LOL virus fail.

[acstech]

So I'm looking up a GMC Twin-6 V12 engine picture that I was going to post in the snowblower thread.

I do a image search in google. Looking through the pictures, I click on one. I'm redirected to a site with a nice little glowing green circle and the text:

"Commencing Scan Procedure..."

Then the browser window is shrunk as far as possible, and a pop-up comes up with the following text:

"The page at http: //www1.setupclean-softpc.in says:

Alert! Your system is exposed to risk of virus attack.

It is highly recommended to check your PC immediately. Press 'OK' to start the scan right now."

It also tries to open an exe file. I didn't take notes on that one. Yeah... that ain't gonna work.

Now what this hapless little piece of malware didn't realize was that I was running Linux. So I yawn, move the pointer up to the system monitor, open it, find the firefox process, and kill it. Then I restart firefox. It asks if I want to open my previous tabs or start a new session. I think I'll start a new session. Problem solved.

Virus fail.

If I had been running Windows, I'd most likely be screwed right now.

I just thought I'd share this little piece of comedy with everyone.

Edit: I added a space to the URL in the quoted section above to keep anyone from clicking it.

[seanc]

Re: LOL virus fail.

Lucky you!

I end up having to clean these damn things off of PCs for customers. So tedious. Bleh.

[acstech]

Re: LOL virus fail.

You're not the only one! I clean 'em up all the time. It's just kind of funny for me to see it from the other side and be rid of it with a few clicks.

[etnietering]

Re: LOL virus fail.

Haha I love it when I'm browsing in Linux and I get some stupid pop up that's somehow made so that the window decorations are just like windows. And then it says it needs to scan the C drive. Yeah, ok, whatever, you can scan the C drive right when you FIND the C drive

[Topcat]

Re: LOL virus fail.

Lucky you!

I end up having to clean these damn things off of PCs for customers. So tedious. Bleh.

I refuse to do that. I'm so glad I only do component level repairs anymore. On the rare occasion I fix a PC for a local friend or something, I tell them right from the start to back up their files because if its infested with viral spoo jam, I'm not cleaning it, I'm reloading it. I have better things to do with my time than get billy bob's porn site crap cleaned off just to have it come back 3 days later with teh same shit.....because billybob took it home and the first thing he did was go back to the site that gave it to him in the first place.

If I'm warez hunting, I use my Mac or a system I have here with Fedora on it.

[Toasty]

Re: LOL virus fail.

Suggestion to report that to Google.

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/

[stj]

Re: LOL virus fail.

it's not porn sites, but american news sites that i see a lot of underhanded stuff embedded in!

[Topcat]

Re: LOL virus fail.

it's not porn sites, but american news sites that i see a lot of underhanded stuff embedded in!

Porn and warez sites are very prone to that kind of stuff. American news sites? That's a new one. Lets see something to back that up.

[etnietering]

Re: LOL virus fail.

I remember hearing about that. It was the New York Times. Here's a Wired article about them fixing it: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/200...-malware-scam/

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: LOL virus fail.

Topcat I do the exact same thing you do. Most computers I get in are for virus/spyware/adware/whatever it's called. The vast majority of them are those fake antivirus things. I tell the client to write down a list of all important file locations (i.e. "back up the pictures on my desktop", etc.) I back those up along with the full contents of all the user folders on the machine and then it's time for a reinstall on a now freshly wiped drive.

To hell with spending hours trying to rid the machine of whatever it's infected with.

It's sorta my standard service procedure, rarely do I get to do cool stuff like actual hardware work. Clients come to me with an infected machine, I give them a flat rate of $40 for a fresh install. $40 is really low for the amount of work involved BUT, I have NO overhead whatsoever (high school kid, living with parents. I have the clients drop off the machine at my house). $40 for ~2 hours of work where I can sit at my desk and do whatever the hell I want during the Windows install sounds pretty reasonable to me, and people around here aren't made of money. For $40, they can't say no, and not only that but they refer me to new clients because I do it cheap. Ever since I started charging so low three months ago, I've acquired four new clients. It's a nice source of pocket change.

[NxB]

Re: LOL virus fail.

My firewall catches these, in windows.

[kaniki]

Re: LOL virus fail.

It's sorta my standard service procedure, rarely do I get to do cool stuff like actual hardware work. Clients come to me with an infected machine, I give them a flat rate of $40 for a fresh install. $40 is really low for the amount of work involved BUT,...

I guess that would have to depend on what you do. If it is just a simple restore from a restore partition (HP, Compaq, etc) or a restore from a CD, then a lot of those dont take more then a half hour.. But if you take the extra time for the extras (flash, shockwave, java, updates, etc) then it is worth it..

as for the cool stuff remark.. that is not always cool.. depending on the system.. I have had some in that were so sticky and dirty that i did not want to even touch it. times like that the software end is a blessing.

Haha I love it when I'm browsing in Linux and I get some stupid pop up that's somehow made so that the window decorations are just like windows. And then it says it needs to scan the C drive. Yeah, ok, whatever, you can scan the C drive right when you FIND the C drive

Of course they are not worried about the linux users.. People who use linux usually are computer savy so they are not stupid enough to fall for something like that, so it is not worth their time to make it linux compatible.

[Junk Parts]

Re: LOL virus fail.

There used to be one out there that would lure you into a free virus scan. The only cure I found for this one was to crash my PC so the scum bag site couldn't install its bullshit package of adware. If the site did get you their popup would always be telling you that you were infected and needed to buy their adware progie to fix it. The only cure if they got you was a clean install of windows. I don't know the details but I think the Feds went after these people and put them under. I have not run into this crap site in maybe a year. I'd like to meet the Asshole who started that site because I have a nice little league aluminium bat that already has some blood on it. A little more wouldn't hurt it one bit!

[seanc]

Re: LOL virus fail.

Unfortunately for me, I work in IT, rather than hardware repair.

If a customer is happy to pay the 2-3 hour fee to have it cleaned up, that's fine. It's actually sometimes easier to clean it up, because explaining to the customer that we can't reload Office or some other program because they can't supply their license key is frustrating.

On the other hand, I can have a fresh install of XP Pro with Firefox, Java, Flash, Foxit PDF Reader, IE 7 up and running in 15 minutes (my image is about a year old). Windows Deployment Services is a godsend - that was one of the most useful day to day tools I've implemented.

[Wizard]

Re: LOL virus fail.

I see this few times and had to clean their explosion aftermath. And happened to me few time as well but what I did is kill the FF via taskmanager when it pops up instead of clicking anywhere in the FF itself.

Cheers, Wizard

[kaniki]

Re: LOL virus fail.

On the rare occasion I fix a PC for a local friend or something, I tell them right from the start to back up their files because if its infested with viral spoo jam, I'm not cleaning it, I'm reloading it. I have better things to do with my time than get billy bob's porn site crap cleaned off just to have it come back 3 days later with teh same shit.....because billybob took it home and the first thing he did was go back to the site that gave it to him in the first place.

I know that feeling all too well.. My friend had a girl friend with a son and he downloads off of these peer to peer programs. not to mention the porn sites. when he goes on them and something does not do what he wants it too because the antivirus goes off, he just turns the antivirus off. Yea, that fixes everything.. I will reinstall it for them but tell them that all i will do is reinstall it. I will not mess around with the viruses because it is not worth my time, especially knowing that he is going to do the same stupid thing again.. and the worst part. his mom sticks up for him.

[acstech]

Re: LOL virus fail.

What's even better is kids that trip over the power cord on laptops. You've got to take the thing completely apart to solder the jack back down, or get a new jack and solder that down, depending on the amount of damage done.

Then it comes back again in 2 weeks after they break it again. Then you don't get anything for it because it's relatives and you're expected to do it for free.

Kids and computers don't mix.

[NxB]

Re: LOL virus fail.

Usually malwarebytes takes care of most stuff. You just wait while it scans. The real annoyance comes from stuff like virut which infects every executable with its code. Now that was a virus which was hard to clean.

[kaniki]

Re: LOL virus fail.

What's even better is kids that trip over the power cord on laptops. You've got to take the thing completely apart to solder the jack back down, or get a new jack and solder that down, depending on the amount of damage done.

Then it comes back again in 2 weeks after they break it again. Then you don't get anything for it because it's relatives and you're expected to do it for free.

I had one like that in here not too long ago. I refused to fix it. My friend knows someone that wanted a laptop. He found one cheap but the PCMCIA slot did not work, it had a small hard drive, 550MHz processor and working USB. He had the PC for a short time and then decided it was not fast enough. After being told, well cant do anything about that, he decided to use it the way it was. then after a short time it ran low in disk space because of the small drive so put a bigger one in and reinstalled. He then decided he wanted to hook it up to the net so got a USB network card. That worked fine until he decided he wanted to go wireless. He went out and bought a linksys wireless card that required at least soemthing like a 500 MHz processor then complained that the PC was running slow. Got him a wireless card that was not so hard on the system and then he lent it to his friend. Next thing i know its coming back with busted USB ports. About this time and since i was doing a friend a favor so charged next to nothing for all the work up till now, I declined to touch it again.. that guy just got annoying.. Now that is a person that you dont want coming back!!

[gdement]

Re: LOL virus fail.

Now what this hapless little piece of malware didn't realize was that I was running Linux. So I yawn, move the pointer up to the system monitor, open it, find the firefox process, and kill it. Then I restart firefox. It asks if I want to open my previous tabs or start a new session. I think I'll start a new session. Problem solved.

Virus fail.

If I had been running Windows, I'd most likely be screwed right now.

I don't see how that's any different than Windows. I kill stuff in the task manager all the time.
What annoys me is that Firefox doesn't provide a clear way to close those popups without using the popup's own interface. We shouldn't have to kill Firefox to get away from something like that.