reset your device every time you visit a suspect website?

DarrenM343 · 29 Sep 2023 at 20:55

No

. Keeping Windows, browsers and other software up to date should suffice.