• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

I'm dekaerF Out

gerdbonk

Penultimate Amazing
gerdbonk
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Dec 8, 2004
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All right, computer geniuses. There I was, mere minutes ago, in Firefox, on Google, typing into that little search box. I'm working on a writing project and I was looking for some alternate phrasing. So I type "euphemisms".

But that's not what shows up in the Google box. What shows up is:

"smsimehpue"

That's a direct cut and paste.

There is no chance I subconsciously typed in reverse. I wasn't even paying attention that closely. I saw the anomaly just as I hit enter and ended up searching for the, uh, opposite of what I wanted.

I immediately shut off my internet access. After I copied the text I shut my browser. A scan didn't find anything.

What the kcuf virus have I been hit with?
 
Have you checked for any abberant extensions that have been installed or existing ones that have become corrupted? Try starting Firefox in safe mode and try your searches again.

If you believe you have a virus then obviously updating and scanning your drive is top priority also running a HijackThis and posting the resultant log file to an analyser can be extremely helpful.
 
Didn't see any strange Firefox extensions.

It only happened that once. Since my first post I have run a more thorough scan and my AV found "Alert Mobile Pro" which it categorized as a high threat, though it seems to be a legitimate, if possibly intrusive, program. I deleted it. It was not something I ever chose to install on my system.

http://www.softsecurity.com/ampro.html

Another board I posted on suggested elgooG, but the event was nothing like that. Google was fully normal. It was my typed text that got reversed.

I will do the HijackThis thing and see what comes up.

Thanks.
 
Did the the HijackThis scan and the items reported as "possibly nasty" were programs I know and have been on my system for a while: tools from my ISP, keyboard control panel, download manager and CDRom emulator.

If it wasn't the file found by my AV scan, then it's gone into slumber, like Xenu.
 
I've had this problem with Firefox a couple times. I'm not sure what caused it, but I vaguely recall getting a plug-in error before it started each time (for a common plug-in, something like Flash, not a malicious one).

Obviously it's getting put into RTL mode somehow. I had to restart the browser to fix it.
 
Haven't switched to Hebrew or Arabic as your default Windows language, have you?
 
ReFLeX said:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51258&
Click to expand...

Interesting. I've got a wireless keyboard. A bit before this happened, the wireless receiver stopped recognizing the keyboard. I popped in new batteries but that didn't help. So I took apart the keyboard and put it back together, just for the hell of it. That fixed it. I don't know why. I forgot I'd done that before I read your thread.

So, possible a glitchy keyboard sends a key combo to the current application? And that combo happens to activate a text direction switch?

I am shrugging and moving on. If it happens again, I will alert the media.
 
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