ZeroAccess?

I am running Bitdefender Total Security and have been for about 3 years. Today my Internet Explorer has been seemingly hijacked - it says (see attached):

"Your system is infected with 3 viruses ... our deep scan will provide help immediately!"

Then a pop-up comes, which says, "Wait a moment please! Microsoft has detected you didn't update your Windows system."

A bit of duckduckgoing brings up reports of ZeroAccess having similar symptons. Bitdefender quickscan throws up a "clean" message. System scan is still running, but so far has only discovered a seemingly innocuous Steam file: Application.Nirsoft.Q ; Q:\Steam\SteamApps\common\SteamVR\tools\USBDeview\win32\USBDeview.

What should I do?

Thanks.

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Sergiu C.

Hi,

I can tell you for sure that the website in question did not detect anything malicious on the computer, from that regard the message is a scam.

If it's an isolated event, it could be a bad ad on the website you've visited, but if you receive this sort of pop-ups on most websites, then you may have installed a browser extension or app that is causing the scam-ads to be shown.

I'd recommend following the steps from our article if that's the case:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/2574/

You can also reach us at bitsy@bitdefender.com if the issue persists, and send us a BDsys log:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1922/

Thank you.

bitdefended

Thanks Sergiu, I got it sorted via support chat in the end. It does seem to have been something relatively benign and I must admit I can't work out what fixed it now, as I ran a few things (AdwCleaner, MBAM, JRT). Maybe somebody in my family had installed something.

It had hijacked Internet Explorer though. Couldn't open any websites and a reboot didn't solve it. Very odd.

Anyway, I'll put it down to experience. Was a bit scary though! I wonder what would have happened if I had clicked one of the links ...

Sergiu C.

On 11/2/2018 at 6:39 PM, bitdefended said:

Thanks Sergiu, I got it sorted via support chat in the end. It does seem to have been something relatively benign and I must admit I can't work out what fixed it now, as I ran a few things (AdwCleaner, MBAM, JRT). Maybe somebody in my family had installed something.

It had hijacked Internet Explorer though. Couldn't open any websites and a reboot didn't solve it. Very odd.

Anyway, I'll put it down to experience. Was a bit scary though! I wonder what would have happened if I had clicked one of the links ...

Thanks for letting us know.

If the website tried to download any malware on your computer, the malware should have been caught by Bitdefender. From what I've seen in similar cases, you are eventually redirected to a "help page" and once you contact the "support" on that page, they request a paid remote session to solve the issue and don't really do anything else, essentially charging you for a useless service.