As someone else already pointed out, It's the Ads. If you have ad blocker the top site will be the correct one.
Many people do not differentiate between the ads and the real links, so they click on the first link that shows up, downloades it, and get hammered.
Right now, in the past 30 days, I've dealt with 6 Viruses like Sirifef, TDSS and various FBI Viruses. This week alone, I've cleaned 9 PC's that had Drive By Downloader Infections and I usually keep that pace every week. I'd say I've cleaned roughly 30+ this past 30 days. If that's not a sign where things are going I don't know what is.
Just about every popular Open Source program out there is Drive by Kidnapped. Just search for any Open source program on google and bing and see what I mean.
VLC media player, 7Zip and firefox seem to be the popular drive-by bait and switch downlaods I seen. There's even a chromium browser ripoff that impersonates google chrome, albeit with a square chrome logo instead of a round one.
Just about all download sites are garbage anymore. The only one I find that has no Adware garbage on it is nonags.com, but it's woefully out of date.
When I got to tell our customers "Don't Download Anything, Anywhere, Anytime" because I can't trust any download site Including the Windows 8 Store, There's an epidemic going on.
Until AV Programs start getting a pair and flag anything that installs as bundleware malicious, this will not stop, Although you'll never see it because Big Names like Google and Microsoft Both bundle their apps with software.
If its what I think they're going to do (reputation detaction Ala IE9) it won't help much. See my sig if you want to go more in depth as to why.
Besides, The biggest Threats are the following
1) Malicious Forked Open Source Software 2) Installers with Bundled Adware
for #1: look at VLC. there's so many malicious forks of this I can't even count them. Many times they're just Renames, but other times they have more adware and spyware Embeeded in them than I can count. Hell One I found Shows ads before you watch any video.
Another example is "Fast Browser" which is a chromium browser fork with spyware baked in. it looks exactly like chrome and the only difference I can tell is the Icon (which rips off the chrome Icon, only Square) and the name in the about box.
for #2. Lets do a search for VLC and highlight any download site that's not from videolan.org or sourceforge (although I should count sourceforge. they're doing this too now) (obfuscated to avoid clicking)
VLCapp,com vlcmediaplayer,org Softonic,com 4soft,org softwareinstall,com soft82,com softdls,com download-pc,com download366,com os-downloads,com..and these are just the results from 1st page direct searches or ads from bing and google alone.
I can all but guarantee that downloading anything from the above sites will get you some Potentially unwanted program or virus. I just wish that someone would make an Adblock plus list like the malware domain list for fake downloading sites.
Now I know that it sounds like I'm Picking on VLC here, but it's just one of the more hijacked examples. You can do this with just about any popular Program. Firefox, Chrome, 7zip, Openoffice, Minecraft, even IE10 and Windows Media Player have software wrappers.
Hell. Even the Microsoft Store in WIndows 8 isn't safe. Do a search for VLC there and the first or second hit is a link to getdesktopapp,com which piles on the junkware. when you look at the app's Publisher. he's doing the same thing with peazip, 7zip UMPlayer and openoffice.
If Chrome does something about these software wrappers then were talking, otherwise it's nothing new from what they were doing before or what IE's been doing for years, and that hasn't stopped anything either.
Or better yet. Is it an Ad if you do a Search for Southwest Airlines.
It's definitely an Ad if the Southwest Airlines ad comes up for say a search for "Delta Airlines" or just "airlines" but as you said, if you're specifically searching for southwest airlines, it's not like you want to go to Delta's site. It's pretty obvious you want to go to southwest Airlines.
As a Happy OG Surface Pro owner, I'm probably going to hold off for awhile, although the battery cover and dock have me intrigued...
As for the ARM Surface it needs to either get open or die. Allow devs to make desktop apps compatible with Windows RT, and allow Domain Joining and you might have a compelling Cheap ARM Tablet to Compete against iPad and Android. Right now thought, The RT tablet should be Branded "Microsoft Fail" and let the Surface name go to the serious Surface Tablet.
What they need to do is Fire Sale the Existing Surface Tablets. It would get Surfaces into the hands of consumers and developers as well as clear off the old stagnating inventory off their books.
It didn't do well for HP, primarily because it was blatantly obvious they wanted nothing to do with WebOS. Since MS has shown no signs of dropping RT It might succeed where HP and Sales Failed.
The Other problem is that Ti is even getting away from on calc programming. The Ti-nspire has very basic function programming, and to do higher level LUA scripts you need a computer.
They also need to quit focusing on the 83 for a bit and start focusing on the Ti-89. It has a powerful language out of the box and can do so much more than the 83's. At least make a Color 89 with a higher resolution screen.
Dell and HP also sells systems with Win7 preinstalled and is not doing as well, but they have to be ordered as such. With Lenovo they always ship you Win8 media and the system has Win7 which is nice unless the customer really wanted Win8, then its a pain.
However, Lenovo quality has gone way south as of late, and this is coming from someone who has sworn by Lenovo since back in the IBM Days. Out of the 6 Lenovo systems we bought over the last 6 months, Two have already had motherboard replacements and the other four have had other issues ranging from WiFi Card Replacements to wierd random crashes for no reason to even one Windows update (KB2647753) causing all windows updates on most Lenovo systems to revert unless you install all of the other updates first.(something that doesn't happen on any other OEM I've had in here or with Straight Windows 7).
Didn't realize the movie came out this weekend and finally read the wiki article so yeah I'm wrong, but the theme is still there. BTW Spoilers, I guess.
Although "Matt Damon turning everyone into Elysium "citizens" and sending space pods to heal people" is a lot different plot that what I imagined, it's the same "everyone is now equal" plot that "In Time" did.
In fact it's actually closer to "In Time's "Justin Timberlake robs time banks and gives out time Robin Hood Style to the point that short timers are now crossing social lines" Plot Ending now that I think about it.
Two Posts about a movie that basically In Time but in space is fishy to me.
I haven't seen this movie at all, But I can all but guarantee that the ending is going to be the Space station crashes onto earth and the rich survivors now have to live their lives just like everyone else.
Unless you like showing everyone how 1337 your Single Player gaming skills are, most likely you're going to have an Xbox Gold Account anyway.
As for the other things tied to Xbox live, if all you want to do is watch Netflix on your Xbox, your better off getting yourself a Google TV and sit on the $400 you saved by buying it, or even a Chromecast and use the $65 to buy some movies to stream.
yes a keylogger can collect this data, but that takes time and patience to wait for someone to type in those details. This makes it so easy, i could walk a 8 year old child through giving all of your passwords over the phone.
Hell. been playing with some other autofill settings and found that it does the same thing with credit card numbers if you store them in autofill. Passwords are one thing but If I can get your Expiry and CC info if you typed it in and saved it with chrome and I only need a few seconds of your PC time without any external programs or copying, that's a design flaw. Period.
When part of my job everyday is cleaning up some mess that some "MS Support Tech" Scammer did to some old lady's PC, and Now these guys just by glancing into Chrome or Firefox or IE to "check for extraneous viruses" can get passwords and Credit card details just by taking a screenshot, there's no justification.
Only if you request chrome to do so, and then specifically tell it to sync your passwords,
If you log into Chrome it asks you to sync everything by default. Most people will choose the default. Passwords by default are checked.
And then specifically tell it to save your passwords. And if you do, it offers to let you use an encryption password for your chrome sync.
Yes it asks if you want to save a password in the password list. You should answer no to this, but keep in mind that people will say yes not knowing the risks associated with the choice.
As for the encryption password. It asks you when you first setup chrome, but again by default it uses your Google Password for the Encrytion Key. Grandma will not type in a different password if it doesn't force her to, and if it does, most likely she'll forget it and have to wipe all of her settings and bookmarks when you have to Reinstall Chrome.
Ideally, the option to show passwords should not exist. If I have a problem with a Password I should just simply delete it and go though the site procedures to recover my password. Having an easy to read password store that's cloud accessible is asking for trouble.
I believe "google account auth + secondary encryption key" counts as two factors.
I'm specifically talking about 2 Step Verification. Two factor comes into play when it comes to storing your Chrome User data using the secondary encryption key, Which also isn't a bad thing to do.
Chrome stores everything in the cloud if you're logged into Google. That's what makes this even more dangerous than it's being reported.
If Chrome is signed into your Google account, and some malicious user gets hold of your Google username and password, then they can retrieve all of your stored passwords simply by installing chrome and logging in. That includes any password on your phone, other systems or otherwise.
This is why two step authentication, clearing out all stored password, and disabling password storing in sync settings are your friends.
The rich commit suicide by giving all of their time to some poor guy, Which causes the police force to chase the poor guy to the point where he and his girlfriend take the enitre system down and disrupt the status que...
Oops wrong movie, But then again, "Elysium" is "In Time" in space so just replace "Embedded watch in arm that kills you when time runs out" with "Space Station that keeps you alive forever" and the above still applies.
The main draw for me to my Surface Pro was the power. I was using a Lenovo S10e for most of my work tasks and while it worked ok, it didn't have enough power to do heavy lifting tasks like Virtual Machines or PC games well. As a subnotebook replacement, the Surface Pro is one of the best if not the best option out there. As a tablet, not so much.
That being said, my Nexus 7 is a much better tablet. If I want to browse the web or check email, the N7 is much better than the SP for that. For occasional tablet use the SP isn't bad but the SP's weight vs the N7 is very noticeable. Battery Life vs the SP is no contest either. The N7 destroys both Surface systems there, But I'm not going to be playing TF2 or running My DEV VM on my N7 anytime soon.
The biggest problem that Microsoft faces when it comes to the Surface is the RT models. They seriously need to revamp RT to be DEV Friendly or EOL it right now. If MS focused strictly on the Surface Pro's from the beginning instead of doing the typical Balmeresque halfassing strategy they've done with just about everything coming out of Redmond the last two years by trying to compete against IPad like just about every failed tablet manufacturer out there then maybe they wouldn't be sitting on a crap ton of money wasting in a warehouse.
The Pen is a Wacom Digitizer, and a very good one at that once the Wintab drivers were updated.
Now for the record, I don't draw, but I do own a Surface Pro and I've set up a Surface Pro for Photoshop. The owner had an older class Cintiq and I couldn't tell the difference but he said he could, but barely. He also said it may have been due to the smaller screen of the surface however (his Cintiq was the 17' model)
It was doomed the second they neutered Development on it to Metro apps only. If they allowed people to recompile desktop apps for RT, it may have been a different story.
The other aspect is price. It's WAY too expensive to get a system with RT. Even the discounted surface RT at 350 is no match for a low end laptop, let alone an Android tablet like the Nexuses.
Frankly, I have a Surface Pro. It is by far the best business oriented tablet out there. It's light. it does everything a laptop does, and it's fast. The RT tablet's aren't even close and the only reason I would even be interested in a surface RT tablet is when Microsoft Fire Sales them. Unfortunately, I think that the RT Junk is going to doom the entire Surface line including the Pro's.
The problem isn't lack of devs. Every windows developer is a potential RT developer.
The problem is that the platform is crippled. You can't recompile windows apps to RT and can only develop metro apps. If they just fixed this issue the surface would have more traction in the marketplace.
Although I believe that Microsoft did the right thing here, I did think that some of the DRM features were interesting, especially the pure digital trading portions.
What they should of done is make it opt in. If you want the ability to share digital games between opt in friends then you turn it on with the caveat that you must always be online. Don't or can't be online, then turn it off with the caveat of having to lug CD's around.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone else already pointed out, It's the Ads. If you have ad blocker the top site will be the correct one.
Many people do not differentiate between the ads and the real links, so they click on the first link that shows up, downloades it, and get hammered.
Right now, in the past 30 days, I've dealt with 6 Viruses like Sirifef, TDSS and various FBI Viruses. This week alone, I've cleaned 9 PC's that had Drive By Downloader Infections and I usually keep that pace every week. I'd say I've cleaned roughly 30+ this past 30 days. If that's not a sign where things are going I don't know what is.
It Gets worse.
Just about every popular Open Source program out there is Drive by Kidnapped. Just search for any Open source program on google and bing and see what I mean.
VLC media player, 7Zip and firefox seem to be the popular drive-by bait and switch downlaods I seen. There's even a chromium browser ripoff that impersonates google chrome, albeit with a square chrome logo instead of a round one.
Just about all download sites are garbage anymore. The only one I find that has no Adware garbage on it is nonags.com, but it's woefully out of date.
When I got to tell our customers "Don't Download Anything, Anywhere, Anytime" because I can't trust any download site Including the Windows 8 Store, There's an epidemic going on.
Until AV Programs start getting a pair and flag anything that installs as bundleware malicious, this will not stop, Although you'll never see it because Big Names like Google and Microsoft Both bundle their apps with software.
If its what I think they're going to do (reputation detaction Ala IE9) it won't help much. See my sig if you want to go more in depth as to why.
Besides, The biggest Threats are the following
1) Malicious Forked Open Source Software
2) Installers with Bundled Adware
for #1: look at VLC. there's so many malicious forks of this I can't even count them. Many times they're just Renames, but other times they have more adware and spyware Embeeded in them than I can count. Hell One I found Shows ads before you watch any video.
Another example is "Fast Browser" which is a chromium browser fork with spyware baked in. it looks exactly like chrome and the only difference I can tell is the Icon (which rips off the chrome Icon, only Square) and the name in the about box.
for #2. Lets do a search for VLC and highlight any download site that's not from videolan.org or sourceforge (although I should count sourceforge. they're doing this too now) (obfuscated to avoid clicking)
VLCapp,com ..and these are just the results from 1st page direct searches or ads from bing and google alone.
vlcmediaplayer,org
Softonic,com
4soft,org
softwareinstall,com
soft82,com
softdls,com
download-pc,com
download366,com
os-downloads,com
I can all but guarantee that downloading anything from the above sites will get you some Potentially unwanted program or virus. I just wish that someone would make an Adblock plus list like the malware domain list for fake downloading sites.
Now I know that it sounds like I'm Picking on VLC here, but it's just one of the more hijacked examples. You can do this with just about any popular Program. Firefox, Chrome, 7zip, Openoffice, Minecraft, even IE10 and Windows Media Player have software wrappers.
Hell. Even the Microsoft Store in WIndows 8 isn't safe. Do a search for VLC there and the first or second hit is a link to getdesktopapp,com which piles on the junkware. when you look at the app's Publisher. he's doing the same thing with peazip, 7zip UMPlayer and openoffice.
If Chrome does something about these software wrappers then were talking, otherwise it's nothing new from what they were doing before or what IE's been doing for years, and that hasn't stopped anything either.
Or better yet. Is it an Ad if you do a Search for Southwest Airlines.
It's definitely an Ad if the Southwest Airlines ad comes up for say a search for "Delta Airlines" or just "airlines" but as you said, if you're specifically searching for southwest airlines, it's not like you want to go to Delta's site. It's pretty obvious you want to go to southwest Airlines.
Yep.
Just Ask Zediva. They did the same thing with DVD's and got shot down.
Streaming Movie Service Zediva Pays Hollywood $1.8M, Shuts Down
Are They calling it Oakland Community Police?
Does RoboCop work for them?
It's just a newer more advanced Turbo Touch 360.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Touch_360
Probably sucks like one too.
As a Happy OG Surface Pro owner, I'm probably going to hold off for awhile, although the battery cover and dock have me intrigued...
As for the ARM Surface it needs to either get open or die. Allow devs to make desktop apps compatible with Windows RT, and allow Domain Joining and you might have a compelling Cheap ARM Tablet to Compete against iPad and Android. Right now thought, The RT tablet should be Branded "Microsoft Fail" and let the Surface name go to the serious Surface Tablet.
What they need to do is Fire Sale the Existing Surface Tablets. It would get Surfaces into the hands of consumers and developers as well as clear off the old stagnating inventory off their books.
It didn't do well for HP, primarily because it was blatantly obvious they wanted nothing to do with WebOS. Since MS has shown no signs of dropping RT It might succeed where HP and Sales Failed.
The Other problem is that Ti is even getting away from on calc programming. The Ti-nspire has very basic function programming, and to do higher level LUA scripts you need a computer.
They also need to quit focusing on the 83 for a bit and start focusing on the Ti-89. It has a powerful language out of the box and can do so much more than the 83's.
At least make a Color 89 with a higher resolution screen.
Dell and HP also sells systems with Win7 preinstalled and is not doing as well, but they have to be ordered as such. With Lenovo they always ship you Win8 media and the system has Win7 which is nice unless the customer really wanted Win8, then its a pain.
However, Lenovo quality has gone way south as of late, and this is coming from someone who has sworn by Lenovo since back in the IBM Days. Out of the 6 Lenovo systems we bought over the last 6 months, Two have already had motherboard replacements and the other four have had other issues ranging from WiFi Card Replacements to wierd random crashes for no reason to even one Windows update (KB2647753) causing all windows updates on most Lenovo systems to revert unless you install all of the other updates first.(something that doesn't happen on any other OEM I've had in here or with Straight Windows 7).
Didn't realize the movie came out this weekend and finally read the wiki article so yeah I'm wrong, but the theme is still there. BTW Spoilers, I guess.
Although "Matt Damon turning everyone into Elysium "citizens" and sending space pods to heal people" is a lot different plot that what I imagined, it's the same "everyone is now equal" plot that "In Time" did.
In fact it's actually closer to "In Time's "Justin Timberlake robs time banks and gives out time Robin Hood Style to the point that short timers are now crossing social lines" Plot Ending now that I think about it.
I'm going for Slashvertisement at this point.
Two Posts about a movie that basically In Time but in space is fishy to me.
I haven't seen this movie at all, But I can all but guarantee that the ending is going to be the Space station crashes onto earth and the rich survivors now have to live their lives just like everyone else.
Unless you like showing everyone how 1337 your Single Player gaming skills are, most likely you're going to have an Xbox Gold Account anyway.
As for the other things tied to Xbox live, if all you want to do is watch Netflix on your Xbox, your better off getting yourself a Google TV and sit on the $400 you saved by buying it, or even a Chromecast and use the $65 to buy some movies to stream.
yes a keylogger can collect this data, but that takes time and patience to wait for someone to type in those details. This makes it so easy, i could walk a 8 year old child through giving all of your passwords over the phone.
Hell. been playing with some other autofill settings and found that it does the same thing with credit card numbers if you store them in autofill. Passwords are one thing but If I can get your Expiry and CC info if you typed it in and saved it with chrome and I only need a few seconds of your PC time without any external programs or copying, that's a design flaw. Period.
When part of my job everyday is cleaning up some mess that some "MS Support Tech" Scammer did to some old lady's PC, and Now these guys just by glancing into Chrome or Firefox or IE to "check for extraneous viruses" can get passwords and Credit card details just by taking a screenshot, there's no justification.
If you log into Chrome it asks you to sync everything by default. Most people will choose the default. Passwords by default are checked.
Yes it asks if you want to save a password in the password list. You should answer no to this, but keep in mind that people will say yes not knowing the risks associated with the choice.
As for the encryption password. It asks you when you first setup chrome, but again by default it uses your Google Password for the Encrytion Key. Grandma will not type in a different password if it doesn't force her to, and if it does, most likely she'll forget it and have to wipe all of her settings and bookmarks when you have to Reinstall Chrome.
Ideally, the option to show passwords should not exist. If I have a problem with a Password I should just simply delete it and go though the site procedures to recover my password. Having an easy to read password store that's cloud accessible is asking for trouble.
I'm specifically talking about 2 Step Verification. Two factor comes into play when it comes to storing your Chrome User data using the secondary encryption key, Which also isn't a bad thing to do.
Chrome stores everything in the cloud if you're logged into Google. That's what makes this even more dangerous than it's being reported.
If Chrome is signed into your Google account, and some malicious user gets hold of your Google username and password, then they can retrieve all of your stored passwords simply by installing chrome and logging in. That includes any password on your phone, other systems or otherwise.
This is why two step authentication, clearing out all stored password, and disabling password storing in sync settings are your friends.
The rich commit suicide by giving all of their time to some poor guy, Which causes the police force to chase the poor guy to the point where he and his girlfriend take the enitre system down and disrupt the status que...
Oops wrong movie, But then again, "Elysium" is "In Time" in space so just replace "Embedded watch in arm that kills you when time runs out" with "Space Station that keeps you alive forever" and the above still applies.
The main draw for me to my Surface Pro was the power. I was using a Lenovo S10e for most of my work tasks and while it worked ok, it didn't have enough power to do heavy lifting tasks like Virtual Machines or PC games well. As a subnotebook replacement, the Surface Pro is one of the best if not the best option out there. As a tablet, not so much.
That being said, my Nexus 7 is a much better tablet. If I want to browse the web or check email, the N7 is much better than the SP for that. For occasional tablet use the SP isn't bad but the SP's weight vs the N7 is very noticeable. Battery Life vs the SP is no contest either. The N7 destroys both Surface systems there, But I'm not going to be playing TF2 or running My DEV VM on my N7 anytime soon.
The biggest problem that Microsoft faces when it comes to the Surface is the RT models. They seriously need to revamp RT to be DEV Friendly or EOL it right now. If MS focused strictly on the Surface Pro's from the beginning instead of doing the typical Balmeresque halfassing strategy they've done with just about everything coming out of Redmond the last two years by trying to compete against IPad like just about every failed tablet manufacturer out there then maybe they wouldn't be sitting on a crap ton of money wasting in a warehouse.
The Pen is a Wacom Digitizer, and a very good one at that once the Wintab drivers were updated.
Now for the record, I don't draw, but I do own a Surface Pro and I've set up a Surface Pro for Photoshop. The owner had an older class Cintiq and I couldn't tell the difference but he said he could, but barely. He also said it may have been due to the smaller screen of the surface however (his Cintiq was the 17' model)
It was doomed the second they neutered Development on it to Metro apps only. If they allowed people to recompile desktop apps for RT, it may have been a different story.
The other aspect is price. It's WAY too expensive to get a system with RT. Even the discounted surface RT at 350 is no match for a low end laptop, let alone an Android tablet like the Nexuses.
Frankly, I have a Surface Pro. It is by far the best business oriented tablet out there. It's light. it does everything a laptop does, and it's fast. The RT tablet's aren't even close and the only reason I would even be interested in a surface RT tablet is when Microsoft Fire Sales them. Unfortunately, I think that the RT Junk is going to doom the entire Surface line including the Pro's.
The problem isn't lack of devs. Every windows developer is a potential RT developer.
The problem is that the platform is crippled. You can't recompile windows apps to RT and can only develop metro apps. If they just fixed this issue the surface would have more traction in the marketplace.
While were on the subject of Nothing new...
Man accused of selling golf ball finders as bomb detectors
Kenya Police: Our fake bomb detectors are real
Still not as bad as the .NET Firefox Plugin dupes But it's only got three more to go.
Although I believe that Microsoft did the right thing here, I did think that some of the DRM features were interesting, especially the pure digital trading portions.
What they should of done is make it opt in. If you want the ability to share digital games between opt in friends then you turn it on with the caveat that you must always be online. Don't or can't be online, then turn it off with the caveat of having to lug CD's around.