Is Huffington Post website being hacked ?

[garybeck]

Nearly every time I go to Huffington Post, the page loads as expected, and then after a varying amount of time (a few seconds to a few minutes) I get redirected to PerformanceOptimizer.com, some kind of spam site telling me I don't have spyware protection installed and if I don't buy their product my credit card numbers are all going to be stolen. All these fake error messages pop up.... ?

I've had it happen on three different computers now. Am I the only one experiencing this?

[bkcc]

1. I go there all the time and haven't had the same issue.

Sounds like you should scan your PC for spyware or malware.

[gateley]

2. I just tried it and it's okay for me, despite the annoying net flix pop-up. Hope

you figure out the problem.

[Teaser]

3. It's you, not hufpost

You have a malware infection.

[garybeck]

11. lots of others seem to be having it too....

[bbgrunt]

4. It has happened to me too. I have Norton and use

adaware and run mozilla. Does anyone know how to get rid of this?

[blogslut]

5. Try Hijackthis

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/programs.php

[bbgrunt]

17. thanks!. have you used this? I will give it a try later after I read a little more about it.

[blogslut]

18. Yes

When I use my Windows machine, I use it. I don't know what's happening with the HuffPo site but that program might help get rid of whatever's going on.

I have not experienced the problems that others have attested to in this thread. Not on with my Windows machine nor my Linux machine. Could be an Active X issue. Could be bad Flash. Could be some Zango-type stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zango

[madrchsod]

6. i got that this afternoon

had to shut the computer off to get out of the site

[parasim]

7. I dunno, but I just went there after reading your post and it happened to me.

I'm on a Macbook Pro running Safari in Leopard and about 20 seconds after I went there I got a popup (I have my pop-blocker turned on) that said something to that effect and when I hit cancel, it then went to some site like the one you went to, but it didn't have that name. It was like Malwaresafe.com or some such. Weird...

on edit to add: Then what I did was hit the refresh button and then before the page completely loaded, I stopped the reload. After that, it didn't happen again.

[supernova]

15. YES!! YES!!!

I have the same setup as you parasim and the exact same thing happened to me.

I reported it to Huff Po. I wonder if they are getting complaints.

[DemGa]

8. Yep, something strange going on there

I've got good virus protection, but clicked on a story and a malware ad popped up, page locked.

I have a dialup, unplugged and restarted to get rid the pop-up ad. Hope I'm okay. I won't be going back.

[msmcghee]

9. That happened to me.

It was happening for about three days. I just ran a scan using my Spyware Doctor - which I hadn't run for a few days. It found 5 "serious malware" infections and removed them. (It usually just finds a few non-serious adware infections). I just went back to Huffpo and clicked around and left it running in a tab on my Firefox Browser. No PerformanceOptimizer popups or windows have appeared so far.

[Atman]

10. It must be a Win virus thingy...I'm hearing the same report from another board.

Totally unrelated. A private message board, when to a cartoon site, nothing to do with Huffpo or DU or anything political. He posted the same alert today complete with scree shots. Don't know what it is (Pause for a moment of Mac-user gloating), but you're describing exactly what happened to him.

.

[Quixote1818]

12. Holy shit! It just happened to me too!

I was just over at HP and the exact same thing happened! Now my computer is running slow. My Anti Spy ware didn't catch it.

[oklahoma_mcarp]

13. I think it's HuffPo

This is not malware. It's an invitation to download malware which is being presented to the user as a Javascript dialog box. It's only happening (at least for me) on HuffPo, and it's happened to me on two different computers.

My guess is it's a javascript embedded in one of HuffPo's rotating banner ads, which is why it doesn't happen every time you visit the site, and they're probably not aware of it themselves.

[libnnc]

14. just happened to me a second ago

[meganmonkey]

16. I've had the same problem at HuffPo

twice over the last couple weeks. Both times using Firefox on a PC (never at home on my Mac, but to be fair I don't know if I've gone to HuffPo from home in a while)

I've had to force-quit Firefox to get it to stop.

[NNN0LHI]

19. I never click on that shit site

Even when someone uses it as a source here.

Don

[pdxmom]

20. I've had it happen to me on multiple computers as well. N/T

[AlaskaMad]

21. re: Is Huffington Post website being hacked ?

Over the past couple of weeks I've had the same thing happen on various computers all running antivirus software with popup blocking enabled. 2 of the computers are running Linux OS and this company doesn't even have a Linux version of that software. (I checked by going to the site on my own, not by following a link) I informed Huffpost my wife and I won't be back until they quit distributing virus software.