I opened firefox After about an hour of the system being in standby and in theSponsored Links row there were 2 new entries
http:/ /bom07s30-in-x03. 1e100. net/ (I dismantled the URLs to prevent accidental clicks)
pnbomb-ac-in-x0e.1e100
I right clicked and searched in Google and it showed up as this
pnbomb-ac-in-x0e.1e100 Sponsored
it disappeared after a while, just to be sure I ran
sudo lsof -i
and noticed firefox was connected to this url
maa05s15-in-x03.1e100.net
I am not sure if am infected or this is just a glitch(I obviously didn’t click on the links)
Others have answered your question. I would like to add that when you want to “dismantle” the URL, there is a practice in cyber security called URL Defanging. Protocols are escaped, such that http becomes hxxp. Other significant symbols that are :// becomes [://] and . becomes [.]
Combining these, your URL becomes: hxxp[://]bom07s30-in-x03[.]1e100[.]net/
Which will be safer for others to navigate. It will take an extra effort to revert it back to the functional URL. Tools like CyberChef can perform this action if you seek a more streamlined solution.
TIL. I didn’t know there was a standard, and I’ve never seen “hxxp”, although the rest is familiar looking.
Search 1e100, it’s a google thing
Yes but why did it show up In the Sponsored links row?
From mozilla. I’m guessing that the links were hosted/owned/etc. by google. When your system resumed it only partially loaded the sponsored links and you were left with the text of the url.
Your system is fine security wise, but privacy wise pinging google servers everytime you open a new tab is not ideal. This type of stuff is why I use Librewolf. Of course it’s up to you how much it bothers you. You can disable alot in vanilla firefox too.
Thank you, but is there anyway I can check whether i am infected or not just for peace of mind?
No. Peace of mind comes from trusting, not from knowing.
Install clamav and run a scan. You will probably get false positives.
For instance the gnome polkit agent has a “malicious” image that it tries to load at start and if it succeeds it kills the program before it can run. This is to keep an actually malicious icon from being used. I spent days on that one lol
But isnt clam AV only for detecting Windows viruses?
Not with 100% certainty outside of nuking your system. You’re probably fine.
installed any extensions recently?
No, I only use Ublock origin which i had installed Approx 4-5 months ago
wtf are Sponsored Links, and why do you need them?
Sponsored links: Mozilla gets money for AD links showing up below the search url on the new tabs page. If you do not disable them (they are on by default).
