Question Clipboard is spontaneously adding a text string ?

[bishoukun]

Hello all,

I've been a lurker for years, and you lovely folks have solved problems I haven't found answers to anywhere else multiple times. So, with this issue nowhere to be found even here, and persisting to more than six months now, I decided to just go ahead and be the one to ask.

What's been happening is this:
Unpredictably, and inconsistently, I will go to paste something and a long string of text will be imported.

This is what I've pinned down so far:

• How I am trying to use the paste function does not matter.
• It is always the exact same string of text, 63732 characters long.
• The string will almost never just appear once.
• There does not appear to be any trigger for the string's appearance; I've come across no common denominators.
• This string will appear in the clipboard spontaneously and inconsistently; I have gone hours, days, even a few weeks at one point without it happening once, while other times it will happen constantly.
• No user action is triggering the string; I am the sole user of this computer and have sat here watching as new entries of this string appear in the clipboard history, sometimes in rapid succession.
• Frequency of using the C/P functions have no influence whatsoever; I could be using it for the first time that day, or the four thousandth. It will appear sometimes after every other item copied, sometimes more, or less.
• To my great relief, this does not seem to coincide with any functions in a way that is more than simply a nuisance; However, I am a writer, and use C/P functions almost constantly.

What I've already done:

• Detailed the situation to the rubber duck. And a few humans.
• Cleared every temp and cache in existence.
• sfc /scannow was clear several times over the past few months.
• chkdsk was clear twice over six months.
• Reset the clipboard history feature through multiple methods.
• Gone through the registry but was unable to find anything that would produce strings or minidumps relative to the clipboard.

The clipboard shows this when the string is appearing. (I've just copied a handful of things for show.)





Click for larger versions. You'll see that even in just taking a few screenshot examples and copying the discord image links, it comes and goes without a known reason. There is one, clearly, but I've not a pot of glue what it might be.

This is the text string itself. Because of the character limit, discord will likely auto-download the text file, but as I've sent the same thing over the last several months to many others, a text file with the string definitively isn't dangerous.

Device and OS specs:

Processor AMD Ryzen 7 2700 Eight-Core Processor 3.20 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB
Device ID DD7B5773-6C74-4FB4-A1C4-AEFEEF1CB24A
Product ID 00329-10458-00000-AA152
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Edition Windows 10 Enterprise
Version 22H2
OS build 19045.2364
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.4190.0


If anyone has even the most remote idea of what is going on, please let me know. Thank you kindly!

Storm

 

[COLGeek]

Have you scanned this system for malware? If so, with what application?

Are all of your applications from legit sources, including the OS (Win 10 Enterprise)?

 

[Etrius vanRandr]

Have you scanned this system for malware? If so, with what application?

Yeah my first thought too, doesn't seem like it.

Googling the first few characters reveals a lot of Chinese results, and there is a lot of malware that comes out of China.

The string does have some repetitious segments, it could be an encoded image or other type of file.

I've uploaded it to VirusTotal with no results.

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file...ca2db59f89e763dd8039d15cdd65dcadff6a6/details

Try checking your startup programs in Task Manager, run CCleaner, and Malwarebytes Free.

Also check your installed programs list, if there's anything you don't know what it is, google it, and if you don't want or need it, uninstall it.