From past couple of days, we are facing this issue where sites are automatically being routed to an adult site, although we get a 404 Not Found HTTP error.
First guess is obviously that my system is infected with a virus or malware. So, I did a complete scan and Avast removed some viruses. But the problem persists.
The redirection doesn't happen all the time, it happens randomly. Also it is not specific to some sites, it happens for any site.
But, I found that I am not the only victim, every one in my network is facing this problem.
On Googling I only got suggestions that it is a doing of a virus or malware in my system.
But, how come our Android devices and iPads are also affected. It is happening in all browsers, Chrome, Firefox and IE.
I've no clue where the problem is and how to fix it. Please advise.
Update:
Checked the router configuration. Found that the remote administration was ON. The password was the default one. Changed the password. Also, saw that the DNS server configuration, it was set to take the details from ISP.
So, not sure how something got hold of my DNS translation.
But, after changing my router's password I haven't noticed the issue even once. So, it makes me think that my router was compromised.
Also, would like to give one more info to the curious ones out there which is puzzling me. When I was opening a url, say abc.com, the page was actually loading and was then getting redirected. So, if the DNS was compromised I guess when we were hitting a link, it should have directly gone to the malicious site. But for us the page was loading and within a split of a second it was being redirected.
Still don't know the root cause, but I'm happy that the issue is fixed.