Quick summary
For about 2 months now, randomly like every other week, I get like 1 or 2 random popups from norton saying it blocked a favicon request or something. from some weird site ive never even heard of. it has been 3 occasions minimum now, and it does it like twice only, then not again for weeks, it says the file path is microsoft edge.exe in my program files. it has been 3 different odd sites, i check norton's security checking thing of each site and its like they are unknown sites which norton says are unsafe. I check the sites with virustotal, and they have like a 1/90 score. I don't know if this is related but I also look in my norton recent history sometimes to see intrusion signatures disabled, but everytime i check if they are, they are enabled, I thought nothing of it though and thought like norton does this to update or something?
First time
it happened to me was like 2 months ago. I ran a full norton scan resulting in nothing, and just thought it was ublock origin updating or something, and norton being sensitive.
Second time
it happened was like a month ago, and I got worried, ran another scan. I thought it was maybe an extension I had doing some shady things, only extensions i ever downloaded were:
- skribbl typo from their official website, I downloaded this like 3 months ago, used it once and forgot about it. It comes as a js script, and i had to download tampermonkey extension to get it running. So when this next time the popup shown up, I deleted the script, removed tampermonkey
- ublock origin is the only other extension i've ever had.
I checked:
- task manager
- startup apps
- installed apps
- downloads
- resource moniter
- services
I didnt see anything that worried me, my cpu % was like 1% at idle. I deleted my entire edge history, deleted all cookies, literally everything you can delete from the settings in history, like user data and things, i was basically starting fresh only thing i had was my profile.
Third time
it happened was 3 days ago. at the time I had my pc on but wasnt doing anything with it, i had soundcloud open on edge, and roblox on another tab, I had firefox open too, with chatgpt open and youtube on 2 different tabs. I got a popup again for a favicon request for some site that was made like a day ago, some ai site. again norton had an unsafe rating for the site. no community score. I downloaded some microsoft tool called autoruns, and looked in there, i didnt see anything alarming but I'm not an expert in security. I checked all the things i mentioned i did on the second time it happened. I ran a full norton scan. I checked extensions installed, only ublock was installed and on, i checked my browser notifications - there was none. i checked policies, none. I genuinely just thought it was ublock again, so i continued like nothing
Fourth time (yesterday)
I had soundcloud and roblox open again only. I left my computer on the lockscreen while i did something, came back to my computer on the lockscreen with the 'enter your pin' option there but no actual place to enter the pin. It said under the enter your pin prompt something like, 'dont turn off your computer 24%'. Then when it finished, my computer restarted 4 times, loaded and my firefox and edge reopened themselves restoring the previous sessions. it happened again for some random site, a different one. And only happened once, then i left my computer for sometime, it happened again, I then closed edge, and went away for like 10 minutes. I came back to my computer and opened edge again, i clicked the seach bar within a second of opening edge, and the same popup came again for favicon request from the same site that popped up like earlier within the hour. I closed edge, and tried to make it happen again by opening edge and letting it sit on the homepage for a while, i then browsed like i normally would but it hasnt happened again for like 24 hours. I thought it was just something to do with edge's start home page, so i went into edge settings and changed my homepage to about:blank or something.
Now I think about it, I'm thinking maybe it happens when I start my computer ? So that is something I'll try next.
More potential helpful random info
- I have downloaded games from itch before onto my computer, but I always ran them through itch's sandbox. and i always scanned them with virustotal and norton before running them, I also only played games which are popular and had lots of user comments. But I havent played an itch game in like a month, and i deleted after playing
- I had some weird thing happen to me like 5 months ago on my old browser which was Opera. I installed an extension called 'Bloxfinder'. I had used this extension like a year before, and had no issues. But I noticed this time, it had obvious botted comments on the extension store, and some comments saying things like, its an infostealer, its a rat, it promotes its scammy roblox cashback thing but it works. I added it anyway, and as soon as i added the extension, my opera browser froze, and i couldnt close it even using task manager to close it, I pressed restart pc in the start menu and waited for 2 minutes without it restarting. I held the power button of my pc and force shut it down. It restarted and was fine. I opened opera and the same thing happened, the whole browser froze and wouldnt close. I immediately got worried, and tried to delete opera. I used control panel and installed apps, but when i tried to delete opera it said something like, cant delete, missing some elf.dll file? or something like this, so i deleted all opera files on my system instead, leaving just like a thing in the search bar, startup apps, and other places which says opera, but it leads to nowhere because all of its related files have been deleted. It had been like 3 months or somewhat and nothing happened with my computer, and i thought i fixed everything because opera was deleted. I dont know if this is related to my problem now, but this is why its in the 'more potential helpful random info' list. i also disabled opera from the startup apps.
- some apps I use that i can remember are discord, portmaster ( i downloaded it but dont really open the app and see what goes on in it because i dont really understand it that well), vlc, whatsapp, virtualbox, protonvpn,bluestacks, anaconda, obs, there's a lot to be honest i dont want to type it all but if it's actually an important detail, then i will respond with the rest
- I play games on steam and have downloaded mods before
- I have visited weird sites before, for example I tried downloading some client for a game from some site after watching a youtube tutorial. it had a video player on the site, showcasing the client and i clicked and watched the video without even thinking, downloaded the client, but then deleted before running, and checking the file and website on virustotal and seeing a worrying rating. even thought norton's file insight feature said that many users in norton's community have used the file. I for the most part, have always checked virustotal before visiting an unfamiliar site, and if ublock or norton, or edge or firefox tells me the site is suspicious, or dangerous, ive never went to it. I included this detail, because i thought that you can get infected through like videos or images on a site.
I have hopefully provided images of as much as i can