There have been a slew of people lately who have been emailing me and posting that they cannot post in the IE or Security forums. When they click submit, they get the message: "The forum specified does not exist."

I have looked into the problem and, unfortunately, it is a problem that cannot be solved. The problem is that these people post HijackThis logs of infected machines. The logs contain malware entries with weird characters that the forum system simply cannot correctly parse. It has even been the case that someone posted a HijackThis log, and everytime I viewed the thread, my McAfee VirusScan went off saying that the webpage was infected.

I have done extensive testing and found that this error only happens with certain HijackThis logs and no where else. So it isn't as simple as a forum bug

Even worse, the same error happens when trying to include the log as an attached txt file. The forum system simply cannot handle the bad characters in the log! Unfortunately, the only alternative I have found (temporary solution) is to put your log into a .txt file and then zip it as a compressed file. By attaching a .zip file to the forum, the forum doesn't parse the contents of the compressed txt file and doesn't spit out that error.

Pleae remember to first try to post your log directly in the forums before resorting to these measures. Sorry for the inconvenience.

what about putting the hjt log inbetween code tags?

No go Most HJT logs are fine. But those few that are so badly infected contain entries in them that is just malicious code that the forum system can't handle no matter what.

I have the same problem at another site that I help out at. I have EZ trust Av & it goes off on some threads with HJT logs & then I am denied access to the rest of the thread where the code is.

maybe it's really something that those people who makes these malwares exploit. don't you think?

What about posting the logfiles as images?

Anything will work that doesn't allow the *direct* posting or attaching of the log file contents. Ways that work include zipping the log file and attaching the zip, attaching an image of the log file, etc.

Maybe I'm missing something here but why not just allocate a separate directory on your webserver and have the the logs upload there and link directly to the text file if folks want to read it? I think those logs are pretty annoying anyways.

Slightly off the subject but relative to the log files...what about an FAQ about spyware encouraging users to empower themselves and take a little responsibility for their computing? Maybe the techies here could compile a comprehensive guide for dealing with spyware; how to identify suspect processes and how to use Google to search for specific strings and just start pointing folks in that direction instead of doing all this work for them and dealing with these enormous log files that I, for one, really don't want to read. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what processes are running and go look them up on Google, they're half way there if they can figure out how to get into the Task Manager. Maybe that is how it should be approached...request that folks go find out what processes are running and research them first; just follow the FAQ...then ask questions if they get stuck. No logs...no lazy lima beans. I don't say this to be harsh; I think that if folks are required to take some responsibility for this stuff they'll be more interested in preventing it from happening in the first place as well as developing their knowledge about computing thus empowering themselves! How hard is it to search Google? We all know it's not that hard, why should we devote our time because someone is too lazy to take responsibility for clicking Yes when it would have been just as easy to click NO!? Sorry for the rant...as an occupational side effect I've become intolerant of this spyware junk and the type of users who are prone to it. :eek:

Don't think we don't hear you. That's what we're trying to do with the Helping Yourself thread at the top of this forum.

I saw that, of course after I had put this post. Cheers to you guys for doing such noble work!