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Adware Spreads Through Myspace
Sandbagger writes "Here's an interesting problem for MySpace — groups of websites that entice MySpace users into placing videos onto their profile pages (under the guise of 'free content'), without disclosing a key piece of information that might make them think twice. When someone visits one of these profiles carrying the video, a DRM acquisition box pops up and attempts to install Zango adware. In all likelihood, the profile owners don't even know these videos are doing this to their visitors. The end result is an Adware affiliate effectively removing himself from the distribution chain and letting kids promote these videos instead, in a strange example of viral marketing gone wrong."
Viral marketing is a relatively harmless marketing strategy that takes advantage of "word of mouth", using its audience to reach new audience. Consider the popular website homestarrunner.com, which has never used marketing but instead relied on its visitors to encourage others to visit. "Viral" comes from the idea that one person sees it, and shows it to several friends, who show it to several friends. This can reach a much wider audience than conventional marketing methods and cuts down on marketing costs.
Oh, BTW, if you read that, you'll find that it didn't even require a myspace site bug. It was just IE badly interpreting a page. The key is the large homogenious mass of people and myspace gave it that.
My stepbrother installed that Zango stuff on my computer. I uninstalled it, and the next day I found it installed again. So I used the hosts file to redirect zango.com to zombo.com
Problem solved.
really 867993
Karma schkarma
Windows Media Player helpfully downloads license files for you, and if a malicious media file asks for something that's nastier than a license file, well.... aspx?noticia=5818
http://www.pandasoftware.com/about/press/viewNews
I've been using vlc, but it's plugin crashes firefox pretty consistently. So what else can you use (that isn't just a front end to the same codecs wmplayer uses)?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
fyi, pretty much every Linux media library is a frequent subject of security advisories. Ffmpeg, mplayer, xine-lib, vlc, mad... Not all distros are diligent in fixing these issues and removing vulnerable versions. Gentoo in my experience is pretty fast, but some others are too lax. Chances are, there is a sploit for at least one multimedia application you use. And if someone wants to pwn you, all they need to do is know what version of what media player you use, and then have you open a special video file. Oh, you think that nobody knows what media player you use? Are you sure that you've never told a Linux n00b in a forum what media player you prefer? Are you sure you've never commented on a bug report in a publically accessible bugzilla? Or asked for advice on irc or a mailing list? Or mentioned in your blog that that you've just compiled that sweet beta version of libFoo-3.14?
Remember, paranoia is a survival trait, no matter what your OS.
By "Not needing to find freeware" I often run into "Not able to find the software I need to get the job done." The "one size fits all" means that many more developers are willing to put in the effort to make software for it. Yeah, I run windows. I have primarilly run Windows for well over 10 years. In that time I had one worm, which incidentally came from someone inside the network who installed software downloaded via a filesharing program which had a trojan with the virus packed inside... (probably targeted at university dorms.) I learned to also turn on the firewall to the internal network after that.
I've also been doing adware scans since Ad-aware came out, and all I ever get hits for is tracking cookies (No big deal, in my mind.)
To stay clean, simply stop using IE, don't visit suspicious sites (There's enough free porn out there without risk. It's the flashy cursors, download assistants and glitzy stuff like that which seem to get you.) Read reviews before installing software. Primarilly, really think about it before you click a dialog button.
You can tick a checkbox in the options to tell it not to automatically download license files.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer