I almost never have virus problems. The only virus problem I’ve had in 5 years came after a hard drive crash when I forgot to reinstall an antivirus program.
I actually have TWO antivirus programs on my laptop right now. And there was something that bypassed both of them. It’s apparently caused by Adobe Acrobat Reader. It’s running javascript that allows a PDF to install a trojan horse program on your computer.
The fix is simple - I put together a 16 second video showing what option to deselect. Simply start Adobe Reader, and watch this video to see how to deselect the problem setting. OR simply:
- Start Adobe Reader
- Go to Edit
- Preferences
- Javascript
- Deselect “Enable Acrobat Javascript”.
Hope this helps. I never post about things like this, except the problem IS serious. A trojan can steal passwords and worse.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Juliette Aiyana // Jan 26, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Thanks Burton. If you didn’t post this I would never have even suspected that such a respected program would cause such a problem. However in the world did you even diagnose this problem?
2 Burton Kent // Jan 26, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Agreed - this is a respected program, and it’s not supposed to be a back door to your computer!
I was seeing that my browser was “waiting for 0.7.7.7″ which is an IP address. So I just searched for that and found discussions of the problem, and how to fix it.
Most of the time when you’re seeing a computer error, you can find fixes by searching on google for “The error message” - use the quotes to get the exact message.
3 Juliette Aiyana // Jan 26, 2009 at 3:45 pm
“this is a respected program, and it’s not supposed to be a back door to your computer”
Word!
That is so interesting, and scary that programs you “trust” would do that. I have changed all of the computers at the office and will do it for my laptop at home as well. Thanks for info about Google-ing error message stuff too.
Have a wonderful New Year of The Earth Rat!
4 CK // Feb 11, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Thanks for the info. This happened to me just yesterday and I knew something was wrong when my search results/browsing would go to the same websites. My question is, though, how to remove the program (or is de-selecting javascript in Adobe reader enough) from my computer? I’ve used several AV programs and they all came back clean.
5 Burton Kent // Feb 11, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Do a google search for 7.7.7.0 or whatever is showing up. That will show you the fix. I don’t remember it anymore, sorry.
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