How do you detect malware and suspicious links?

[Lurkus]

Greetings to all. 

I have been in this forum for about 4 months and am studying various subjects. But even after giving the password to my account, it keeps showing wrong password. So I have opened this new account. I apologize to you that I have opened the account again. But I had no other choice. If I have done this outside the forum rules, then I am sincerely sorry.

Now let me talk about my main discussion.

You may be aware of this thread. Malware and suspicious links are reported here. I have been researching this topic for the last two weeks, how to detect these suspicious links and malware. But unfortunately I have failed to learn. But the curiosity to learn about this topic forced me to create this thread. I want to know from you, how malware and suspicious links are detected. So those who know well about this topic, please explain to me in your own way. I will be very benefited by this and I will be sincerely grateful to you.

Thanks in advance.

[Charles-Tim]

It is not wrong to register another account on this forum, what that is wrong is if you registered another account after you have been banned. That would be seen as ban evasion.

Did you not register the first account with email? If you registered it with email, you could have used forgot password on the login page to recover your account.

If you want to know about malware and suspicious links, it can be from knowing the original websites. Some sites online clone or mimick another websites. After investigating that the new links or related links are not legit links of the website, that is suspicious already.

Another are sites that lure you to download a file. If the site is suspicious and having new domain (but the domain may not be new), that is a red flag already.

Another are websites that is luring people to input their seed phrase. That is scam obviously.

Another one are fake websites that will lure people to connect their wallet. This can easily be known.

And so on.

[Charcol]

Greetings to all. 

I have been in this forum for about 4 months and am studying various subjects. But even after giving the password to my account, it keeps showing wrong password. So I have opened this new account. I apologize to you that I have opened the account again. But I had no other choice. If I have done this outside the forum rules, then I am sincerely sorry.

As far as I know, having two accounts is not prohibited here. However, it is discouraged. Since the password for your previous account is not working, it means you have forgotten the password. If you want, you can try to solve the problem by reading this thread.

Recovering hacked/lost accounts

You may be aware of this thread. Malware and suspicious links are reported here. I have been researching this topic for the last two weeks, how to detect these suspicious links and malware. But unfortunately I have failed to learn. But the curiosity to learn about this topic forced me to create this thread. I want to know from you, how malware and suspicious links are detected. So those who know well about this topic, please explain to me in your own way. I will be very benefited by this and I will be sincerely grateful to you.

Thanks in advance.

I'm not very educated on detecting malware or suspicious links. However, in the thread you mentioned, the OP has added a link to another thread in his original post.You can check out that linked thread if you want. Then hopefully you'll get the full information.

How to find out Fake ANN and Github links you can read here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5167236.msg51891741#msg51891741

[Lurkus]

It is not wrong to register another account on this forum, what that is wrong is if you registered another account after you have been banned. That would be seen as ban evasion.

Did you not register the first account with email? If you registered it with email, you could have used forgot password on the login page to recover your account.

I'm trying.

If you want to know about malware and suspicious links, it can be from knowing the original websites. Some sites online clone or mimick another websites. After investigating that the new links or related links are not legit links of the website, that is suspicious already.

Another are sites that lure you to download a file. If the site is suspicious and having new domain (but the domain may not be new), that is a red flag already.

Another are websites that is luring people to input their seed phrase. That is scam obviously.

Another one are fake websites that will lure people to connect their wallet. This can easily be known.

And so on.

Every thing you said is very important. But I am not able to learn the whole subject. How can I learn the whole subject? I seek your help in that regard.

As far as I know, having two accounts is not prohibited here. However, it is discouraged. Since the password for your previous account is not working, it means you have forgotten the password. If you want, you can try to solve the problem by reading this thread.

Recovering hacked/lost accounts

Thank you very much.

I'm not very educated on detecting malware or suspicious links. However, in the thread you mentioned, the OP has added a link to another thread in his original post.You can check out that linked thread if you want. Then hopefully you'll get the full information.

How to find out Fake ANN and Github links you can read here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5167236.msg51891741#msg51891741

I saw that, but failed to learn, so I seek help from those who know about this topic and contribute to that thread.

[Charles-Tim]

[Every thing you said is very important. But I am not able to learn the whole subject. How can I learn the whole subject? I seek your help in that regard.

I learn about how to avoid scam online. If you search for it, you will learn from it. The other thing is that there are some user that are exposed on the reputation board and scam accusation board. I learned from them all also. Learning from these will be very helpful for you.

[Lurkus]

[Every thing you said is very important. But I am not able to learn the whole subject. How can I learn the whole subject? I seek your help in that regard.

I learn about how to avoid scam online. If you search for it, you will learn from it. The other thing is that there are some user that are exposed on the reputation board and scam accusation board. I learned from them all also. Learning from these will be very helpful for you.

https://talkimg.com/images/2025/12/26/Utx4Qw.jpeg
@Charles-Tim Sir, look at this person from screenshot, I want to learn how to collect information and report like they did. I would benefit if you teach me the subject completely.

[cryptomaniac_xxx]

You may be aware of this thread. Malware and suspicious links are reported here. I have been researching this topic for the last two weeks, how to detect these suspicious links and malware. But unfortunately I have failed to learn. But the curiosity to learn about this topic forced me to create this thread. I want to know from you, how malware and suspicious links are detected. So those who know well about this topic, please explain to me in your own way. I will be very benefited by this and I will be sincerely grateful to you.

Thanks in advance.

Most of them are in the altcoin board as far as I know. There could be new post about a certain project and then they will post a link in their ANN thread. But you must be very careful specially if those links contains zip files as it contains malware.

Or even pointing to a official github repository, and then they will have a link there that is potentially also laden with malware and trojan. So before you download, think many times or used tools online like virustotal to check the links.

[nakamura12]

Most of them are in the altcoin board as far as I know. There could be new post about a certain project and then they will post a link in their ANN thread. But you must be very careful specially if those links contains zip files as it contains malware.

Or even pointing to a official github repository, and then they will have a link there that is potentially also laden with malware and trojan. So before you download, think many times or used tools online like virustotal to check the links.

It is useless if you only think twice and not make a research about the tools or about the link if it's legit and if there are people who are using it without a problem. Let's say a password manager as an example and make some research about it if there's no problem using it and it's never been hacked before downloading the tools from the original source. Well, I am sure OP will find what he wants like how to check the links if it's correct or not and if it's legit or not.

[Upgrade00]

<snip> look at this person from screenshot, I want to learn how to collect information and report like they did. I would benefit if you teach me the subject completely.

That particular post gives you the pointer to how they did it, a tool that can help you also do searches on links you're unsure of. Virus total is a website where you can submit suspicious urls or files and it will give you info if there are any harmful contents. What you'll need to learn is how to detect which link is suspicious.

• You should be looking for any discrepancies in the url like wrong letters or presence of extra characters that should not be there
• You should also be checking if a supposed url looks very similar to a file.
• You could also check when a hyperlink is used if there is a marked difference between the hyperlink and original link.

When you consistently do these, you'll get more familiar with it and errors will be easier to spot.

[joniboini]

I saw that, but failed to learn, so I seek help from those who know about this topic and contribute to that thread.

I think you just have to read a lot. Read news about malware and phishing, most of which will explain how the scammer managed to trick users and all that, so you can learn and try to build your own intuition. They'll share similarities in one way or another, so that will help you. But at the end of the day, it's exposure to scam tricks, which means you need to read/view a lot of them. Remember that scammers also learn new tricks to scam their users, so there's no downside to reading the latest news about malware attacks, etc.

[casey15]

One thing that helped me is that most of the important service I use online, I know their original URL so I just type it manually into my browser, or bookmark them and access it from my bookmark just in case I forget the link... There are many tools online to check ilthe authenticity of a URL. One example is who.is which shows when a domain is registered. This can help point out some errors like a newly registered domain that clones the original website.
You can also check for small details like spellings, double letters and also extensions. If you use an anti virus software, it usually prompt when you have a malware.. but since it is not 100% reliable, you should avoid downloads from not trusted sites and avoid accessing sites with no secure connections

[qwertyup23]

As someone who had reported multiple ANNs and fake ICOs in the past, let me share to you my experience and methods on what helped me in detecting them:

• Checking their designated ANN section and the contents thereof;
• Clicking the website and checking the domain if they purchased such recently;
• Checking the photos of their team members if they are stock images or AI-generated;
• Manually inputting the contents of their whitepaper on Google to see if they are plagiarized; and
• Putting the download link of their wallet in virustotal if they are indeed infected with malware.

On the above-mentioned list, one of the few ways of checking if such link is suspicious is putting it in virustotal to detect if they are infected with malware. I will be providing below all the tools that I used that helped me spot malware from links, etc.

You can also check this link in which I put all of the fake projects that I spotted throughout this forum. It also contains all the pieces of evidence that lead me to conclude that such project was indeed fake.


1 Virus Total : https://www.virustotal.com/gui/
2 Whois domain checker: https://www.whois.com/whois/
3 History : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5274460.msg55157533#msg55157533

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

1 Virus Total : https://www.virustotal.com/gui/
2 Whois domain checker: https://www.whois.com/whois/
3 History : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5274460.msg55157533#msg55157533

Checking is the very last steps to do but there are more important and vital first steps to do.

1. Having safe and healthy habits on computers, mobile devices, with accounts and on the Internet.
2. By having such good habit, you already reduce a lot of potential risk factors that can infect your devices and accounts.
3. Don't arbitrarily and carelessly click on any link, any file sent to you by strangers to any platforms, you can stop right there, no need for further checks. If they are sent by people you knew, be careful and check with softwares like above.

Cryptocurrency security checklist.

[348Judah]

But even after giving the password to my account, it keeps showing wrong password. So I have opened this new account. I apologize to you that I have opened the account again. But I had no other choice. If I have done this outside the forum rules, then I am sincerely sorry.

You don't need to apologize as long as what you're doing is not against the forum rules and regulation, you're free to create an account if you wanted to, but ensure that its not done because one was banned, such could lead to ban evasion, i will also advise that you go through the forum rules and know other thigs that are expected of you to do and know as a member of this forum form this link https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0

[DYING_S0UL]

@Lurkus, would have been better if you mentioned some of the users that you have seen frequently reporting such cases. Now to answer your original question first you need to know whether these links are posted the most. You need to identify those boards, you may do it using the help with Ninjastic, now knows as (https://bitlist.co/). This forum is a big place, without kowing where to look is like trying to "Finding a needle in a haystack". Check the already reported cases and where they were spotted, it'll give you a decent idea where to look. Then comes the checking part, just use (https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload), it's the most convenient one, just copy the link, paste it there and then give it a quick scan. If it contain malwares/viruses, it'll give you many red flags. You can also scan files there, if you are unsure. Whenever in question, use virustotal, many of us use it for our day to day use. If you find any harmful things, report it in appropriate format.