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Mozilla Wrongly Accused Sothink Addon of Malware

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the sorry-bout-that dept.

eldavojohn writes "Mozilla has admitted to wrongly accusing Sothink of distributing a video downloader with a trojan virus as a Firefox addon. From their official blog: 'We've worked with security experts and add-on developers to determine that the suspected trojan in Version 4.0 of Sothink Video Downloader was a false positive and the extension does not include malware.' Before you go download that addon, however, keep in mind that Sothink has come under fire before for GPL violations and dishonesty."

7 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Trojan Virus? by Anarke_Incarnate · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not more of this shit again.... A Trojan Horse is NOT a virus. It IS malware, but a virus tends to replicate and trojan horses do not, on their own. A trojan horse is just a program is the infection (In that it does something other than wanted or specified, and does so intentionally)

    1. Re:Trojan Virus? by mamer-retrogamer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are waging a losing battle my friend. Just as the distinction between the terms "hacker" and "cracker" has been lost upon wider usage, "virus" has now come to mean any type of malware.

      --
      Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
    2. Re:Trojan Virus? by Spad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      These days you've got malware that is a trojan (to get onto your machine) and a virus (to spread itself to all your facebook friends, email contacts & embed itself on your USB key) and a worm (to spread itself around your LAN), which will zombie your machine to send spam and conduct DDoS attacks, keylog to steal your bank and WoW credentials and try to get you to buy fake AV software to get both your cash and personal info.

      To say the lines between trojans, viruses, worms and spyware are blurry is a serious understatement.

    3. Re:Trojan Virus? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What gave you the idea, that we care what the general public thinks about our area of expertise?
      Are you so weak, that you bow to a stream of loud idiots saying that 2+2=5?

      We define what a virus is. We define what a cracker and a hacker is. Like professionals in any other profession.
      There is no battle, so we can’t lose. I’m still calling anyone calling a cracker a hacker somebody who got no fuckin’ clue. Including you, if you do so. Period.

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    4. Re:Trojan Virus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      At the risk of sounding like a Linux/Apple fanboy, "I couldn't care less".

      At the risk of sounding like the voice of reason, "It's still possible to get rooted by a worm on a Linux/OSX box"

    5. Re:Trojan Virus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Perhaps but when I talk to my family guess what THEY DONT CARE about the distinction. They know their computer is screwed up and that a 'virus' did it. Because after the fact the results are the same to them. Their computer is messed up. They do not care that they did it or someone other program did it automatically. I then tell them if they did it to themselves or not and how to avoid it in the future. It is my job to make the distinction. You need to talk their lingo to figure out what happened if you dont you just come off as arrogant and rude. The end users realllllllllly do not care. Much like I do not care what plastic the moldings on my car door are made out of. I know they keep the water out.

  2. Re:ie * by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Intentionally misleading and making a mistake are two different things.