Another note on site security, your security, and a malware email doing the rounds

[berttheengineer]

Good luck combating this guys and keep up the good work :)

[Cetacean1]

Thanks for the heads up. I was actually looking to see if there was a place to comment on what I had noticed on mod sites. It seemed lately there has been a large amount of popups needing to be blocked and items being loaded (shown on the lower left corner of the screen). There was audio from a Verizon add with no corresponding visual in the adds in the boxes supporting the page (Realistic Lighting Overhaul at the time). As I was in the middle of writing a comment my AV (Avast) gave a warning that it had to block a malicious link from opening, and asked me if it was a false positive. If you get the chance to check the mod sites some may have picked up malware/spyware that is trying to launch, and may be causing some issues with stability and downloads as well. It seemed worse than I had seen it in the past. I am glad I don't let my browser store passwords.

[bitterbug]

I've not received one of these emails and my account is 8 years old. So if the site had been breached for emails, I would probably have been one of the targets. Maybe they're just mailbombing, or targeting certain users they've identified via forums or Steam.

[bben46]

@Bitterbug - your email filter will probably catch it and you would never even see it in many cases. It could also be region based or use some other demographic. But the highest probability is they got a mail list from some other game site - either hacked or purchased. We do not sell any members information to spammers - or to anyone else. We don't even keep the members email addresses in a useable mail list format because we don't send out mass mailings. We don't like to see members post their email in the forums, and often hide them and warn the poster not to do that.

 

If you have ever posted your email openly on any game site, it was likely harvested by internet spiders or webcrawlers. These are programs that go through everything on the internet harvesting ( collecting) everything that is posted - some are harvesting any email addresses they find for the spammers. We ( and other sites) cannot keep them out as they are the same crawlers used by Google and other indexing services to index the forums so you can search them. Without the webcrawlers there would be no Google (or any other) search capability on the internet. BTW, Google and every other search site does sell information - that is how they became rich, by selling the information you freely gave them to the spammers.

[shirleytemple656]

Wow I just signed up to nexus and this was the first thing I read! I have always used steam mods for Skyrim, but was curious as to many of the modders speaking of those on nexus and how good they were! Thank you for this info, I myself cannot understand the mentality of hackers. I figure if they want to use their skills, use it for something for the good of all, not for destroying peoples work, or peoples lives.

[salomaogh]

I want to report to the moderator that i've only read this a few days ago and remembered that i used one mod that had a .*exe file on it. Now, i've just found out that the JIP REALISTIC WEAPON OVERHEATING mod has this file. I DON'T KNOW IF IT IS A VIRUS, because i don't even have a free antivirus (it slows down my pc). Better check it out, though. So, to those it may concern, this is the version of the file that i downloaded:

JIP Realistic Weapon Overheating - Manual-49892-0-81.zip

 

 

 

[DrakeTheDragon]

In response to post #16359410.

Containing an .exe file per se is not inherently a bad thing. Only .exe files can be infected, or replaced by a Trojan, but still the most welcome to and longed for by the users way of distributing a mod is with a handy one-click-install self-extracting .exe installer doing the work for them. It's not uncommon to see these here.

In order for staff to check it out, we'll need at least a hint 'what game' you're talking off though, as there's literally hundreds to choose from. And the usual way of reporting a suspicious file to site staff is just that, click the "report" button on the mod page. Won't get one of staff looking into it any quicker than that way.

[lonewolfsstuck]

was just browsing around around on the forums, found this.. worth reading.

[bben46]

You can check any file from any site before downloading FREE. Here is a link for that.

https://www.virustotal.com/

Yes, it is safe. If you are suspicious of a file for any reason. Use it. :cool:

 

 

Easiest way to use it - copy the url from the site ( this is the stuff that appears in the address bar) such as this one - from Nexus mod manager http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/modmanager/? - This is called the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and is the actual internet address of the file.

 

Click on the URL tab on the Virus total site - Then paste the URL that you copied into the example bar. Then click on the large "Scan it!" button underneath. It will run multiple scans on just that file and return a list of the scanners it used and what they found.

 

This is not to be confused with the antivirus on your computer. It does not run in the background, it does not scan more than one file it also Can NOT clean a virus - it is not meant for that. You do not have to download anything or register at the site. Virus total is never downloaded to your computer and only works from it's own site. :thumbsup:

[ashleyclark]

Nevermind. Wrong place. Edited July 10, 2014 by ashleyclark