Hacker attack from "questionable site."

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A friend has visited some questionable sites, Win 10 1903, Firefox and with Edge.

When browsing, his screen goes black.  He looses control of his computer.  Sometimes keying up the task manager helps.  Sometimes Alt-F4 (keyboard shutdown) works.  Sometimes nothing works and he has to do a hot shutdown pressing the on/off button.

He has updated Windows Defender and Malwarebytes (purchased).  Both report no malware.

How can someone get into your computer?  Is there a defense?  If they can make the screen go black and pretty much disable the computer, can they do other bad things?

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Does the black screen event when happen when using Firefox and/or Edge?

Has your friend ever seen notification messages about a video driver crashing and being restored to operation?

 

How can someone get into your computer?

A non-exhaustive list: Malware infection through served third party advertisements and other JavaScript scripts, opening attachments added to malicious (sometimes targeted) emails, hacked sites, faked browser update pages, sites may also have been served a script the redirect your browser to display purely fake virus infection warnings to scare (or terrify) people into getting fraudulent “tech support”, infection via Ransomware worm that searches for vulnerable networks, etc…

Is there a defense?

Yes, NoScript, uBlock Origin (or uMatrix), Privacy Badger, some people use other extensions. Your friend will have learn to research to learn the function of domain names before enabling them using NoScript, and learn how to use the other tools.

Using a Domain Name System resolution service that offers some protection from corrupt actors and blocks questionable sites before returning a site’s address back to your computer.

Another solutions touted by others which does require more technical expertise which can block malicious traffic is Pi-hole.

If they can make the screen go black and pretty much disable the computer, can they do other bad things?

Yes, possibly if it this is a malicious attack.

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It’s also possibly a hardware problem. Check the Event Viewer for error messages around the time the screen goes black.

You can try FullEventLogView from NirSoft if you want an easier way to view the logs.

cheers, Paul

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