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I think firefox on my windows laptop is hacked

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Hi. I have firefox 21 installed on my laptop with windows7. I face with untrusted ssl connection error for any sites I want to visit like facebook, google services like gmail, google search, etc. but not in other browsers. last night when I was using FF, it displayed an update error with a description like this: "Firefox failed to update. It seems that something is tricking firefox to do an insecure update..."

It is about a week that ESET Smart Security is notifying me something like this: "Detected covert channel exploit in ICMP packet." "source: 192.168.0.104" "target: 106.10.165.51"

It notifies me with this notification whenever I start windows.

what should I do? does anyone face with this kind of problem?

Hi. I have firefox 21 installed on my laptop with windows7. I face with untrusted ssl connection error for any sites I want to visit like facebook, google services like gmail, google search, etc. but not in other browsers. last night when I was using FF, it displayed an update error with a description like this: "Firefox failed to update. It seems that something is tricking firefox to do an insecure update..." It is about a week that ESET Smart Security is notifying me something like this: "Detected covert channel exploit in ICMP packet." "source: 192.168.0.104" "target: 106.10.165.51" It notifies me with this notification whenever I start windows. what should I do? does anyone face with this kind of problem?

All Replies (4)

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Sometimes a problem with Firefox may be a result of malware installed on your computer, that you may not be aware of.

You can try these free programs to scan for malware, which work with your existing antivirus software:

Microsoft Security Essentials is a good permanent antivirus for Windows 7/Vista/XP if you don't already have one.


Further information can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware article.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

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It might be this: ESET includes a feature to inspect all your web traffic. When you visit a secure site (HTTPS protocol), Firefox checks the certificate presented by ESET and raises an alarm.

Check out the solution in the following thread to see whether that helps: firefox suddenly stopped allowing access to Https sites, saying the sites are untrusted. Chrome and ie allow them. What's up?

Now, about that Windows startup message... please see smo's reply.

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I have ESET Smart Security 5 Installed. It has detected that svchost.exe is a maleware before all these happen and cleaned it. I update ESET in a daily basis and I'm sure it is updated.

Do you think the maleware is still remaining in my os or someone is trying to access my pc?

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Hi fafa92, I've never heard of that "covert channel exploit" message before. Maybe ESET can explain whether it is significant?