I came across something last evening while browsing the internet with Firefox that I haven't experienced since I used Windows Explorer.

A pop-up dialogue box appeared announcing that I may have errors on my computer and to click OK to fix it. Obviously I tried to close the box but in true Windows-like style it started downloading its crappy software to my PC anyway. I quit Firefox and noticed that my Control Centre was open. I hadn't opened it!

Has anyone else experienced something similar while using Firefox?

How to do I find out what incursion, if any, has taken place?

Thanks, Mikie.

do you know what website you were on so others can test?
i doubt you were infected with a virus or spyware. the popup was a familiar flash or other web-based popup that is common on IE or firefox on windows, correct? i get many of these in linux too, in konqueror (KDE) and firefox but they have never hurt anything, or tried to. i doubt the site was targeting linux users.
if you were running firefox as _root_, and the popup was infact real and malicious, then you may have some infection, otherwise i would say its impossible.

not sure how to check, search in the security forum for things like this, rootkit hunter or somethign? i dont know ive never ran diagnostic tools on my install.

also are you using a stable version of firefox and other core software in your distro?

Tough to say Mikie...did you click OK on the box or Cancel or the "X" to close it. Looks like you clicked "X" by what you said. Its really not possible to say whats happened unless you can give us the name of the website.

BTW I use this whenever I'm browsing does seem to work pretty well. Helps you incase any bad scripts are running on a web page and blocks them until you allow them. You might want to use this whenever you're browsing too.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/
Cheers
Arvind

Sorry I've been a while replying. I've not actually been at my home PC since Friday. I'm replying from a company Windows box right now.

I clicked on the cancel button then, when a download started, I tried to close the box using the cross but it wouldn't close.
Yes, it was the sort of flash pop-up that is common in Windows but it's the first time I've experienced this with Linux. I don't browse the 'net as root so I expect I'm OK, but I was a bit alarmed that Control Centre was opened and wondered if this was something that targeted Linux systems.
I will try and trace the website from my browser history when I'm at home and post that.
Meanwhile, thanks for the reassurance

Mikie

Edit: The version of Firefox and all other software are from the stable release of Debian.

hehe something like this www.goggle.net

this is a very handy firefox extension in addition to NoScript..

http://www.siteadvisor.com/download/ff_preinstall.html