Tencent and Malware

So I was having troubles with all kinds of things on my computer lately [kept getting an HSTS error that prevented me from doing anything via Google, including checking my emails], so I researched and downloaded/ran two sweepers.

Both flagged QQ, as well as some other Baidu program I hadn't consciously installed.

So from now on I'm only going to use QQ from a public computer. "Chat" at your own peril.

I came across some info that QQ went pretty damn deep into your computer so deep in fact that a program was created just to remove from your system as a regular uninstall will not do the job. As QQ is part of ten cent my guess would be that this extends to we chat as well.

Can remember the in and outs though. I quick search turned up these links:

http://www.spywaredb.com/remove-tencent-qq/
http://www.exterminate-it.com/malpedia/remove-tencent
http://www.securitystronghold.com/gates/tencent-qq.html

There was a plug-in for pidgin where you could use the QQ protocols sadly after QQ was updated the pidgin was seemingly abandoned. There was no other all in one message centre that had a pidgin protocol from what I could see.

web.qq.com

So I was having troubles with all kinds of things on my computer lately [kept getting an HSTS error that prevented me from doing anything via Google, including checking my emails], so I researched and downloaded/ran two sweepers.

Both flagged QQ, as well as some other Baidu program I hadn't consciously installed.

So from now on I'm only going to use QQ from a public computer. "Chat" at your own peril.

it more sounds like you are blocked by GFW. To prove that, let's see if you still get the error without QQ installed.

The malware scanner tagged, and subsequently removed all the trouble makers. There were a few in addition to the Tencent/Baidu programs, so we can't do a 1:1 correlation.

After the wipe everything was fine.

What's interesting is that the scanner software flagged the software and that there was additional software installed that I hadn't approved - I never use Baidu, instead using the Hong Kong Google.

Hence the heads up.