Posted by dionaea on 1/16/07 10:45am
Msg #171059

OT - odd popup window - anyone know 247sniffer?

I was on a refunding website I visit every day, and suddenly a popup window appeared which said that an attempt to contact www.247sniffer.com had timed out. ????????? Now I had neither attempted to contact the site nor had I ever heard of that site. I did a whois search and found that the URL is registered to a James Lane, 269 12th Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11215-3919, [e-mail address]; phone 917-865-2591. This same person apparently runs or did run a site called SuicidalGrooveRecords.com, an underground music website and also Hot Indie News, some kind of underground newsletter. The whois record was created on 27-Sep-2006. There are few hits in Google for any of these businesses, and the websites for both Suicidal Groove Records and Hot Indie News look a bit stale, no updates in 3 or 4 months. Yes, I've done thorough system scans, but no invasion shows up. Do any of you computer geeks have any idea what this was about, why it happened, and what www.247sniffer.com might be?

Reply by PAW on 1/16/07 11:01am
Msg #171064

Check the source of the website you visited. There may be a hidden link to "247sniffer.com" buried in the code.

I use a service called "Stat Counter" to track hits at the websites I have or monitor. The links are hidden, but if the stats server is slow or not available, an error message may be returned which may generate a confusing pop-up to the unsuspecting viewer.

Reply by Sharon Taylor on 1/16/07 1:03pm
Msg #171094

Thanks, PAW

I did send an email report of the incident to the staff at the website I was on, giving details of the incident and asking them to check into it, and I'll continue to follow up on this. With all the trojans and viruses and spybots and other crud out there, we're very very careful about the sites we visit, and the site I was on is exceptionally secure, so I'm sure they'll be investigating too. It may be a "stat counter" of some kind, but the 247sniffer.com website looks like a "work in progress" and doesn't seem to be related to a stat counter service.

Reply by PAW on 1/16/07 1:53pm
Msg #171111

Re: Thanks, PAW

Considering there is no content about 247sniffer, it's hard to say what their purpose is. There is simply a placeholder there by Webair, the hosting company, which also hosts 19 other sites on the same server. That doesn't mean that 247sniffer is related in any way with any of the other sites.

But is is good to question the linkage with the website you visited. If it weren't for someone doing that to my site a couple of years back, havoc could have been wreaked to all my visitors after my site was hacked.