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Life-Ruining Browser Hijackers
LehiNephi writes "If you're not diligent enough at whacking malware on your computer, you could end up in jail, whether or not you actually did something wrong. Hijacked browsers can not only annoy you with a never-ending string of pop-ups, they leave a less-than-virtuous browser history behind on your computer. This guy claims that some piece of malware hijacked his home page, opened an unstoppable chain of pop-ups, and filled his cache with porn. He now has to register as a sex offender, even though he denies that he did anything his computer says he did. Makes me glad for built in pop-up blocking in Mozilla."
But now the Transponder gang (ABetterInternet) are making .xpis to install their shit in Firefox/Mozilla.
And yes, CoolWebSearch is a goddamned pain to get rid of. New variants are immune to Merijn's CWShredder; they require specialized tools (pv.exe, TheKillBox) to remove, and some even require booting to a command line (nearly impossible in XP/2000).
One guy at my office accidentally got some CWS variants on his machine, and the IT department - myself included - went through the router logs (school district, have to keep the logs, state law here) to see where he got it. This resulted in his getting fired (free pr0n site, and yes, he was logged in as himself).
In short, these little bastards really _can_ ruin your life and your machine.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
That would require some form of intellegence at the justice department.
Popup blocking, tabbed browsing, superfast layout engine, ability to turn on and off javascript. Makes you wonder if the developers of Mozilla were really trying to make a better pr0n browser, eh?
Well, they succeeded.
Maybe. But do you want to bet your future on your lawyer convincing a skeptical judge and jury that it was a technology problem? After all, they have evidence that the pictures were on your machine, under your control. I don't think I'd want to bet my future on that.
Moral of the story - use pop-up blockers. Run AdAware. Run AV software. Get some software that wipes unused areas of your hard disk and "shreds" files you delete. Be paranoid.
And yes, in the "old" days I ran into the same problem that the person described in the artcile had, but I was savvy enough to clear up my machine, wipe out the last vestige of those files and run software to wipe the unused area of the hard disk with random data.
After all, how often do you see pop-ups with child porn on 'em? I certainly know I never do, even when I'm forced to use IE
The dude in question claims that he bought the computer on eBay, which is a whole other ball of wax. If you buy a used computer, and can prove you did so, are you legally responsible for what might have been on it when you bought it?
I totally have no idea what the right answer to that would be.
Where you don't need to do anything damaging or hurtful to commit a crime, just have the wrong information on your computer.
Yay for removal of civil liberties. Oh did the sites any of the images came from get sued? Of course not, it's not their fault they're publishing illegal material (if it even is illegal).
Because we all know looking at pictures is bad. I mean people always do bad things they see in pictures, right? I just can't wait until they finish the thought listening machine so we won't even need pictures for evidence. It'll just be "Hey you! You had bad thoughts about that person, you're obviously going to act on them, get in jail!" Or "Hey you, you thought about doing drugs! We can't have people using untaxed substances to enjoy themselves without hurting others, get in jail so you can learn to become a good consumer of only the harmful products our society approves of and generates money from at the expense of public health!" or "Hey you! You thought the person in charge of this country might be wrong! That's obviously not allowed, come here so we can kill you!"
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Spybot Search & Destroy (best and most up-to-date IMHO)
AdAware (the original big one, not as up-to-date as Spybot S&D, but it still catches stuff Spybot doesn't)
HijackThis (for the really nasty stuff that the others don't get, though this can mess up your computer if it isn't used properly)
SpywareBlaster (it isn't as good as the others mentioned, but it still couldn't hurt)
What if this signature were clever?
This reminds me of the saying "Nobody ever got fired for choosing Windows".
"No, but it did get someone registered as a sex offender."
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
what's the best way to get rid of this crap?
And for the love of all that is holy, tell everybody you know to stop using IE. If you're the tech support guy for your friends and family, have them start using firefox. Because sooner or later, if you don't, they'll get CWS and you'll be at their house helping them for a LONG time.
Being labeled as a "sex offender" will ruin your life forever in America. Once your labeled, I don't think there is anyway of getting rid of this title. I call it a title because it's exactly that. Try getting a job with a future employer. Try finding a place to live. Try anything. Once you're labeled, the stigma ostracizes you from the rest of society. It's enough to make you flee from the country, or commit suicide.
I guess what I'm getting at is this. If your going to be labeled as a "sex offender". The government better damn well have compelling evidence to label you as one. And I don't think having porn on your computer counts. Sex is natural and part of human nature. It's only when it becomes "offensive" to others around you that's at question.
Life is not for the lazy.
Out of interest, when I rebuild my home server recently, I installed a fresh Windows XP (with SP1(!)), but nothing else. Then pointed my browser at www.netants.com (that site would probably deserve a good whacking) and sat back and watched the show.
Within five minutes, there was porn everywhere. The browser homepage (which also downloaded new tasty bits of spyware whenever the browser was launched), the favorites (it would take a determined smut-lover months to accumulate a list of porn sites that long!), the browser history, lots of links on the desktop, porn quick-bars, search bars, the start menu, and every other piece of mal-, spy-, ad- and crapware under the sun.
The scary thing is, I did not click on any buttons, links or otherwise. The website simply exploited IE flaws to install all this crap.
I then ran ad-aware and spybot search and destroy and the amount of shit that had been installed in about five minutes was absolutely staggering! After that, I continued using the machine for a few minutes, but could not shake the feeling that there was still a fair amount of *ware left on the box. I had to repartition, reformat and take a shower to feel clean again.
So it would be all too easy for Joe User, who does not quite grasp the concept of IT security in general and the necessity to upgrade in particular, to stumble upon a site like that and catch all that junk. After witnessing this, I will certainly be migrating my parents and other relatives to Linux/Mozilla as soon as I can.
I have now prepared an old laptop that I can restore quickly by re-ghosting with a virgin XP install. Every time I need to impress the importance of updating, configuring your system properly and generally staying away from MS software, I take the laptop along, open abovementioned site and ask people to clean up the machine. Normally they give up in disgust after firing up IE for the first time. Might be an idea to do that in court, too.
I asked for a refund - and got my monkey back.
I had something like this happen to me, but fortunately I wasn't arrested or fired: One day a while back I decided to clean up my Windoze computer a bit and logged into the default account, which I hadn't logged into in a long, long time -- typically I log into my own account. There were a few shortcuts on the desktop that I hadn't remembered puting there, so I double clicked on one of them and it took me to a kiddie porn site. I was not amused. The other shortcuts were also to kiddie porn sites.
I called up my ex-girlfriend, since she was the only other person who had ever used this computer, and I started ranting at her about how could she have been so cruel as to play that kind of practical joke on me. She clearly had no idea, however, what I was talking about.
So, it must have been some sort of virus, worm, trojan horse, or web-based vandalism that put those links there. Thank goodness I found them before letting a guest use the default account!
|>oug
"Oh man, check out the META tags on her!"
Either that, or Ascii Pr0n NSFW
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Well, I hope he appeals. And gets access to his hard drive, so he can have his own experts analyze the data.
Like another poster said, you should be able to determine something from the timestamps on the files.
If the data's missing, or even more recently accessed than when he last had the machine, he could also go after the Justice Department for destroying evidence.
As an aside...I've got a friend who's on the sex offender registry here in Michigan. He'd been accused of sexually abusing the child of a woman he'd thrown out of his house. (He'd been telling her to get a job and find another place to live for months...finally, he just threw her out. She turned around and filed charges. No medical evidence was offered, but it was still a better deal for him to take a plea bargain.)
It ain't pretty, and I pitty anyone who's been put on there without having actually done the crime.
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These days, any combination of innocent things can make a trial by jury a very dangerous thing for an innocent person.
Case in point. Say a neighbor asks if his kid can come over to my house one afternoon for help with his math homework or something. Say the kid isn't as well adjusted as I thought, and tells everyone I touched him.
Well, that alone means I am now guilty in todays world. But enter the detectives. They take my PC and find that I have some porn in my cache. Most of it is adult porn which is bad enough. But then they go and do ID checks on some of the pics and turns out the girls were mature looking 16 year olds. Fuck, now I'm just sick- a true pedophile.
By now, the community has been told who I am. There are posters up in my neighborhood. My employer fires me. Even if I don't get convicted for some reason, my life is still over. And if I do get convicted, I'm now taking it in the butt in some federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. In which case I'd probably kill myself.
Anybody can disagree with me if they like, but this kind of shit isn't a stretch. The story was bad enough even if I didn't have porn on my box, but that fact just kind of seals the deal.
This gets past the Mozilla/Firefox blocker by using target="_blank" which somehow bypasses it.
// disable target="_blank" (open in same window):d ow", true);
p s.html#beh_blank
Add the following to your user.js to stop it:
user_pref("browser.block.target_new_win
Stolen from Texturizer.net:
http://texturizer.net/firefox/ti
I am a lawyer, and a former prosecutor, to boot. I never worked in a sex crimes unit, but I thought I'd offer my thoughts:
I didn't see that this was a federal case, so the Justice Department probably wasn't involved. If I missed it, I'm sure someone will correct me, but I don't think the feds just go after a guy with a few pics on his computer. It's more likely local cops and prosecutors.
That said, generally prosecutors have to turn over exculpatory evidence. Prosecutors are not permitted to second-guess what's exculpatory and what's not. If they don't turn something over, the defense can ask the judge for a number of sanctions, the most extreme of which is a dismissal of the charges. No prosecutor I know of would risk that or risk being made a fool of in front of the judge. Naturally, there are going to be instances where the prosecutor doesn't turn something over because of an oversight and there are very rare cases where prosecutors intentionally withhold evidence.
One comment indicated that the prosecutors should be able to tell whether or not the pictures happened all at one time or spread out over a span of time. The prosecution is required to turn over the evidence only; not their intepretation of the evidence. So, they'd have to either (1) turn over a perfect copy of the hard drive; or (2) allow the defense to examine it. If they employ an expert, however, they'd be required to turn over his opinions and the bases for them.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
a public attorney is awarded a wage, that is added to the fines of the convicted person. it isn't worth their time to go to trial and waste a bunch of money when they can just get the defendant to agree to a plea and at that point count on a thousand (or more) or so bucks payoff RE that case all for just visiting jail a few times and showing up in court once or twice.
from all the people i spoke to (yes, spoke to *in* jail who were serving time) it's common to sit down, and have them tell you you're looking at 3-4 years in prison (this of course varies) and recommend you just take a plea, all without even fucking asking about your side of the story.
yes, i'm bitter about it, but even moreso i'm angry for all the people whose lives get caught in the justive systems interminable process of rapid conviction commerce.
i can give you one rule, and it of course might be more obvious to some than others (like a frightened 18 year old in jail, or anyone else really) is that ALWAYS get a private defense attorney, NEVER trust your life with a public defender.
- I'd prefer not to.
What's he going to appeal? It was a plea bargain; he gave up most of his appellate rights. The only thing that stands out in my mind is that he could file an appeal based on ineffective assistance of counsel. In my experience, though, he wouldn't be likely to do this for two reasons: (1) appeals are extremely expensive; and (2) a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel has to be predicated on some kind of extreme negligence or malpractice on the part of the attorney. Bad advice alone isn't enough to warrant a reversal of his conviction.
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Furthermore, it's considered unethical (I know, I know, insert lawyer joke here) to collect a contingent fee in a criminal case. Why? Because then attorneys wouldn't take criminal cases they knew they would lose and poor Joe Child-Molester would never find competent counsel (contrary to popular belief, public defenders are only available to the indigent; most jurisdictions require a person seeking a public defender to disclose their financial information).
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Coincidentally, my father is a retired FBI agent. I've never dealt with the FBI in a professional setting, but I know a little of the history. The FBI under Hoover was used to keep track of all kinds of people that Hoover saw as a potential threat. Thus, the FBI investigated everyone from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Elvis Presley. They undoubtedly used means to discover information that, by today's standards, would be considered illegal and abusive. Most of the time, this would not be a problem for the FBI because the sanction for obtaining evidence illegally is to throw the evidence out. If they're just keeping tabs on you and you're never arrested, there's little chance that you'd ever know about it.
That said, the FBI was usually way ahead of its time when it came to ensuring that they got their man. For example, they were employing Miranda warnings long before the Supreme Court issed the Miranda v. Arizona decision, which required the police to read a defendant his rights before questioning him.
One of the really great contributions of the FBI is that, wherever they interacted with the local police, they would encourage the local cops to adopt the same practices. This ultimately led to the creation of the FBI National Academy, where local police forces send their cops for training on legal issues as well as investigation techniques.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
If you live in Arizona, it's often better to cop a deal even if you are innocent. Punishments for Crimes against children in this state are particularly harsh. If you're convicted in a Jury Trial, you'll be facing mandatory consecutive sentences If you're accused of touching a child 10 times, that's a mandatory 10-24 year sentence for each charge. That's 100-240 years in prison without possibility of parole. If I, as an innocent, were faced with this situation, I'd really have to consider a plea bargain rather than take the risk.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Think about it. If you exercise your right to trial by jury, and lose, you may well end up with a much worse sentence. What this amounts to is the government punishing us for exercising our rights! Allow me to requote Chief Judge William G. Young of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, from an excellent article (warning PDF) at theCato Institute.
For completeness, there is a companion article in favor of plea bargains.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yes you do. Let say something happened and you are arrested on Thursday. They charge you with a crime and you are now looking at five years in jail. Friday morning, the judge sets bail at $50K. Your checking account has little over $1k and there about $3k in savings. You rent an apartment and drive a car valued at about $10k with $8k owed. You also have a wife and a kid. A lawyer costs about $20K to go to jury trial, but it will take three month to go to trail. In the mean time you sit in jail. A bench trial costs $3k, which is nothing more then a better pea bargin then the public defender can offer. It also gets you out of jail until trial. The public defendent is free, but is only intrested in pea bargining. They offer a pea bargin that will get you out in a 20 days, but you are on probation for five years and have a felon convention now. What do you do?
predatory_ sex offender, sounds kinda nasty doesn't it?
Would you rather be a plunder of kiddie sex offender?
besides in what kind of a nation that even pretends to be free if you're thrown into jail without a 'chance to explain' ie. hearing with an expert?
A nation that is intrested in profitting from crime. The cost to keep one person in jail for a year is about $25K. There are over 2 million people in jail in American (22% of the world jail pop,btw). That means incarcerating people is a 50 Billion dollar industry!! That's not including lawyers, court cost, judges, cops, probation fees, the value of prison labor used by private companies. In fact, most states spend more to build more jail then on colleges!!
The basic truth is there is a big money in criminalizing people. That's why if you are the one on wrong side of the law, you will get fucked. And only the o'mighty dollar will save you.
The journey is better then the end.