Hi folks, I don't post very often, however on this occasion i felt it important to warn the fs community

regarding chart downloads. Normally i download free airport charts using vatsim chartfinder which is

usually quite good. on this occasion i was assigned a long haul by my va, eham> rctp (taipei)

as this is a 12 hr flight i decided to download charts for rctp enroute. I have windows 7 64bit desktop setup and 2 remotely connected laptops using simconnect for squawkbox, fsinn, etc. and it is a fairly

extensive set up for serious flightsiming by any standards. anyway i accessed the vatsim chart site

then redirected to vatsim asia and finally vatsim roc ( republic of china) found the taiwan charts

and downloaded on to one of my laptops. then thought no more about it. carried on and had an

excellent flight using pss T7 . my problems only started next morning when i switched on one of my

laptops and noticed my avg antivirus was turned off and would not respond in any way windows

updates were also turned off and could not be restarted, firewall was turned off and could not be

restarted. i could not even access internet explorer. obviously something serious was happening

here. i then tried my other 2 computers and found the exact same problems on both.

 

as they all use the same remote router hub and are interconnected via simconnect i supose that is

why they were infected with the same problem. the only way to try and fix this i figured, was to bypass

avg free by booting up the 3 seperate machines in safe mode. which revealed everything was ok

apart from avg free. the only solution was to uninstall this application in safe mode, which then revealed

(supples supplies!) all the uninstall instructions were now in chinese. pretty obvious this was caused

by previous chart download. i did manage eventually to circumvent this however and get it off my system altogether, then installed avast and spybot which revealed a trojan inffection. it has taken me

2 full days to cleanup my 3 machines due to this, which i would not wish on any other simmer going thru. this has been a hard lesson for me as i trusted vatsim chart services and do not think for one moment their files are corrupt however vatsim asia is a different matter and i for one will not be using

that site again to download charts. i just hope on reading this others take heed and don't get caught

like i did by these shysters. ( not my real thoughts)

 

Regards, :Waiting: graeme crawford

Graeme,

 

Sorry to read about your troubles, have you posted at VATSIM or sent an email to their administrators?

Correlation != Causation. It is EXTREMELY unlikely that you got the virus from chartfinder.

 

However, chartfinder has some practical issues, and has been supplanted by aircharts.org

Correlation != Causation. It is EXTREMELY unlikely that you got the virus from chartfinder.

 

However, chartfinder has some practical issues, and has been supplanted by aircharts.org

 

I know a good way you can check! You could link to the same site he went to, and see if your system catches the same virus!! Let us know how you make out.----- I wouldn't discount any claim of a virus coming from a suspected Chinese site, especially when he goes to uninstall the affected app and it's now in Chinese!!

 

Edit: I have Norton Internet Security, which if I do a Google search will tell me if a site is safe before I enter it. Or if there is a suspected threat, or there is no security information. A search for VATSIM ROC reports, there is no info, meaning Norton can't verify whether or not the site is safe.

Yeah I use AVG and the Google Chrome WOT (Web Of Trust) plugin both of which give ratings for websites and warn or in serious cases stop access to websites.

 

I could not imagine the VATSIM network linking to virus's however although it is not something I use commonly, I have found some of the chart sites to look rather un-professional. I would not recomend anyone to purposely try and get a virus from the aforementioned websites as it appears the OP got of easy. I would however ask that you write a report to VATSIM consisting of the specific charts you download etc... and perhaps all the information in the post.

Yeah I use AVG and the Google Chrome WOT (Web Of Trust) plugin both of which give ratings for websites and warn or in serious cases stop access to websites.

 

I could not imagine the VATSIM network linking to virus's however although it is not something I use commonly, I have found some of the chart sites to look rather un-professional. I would not recomend anyone to purposely try and get a virus from the aforementioned websites as it appears the OP got of easy. I would however ask that you write a report to VATSIM consisting of the specific charts you download etc... and perhaps all the information in the post.

 

It may not have been the Vatsim site itself, It may have been a 3rd party site they link to for the charts.

Graeme,

 

Sorry to read about your troubles, have you posted at VATSIM or sent an email to their administrators?

hi i have posted much the same message on vatsim uk and i believe they are now looking into

it thanks. I have changed my av protection to avast, which does seem for some reason to let my system

run a bit faster, although for all the firewalls and extra security precuations you take, it normally comes at some cost in computer performance, which i guess for most serious simmers can present a bit of a

trade off. I have a high end main rig designed for flightsim less than 6 months old ,without going into detail

i thought was well protected, however i think it may be impossible to shut out the rogues & hackers

out there completly, even with sites you may trust.

 

regards, graeme crawford.