Strange problem accessing search engines

E

er3scf

I know this is a hardware group but other groups I've posted to seem to be
dead.

Weird a$$ problem. The other day I could not connect to anything (browser or
email) so I called
up comcast. They had me change to "Obtain DNS server address automatically"
rather than the 'use the follow DNS server addresses'. Btw this may not be
related but I think its their DNS servers are messed up.

Anyway if I try to go to www.google.com or altavista.com it comes back with
'the page cannot be
displayed'. If I try lycos or altavista I get a page which reads 'there is
no website configured at this address'. That page is owned by
http://www.cpanel.net/

Any other type of website such as boston.com, cnn.com, etc works fine. It
just seems to hate search engines. Comcast suggests that I contact Microsoft
on this matter. I checked for viruses and didn't see any.

One other thing, I tried SlimBrowser and have the exact same results. And I
forgot to mention yahoo, if I goto yahoo that page is displayed but in IE
I'll hit the search button and nothing happens in SlimBrowser it appears to
be working but eventually times out with 'the page cannot be displayed'

btw I'm running win2000 IE 6.0.2800.1106 and cipher strength 128 all the
latest patches and releases

If I ping google.com I get 207.44.194.56 which as I said is the page owned
by cpanel. Can someone ping google and post the result to see if I can get
there directly.

Also if anyone has any idea whats going on I'd appreciate any thoughts.

Thanks
 
G

Groove

er3scf said this...
Also if anyone has any idea whats going on I'd appreciate any thoughts.
Click to expand...
You've been hit by an ActiveX exploit throught your IE browser. This messes
up your DNS settings and dumps a fake HOSTS file on your system. Read all
about it and the fix here...

http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_100719.htm


When you're clean goto MS Update, there's a new patch available.

HTH. Good luck.
 
G

Geo

Any other type of website such as boston.com, cnn.com, etc works fine. It
just seems to hate search engines. Comcast suggests that I contact Microsoft
on this matter. I checked for viruses and didn't see any.
Click to expand...

Another micro$oft security hole? (as yet unpatched)
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/trojan.qhosts.html
If I ping google.com I get 207.44.194.56 which as I said is the page owned
by cpanel. Can someone ping google and post the result to see if I can get
there directly.
Click to expand...

I get:-

F:\>ping www.google.com

Pinging www.google.akadns.net [216.239.59.99] with 32 bytes of data:


Geo
 
E

er3scf

Groove said:
er3scf said this...

You've been hit by an ActiveX exploit throught your IE browser. This messes
up your DNS settings and dumps a fake HOSTS file on your system. Read all
about it and the fix here...

http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_100719.htm


When you're clean goto MS Update, there's a new patch available.

HTH. Good luck.
Click to expand...

Thanks alot for your prompt reply.
 
E

er3scf

Geo said:
Any other type of website such as boston.com, cnn.com, etc works fine. It
just seems to hate search engines. Comcast suggests that I contact Microsoft
on this matter. I checked for viruses and didn't see any.
Click to expand...

Another micro$oft security hole? (as yet unpatched)
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/trojan.qhosts.html
If I ping google.com I get 207.44.194.56 which as I said is the page owned
by cpanel. Can someone ping google and post the result to see if I can get
there directly.
Click to expand...

I get:-

F:\>ping www.google.com

Pinging www.google.akadns.net [216.239.59.99] with 32 bytes of data:


Geo
Click to expand...

Thanks alot for your prompt reply.
 
F

FHLA56

I had a problem with dns server --exactly what you describe. It is not a
virus.
it seems to occur when there is a conflict between which browser is the
'default' .

I am not using broadband, but it happened here also.

When you get a message in the address bar, highlight it, copy it, paste in
notepad.

What it does is redirect the browser back to itself.

Finally, I set ie as default and lo and behold it clears up!!

Unless, your ie browser is an oem of your access provider, there will be a
conflict.

ie. aol, bundles an oem version of ie which does not conflict .

Hope this helps, as it is very frustrating!!
***********
 
C

cleve

Groove said:
er3scf said this...

You've been hit by an ActiveX exploit throught your IE browser. This messes
up your DNS settings and dumps a fake HOSTS file on your system. Read all
about it and the fix here...

http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_100719.htm


When you're clean goto MS Update, there's a new patch available.

HTH. Good luck.
Click to expand...

And many thanks from me, too. I got the damned thing somewhere, too.
Fortunately, it was easy to fix with the link you gave. (I used the manual
method.)

I found this thread by googling on another machine. Thank you very much for
pointing me to the solution to this baffling-looking problem.

(Dick-heads! Can't they be shut down? Is this crap really going to go on
forever? Here's an idea: bounty hunters. Perhaps some MORAL people, with
the same kind of techy minds, could be harnessed to CATCH these wipes. (And
mpegs of their executions, available on some site.))

--cleve
 
G

Groove

cleve said this...
And many thanks from me, too. I got the damned thing somewhere, too.
Fortunately, it was easy to fix with the link you gave. (I used the
manual method.)
Click to expand...

Glad I could help. I got hit too, and it took a few hours to find out what
the hell was going on.
PS: I like the way you think. Perhaps a little public humiliation for the
toerags that write this stuff would help...
 
T

t o e n a i l

for about two weeks i had the same problem.. could use my fav search
engine google.. kept redirecting me to cpanel.. ran av's and nothing..
ran spyware programs and nothing.. couldnt find it, couldnt find
anything unusual... well my problem was fixed today.. goto
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm and download every
registry fix that is shown and apply them to your registry.. BAMM...
no more problem... was that simple.. damn i love that site.. thank god
http://groups.google.com wasnt effected by that little Qhost trojan...
well, good luck to all...

im gonna post this everywhere that i find ppl looking for answers for
fixing this problem.. because fact is.. i couldnt find the answer
anywhere myself..
 

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