Steam is somehow infecting my computer with spyware. WTF!!!

Zip

Zip

Zip

Soldato
Joined
26 Jun 2005
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Something is wrong with steam, I dont know if its steam its self or if something has attached itself to it on my computer or something but every time i open up steam i get a whole heap of pop up advertisements come up using Internet explorer and i get the exact same thing when i close steam aswell.

Im not talking about steams normal ads, im talking about ones that come up saying "You computer is at risk, Please click here to scan it" and "Click here to get free mobile phone ring tones"

WTF is causing this and how do i kill it? :(

Please move this to the windows forum if you think its in the wrong place :)
 
Does Steam use IE for its 'News' section? I'd suggest you check your PC for the usual junk first. I can't see Steam itself doing this.
 
It's not going to be directly Steam, but it sounds like you've got an annoying trojan / spyware thingy that likes to make an appearance every time certain internet explorer instances do things, and as Steam has an integrated internet explorer, it's one of the thing's that's calling up the problem. I'm not sure what specifically to do, but it may not be detectable via normal AV / anti-spyware, so have a go at what modo77 has said, and see if it can be figured out.
 
Thanks all.

Ill try the hijack this thing in a minute :)

Could this be a security flaw in steam? :confused:
I know steam havnt down this deliberately and knew it was something that was something that latched it self onto the steam thing on my computer, i just thought it to be od and frustrating.
Its weird because when MSN uses IE to open emails up i dont get any spywear jumping out at me then, it just seems to be coming from when ever steam is used :confused:

Owell, ill have a check soon. Spybot doesnt seem to find anything thats causing it :(
 
Zip said:
Thanks all.

Ill try the hijack this thing in a minute :)

Could this be a security flaw in steam? :confused:
I know steam havnt down this deliberately and knew it was something that was something that latched it self onto the steam thing on my computer, i just thought it to be od and frustrating.
Its weird because when MSN uses IE to open emails up i dont get any spywear jumping out at me then, it just seems to be coming from when ever steam is used :confused:

Owell, ill have a check soon. Spybot doesnt seem to find anything thats causing it :(
Click to expand...

Just open up task mgr , find a process which is running that you don't recognise , then google it and when you find the blighter , it will tell you where the reg key value is for this spyware delete that and you should be all done
 
divaboy said:
Just open up task mgr , find a process which is running that you don't recognise , then google it and when you find the blighter , it will tell you where the reg key value is for this spyware delete that and you should be all done
Click to expand...

Thanks :)

Ill do that as oon as i get some sleep :)
 
Steam uses the IE backend to show it's internet pages. For the umpteenth time :p

Spyware/Malware attaches itself to IE, thus when any instance of IE starts - so does the spyware.

Use SpyBot S&D and/or AdAware (and/or any other antispyware software you have.)
 
Zip just do the task bar thing. 9 times out of 10 even if adaware spy bot etc does find them ,it doesn't delete the exe or the reg key, so it then just re loads it self when you open up explorer.
 
divaboy said:
Zip just do the task bar thing. 9 times out of 10 even if adaware spy bot etc does find them ,it doesn't delete the exe or the reg key, so it then just re loads it self when you open up explorer.
Click to expand...


What do i have to do to get the Task Msr up? I assume you type something in Run?
 
ctrl+shift+esc for taskman.. if you have multi-user ctrl+alt+del will bring up the "shutdown/lock/restart/change password/logout/tasjmanager" option screen.

Uber geeks use ctrl+shift+esc because a) it only needs one hand and b) removes the unecessary extra step on multi-user setups :p

/geek.
 
Dj_Jestar said:
ctrl+shift+esc for taskman.. if you have multi-user ctrl+alt+del will bring up the "shutdown/lock/restart/change password/logout/tasjmanager" option screen.

Uber geeks use ctrl+shift+esc because a) it only needs one hand and b) removes the unecessary extra step on multi-user setups :p

/geek.
Click to expand...
True geeks type 'ps -eaf'.
 
Roduga said:
True geeks type 'ps -eaf'.
Click to expand...
NEGATIVE!

it's just ps -ef. :o

Infact.. I actually wrote a small script to do it all for me.. all I type is "killproc 'name'" where 'name' is the match for finding the process :o
 
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