So today I removed a particularly nasty piece of malware called Vista Antispyware. It cleverly dresses itself up as an Anti-Spyware program and then badgers the user with tons of warning messages and fake scans designed to con you into buying it.
What makes this program really nasty is that it apparently over writes other Anti-Virus programs. Declaring THOSE programs as viruses and then demanding you buy their program to protect yourself. This has been done before, but Vista Antispyware puts up a convincing act...mostly.
The giveaways were its constant badgering of adds, a "scan" which took all of 10 seconds to complete (waaaay faster than the average scanner's speed) and no ability to manually shut the program off in Task Manager. (Which is usually an immediate give away of malicious intent.)
Now if I had ended up with this malware because of a dumbfuck move like clicking on a sketchy link or downloading porn from some backwater website then I wouldn't be here today. What makes this virus worth bringing up is that it's in a special class of really deceptive viruses. According to Google Vista Antispyware downloads itself onto your computer just through visiting a website. So it's intrusive, dishonest, and most importantly, subtle about entry.
Anyone else got any equally impressive efforts in the world of malware? The most important part was the giveaways. What did the malware do/act/say at any stage from pre-download to post-installation that made you suspicious? For us, these things are probably going to seem trivial, but plenty of people really just can't discern a malicious program from a normal one in any way.
Viruses and You!
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CaptHawkeye
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Viruses and You!
Best care anywhere.
Re: Viruses and You!
Presumably it can only get on if you allow scripts. Noscript is a great add-on for FF. As long as you don't go around allowing access to dodgy porn sites and shit, that is 
My sister had something very similar to what you just described recently, but I killed it with safemode + virus scan. It gave itself away by being absolutely unrepentantly obtrusive, of the "it comes back 5 seconds after you tell it to fuck off" variety.
My sister had something very similar to what you just described recently, but I killed it with safemode + virus scan. It gave itself away by being absolutely unrepentantly obtrusive, of the "it comes back 5 seconds after you tell it to fuck off" variety.
A scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortoise standing on?'
'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.'
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortoise standing on?'
'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.'