(20+ years malware-free on my personal computers, speaking here.)
I am so very tired of this kind of thing,
“As a user who has fallen prey to this new rogue / virus, while surfing the net using IE9, let me share my personal experience with you.”
So very many stupidities in one brief sentence; where to begin? I’ll start with the least offensive element: “rogue / virus”. No, dumbass, “rogue/virus”. *sheesh*
Now, the next least offensive: “surfing the net using IE9”. Why do such a thing? It’s still in beta and… it’s still Internet ExPloder. Lame; truly lame. As much as the thing is touted as having been improved, features added, etc., it’s still far behind modern browsers in features and compatibility with standards.
But the really offensive statement is, “As a user who has fallen prey to this new rogue / virus [sic]…”
1. “[F]allen prey” indicates the attack was waiting in ambush for an innocent passerby. Not so, as I will explain in a moment.
2. “[N]ew rogue / virus [sic]”. No it’s not. It’s the rogue Antivirus 2010, which is almost exactly the same as the rogue Antivirus 2009 and the… etc. “New” it is not. It’s so old, it’s almost reached puberty. *heh* And it always achieves its infestation of a user’s computer by direct action by that user. Sure, it’s “laying in wait” to lure a stupid, lazy* user into installing it, but if one simply doesn’t install it, one will not be infected.
And, BTW, while I’ve seen the invitations to infect myself while surfing, it’s only while surfing with Internet Exploder or Firefox that I’ve seen these popups. Of course, the really stupid folks who infect themselves do so by clicking on static ads that lead to a direct download and install of one of the variants of this crap.
And the comment, “Not sure of which site infected me… ” once again says the author doesn’t recognize or accept responsibility for infecting himself–typical of most users infected with malware. Here’s a brief video that demonstrates the typical steps someone has to take to infect themselves with this pest:
No, it’s not “As a user who has fallen prey” but “As a user who has stupidly infected himself.”
Oh, the really funny thing about the article I find offensive overall? “…Antivirus 2010 labeled Alureon.h, though recognized by current security software like Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes, can remove the virus, but the after effects of the removal will disable users from using IE9.”
Bud, that’s not a negative. It’s a benefit.
Word of advice: If you ever do infect yourself with some malware, the FIRST step to recovery and prevention of future infections is to admit your own culpability. This guy’s just going to keep on infecting himself and refusing to accept responsibility, I’d bet.
*stupid and lazy? Yes. While one could say “naive” in this day and time a naive computer user running loose with an internet connection and installing apps willy-nilly is definitely the result of their own (or in the case of a child user, an irresponsible adult’s) stupidity and laziness. Period. No exceptions.
Update: catch the whiny, crybaby tantrum (replete with continued denial of responsibility for infecting himself) posted by the author of the screed I deplore in my lil rant. Sounds a bit angry doesn’t he? But… over at a Shoutbox forum (scroll down to the actual post), he records his reaction to my lil post differently:
“I was shown this article today in response to the article I wrote about IE9 and the Antivirus 2010 virus. I almost spit my drink all over my computer, laughing, when I read it…”
Quite the contrast to his crybaby tantrum here, isn’t it? Methinks the dude can’t even lie well.
BTW, just for posterity’s sake (because you can never trust liars not to “pull a Charlz Green”), here’s a screencap of the guy saying my post was funny, not “inducing frothing at the mouth anger” as his comment here indicates:
[I’m tempted to deconstruct the crybaby tantrum below, but literate readers here can note the poor grammar, punctuation, lack of reasoning, and outright disingenuity, if not outright mendacity, as well as the inability of this guy who thinks of himself as a tech writer on Windows issues to even configure a spell checker for his browser of choice. –ed Oh, and yes, I know “disingenuity” is sadly falling into disuse against the less harmonious “disingenuousness”.]
Mighty ignorant aeticle you have written. Next time you decide to criticize an article I wrote, educate yourself some. Your little I needed something to complain about write up is full of ignorance. Yes I was infected, and nowheres did I blame anyone for me getting infected. Yes I was infected from a website, btw, was quite similar to yours. Instead of complaining because you have nothign to write about, get out in the world, get your own content to write about and quit trolling. Apparently you found the site more interesting than your own to keep up with what’s going on. The majority of users do not pay attention to what they are doing when they surf the web, and at the time I wasn’t. It was written so that the majority of users who are using or plan on using IE9 will make sure to protect themselves. Saying don’t use IE9, it’s Beta, blah blah, that’s a completely ignorant comment. But looking through your website, your an angry childish person as is apparent by all the content you write about. It’s time to grow up, seriously. And, btw, you will probably remove this comment, as is usual for ignorant people, but remember, the audience I write to is quite larger than your little website and I’ve made a copy of this article to make sure that people know just how ignorant people such as yourself are.
@Lee Whittington, You need to read the comments policy for my blog. Dumbass.
Sad but true: the stupid article you wrote was to a wider audience than I now have. Sadder still, you refuse to admit that YOU INFECTED YOURSELF by simply being stupid, not practicing simple, safe computing and installing a piece of malware yourself. You weren’t the victim of a drive-by install, as the rogue malware you cited has yet to be seen as a drive-by exploit in the wild, and if you weren’t a whiny crybaby, you’d admit as much, learn your sad lesson and be more careful in the future. But no, your comment here shows that you cannot accept responsibility for your own actions. “Yes I was infected [passive voice–no action on your part, no sir–liar] from a website, btw, was quite similar to yours.”–How “similar”? Oh, you don’t know and won’t say, unless you are ready to admit you’re a liar, since you said in your original article that you did not know where you picked up your malware infection. Gee, you can’t even make a lying false accusation well!
Oh, and learn English if you’re going to write in it. “[Yo]ur an angry childish person” indicates both an ignorance of English and a basic lack of ability to reason. Have someone–probably not in your circle of subliterate friends–explain that to you using very short words, speaking v e r y s l o w l y. I’ll not deconstruct the rest of your usage and grammatical errors, but be assured, they were the only painful thing about reading your little tantrum here. Your article was as bad, but that’s between you, your conscience and whatever “editors” the site you wrote for might have.
Subliterate dumbass.
I certainly hope you received no remuneration for writing that article. If so, you are also guilty of theft, IMO, on top of your crimes against the English language, ethics and moral responsibility.
I stand by my analysis of your whiny lack of ability to take responsibility for infecting yourself with the rogue Antivirus 2010. And I stand by my prediction that unless you learn to accept responsibility for your unsafe computing practices you’ll continue to infect yourself… and continue to refuse to accept responsibility for your actions after doing so.
Asshole. Whiny crybaby. Someone needs to give you a computer with training wheels, or commit you to an Assisted Computing Facility for your own good. (Here, dearie; let me make that mouse click for you… “)
“Now, go away or I shall taunt you a second-a time-a.”
Note: I did take Lee’s injunction to educate myself. Would that he’d follow that one piece of his advice that might be useful to him. I checked. Nope, there’s been no significant change in Aleureon.h (the component he misidentified as identical with Antivirus 2010) since July/August. Nor has the infection vector changed in any significant way with Antivirus 2010. Not new. (Thanks for spurring me to verify that your misinformation on that matter is as profound as I thought, Lee.) And, of course, “The latest variant of the rogue Antivirus 2010 (Alureon.h)… ” misses the mark entirely, as Alureon.h is a rootkit installed along with Antivirus 2010, when a dumb user practicing unsafe computing clicks through several warnings Win7 or Vista throw up.
BTW, I suspect the UAC prompts are one reason that VISTA and Win7 computers are the least infected by Alureon.h groups, which would likely also make them the least infected by its close associate, Antivirus 2010. XP computersaccount for about 78% of computers infected by the rootkit (which is mostly installed with an Antivirus 2010 user-infection), and only a grand total of 7.3% of computers using Vista and Win7 combined are infected. Makes sense, since only the very stupid would click through multiple UAC warnings not to download or install Antivirus 2010. Heck, I’ll even give the dreadful Internet Exploder props for balking at downloading the thing without user intervention.
I’ve never even seen the option to download this thing. Never even heard of ’til now.
Mel, it’s not–yet–offered in a Mac version. *heh* Personally, I think that’s a mistake on the part of the scum who are pushing it, because I know very few Mac users (not including yourself) who wouldn’t be gullible enough to infect themselves… IF they ever thought there were a possibility (there is) they could be infected with malware.
But really, Mel, I see no reason for Mac users to be concerned about malware of this or any other nature as long as they’re afflicted, IMO, with the most consuming malware on the planet: the straitjacket GUI that is Mac OSX pasted on top of BSD. *heh* BTW, catch the loon who wrote the article whining and throwing a baby-tantrum about my little blogpost… while still not admitting HE INFECTED HIMSELF.
Did someone put a gun to his head to click forward?? What a whiner…
Yeh, LCAS, apparently someone forced this whiner to infect himself… But sadly, that’s a big part of the problem with lots of computer users nowadays: no personal responsibility. “Back in the day” (when using computers required actual thought–heck even the DOS command line required being able to think logically, hierarchically) people knew when they’d done something stupid and infected themselves, almost always with a corrupted boot disk or a copied (bootlegged) game or some such and couldn’t hide it from themselves or others. “Stoned”–perhaps the original virus–had a lot of variants and cousins (and I cleaned Stoned from computers as late as 2001), but an infection from it was always, as with this loon, the result of user intervention. No real changes, nowadays, except in computer users.
I think the huge growth in computer use has allowed the truly stupid user to be as commonplace as the truly stupid college freshman is nowadays. Unfortunately, the poor babies are also likely to have grown up with no sense of either personal responsibility OR the idea that their own actions have consequences.
Anyone who still uses IE in any form has no business writing tech articles. And anyone who can’t (at bare minimum) reread their screedy comments for spelling/grammar errors before hitting “Submit” should refrain from doing so. It hurts my eyes.
Heck, Nicole, anyone who can’t configure a spell checker for their browser (as this guy, from his comment here, so obviously has not) has no business writing an article on computer use. And, if you read his article, you’d see he has absolutely NO useful counsel on how to avoid infecting oneself with this pest. Now, what kind of cautionary tale is that? How completely, most unuseful is that?
BTW, I have seen the popups that lead to this pest’s installation, but only on those rare occasions when I had to use IE *shudder* for some particular purpose (usually to check a client’s issues). Funny, that…
Who clicks on popups nowadays? And who doesn’t have a popup blocker installed?
Who? People who shouldn’t write advisory tech articles, that’s who.
And who, Nicole, (apparently) doesn’t have properly-configured firewalls (yes, plural) nowadays? To quote a respected source, “People who shouldn’t write advisory tech articles, that’s who.”
*heh*
yeah i see the tantrum.
you know, I do own a PC also, with windows vista.
Just letting you know that so that you understand that although I do prefer my mac, I do use the PC on occasion, too.
Mel, I’d prefer an old PC on DOS to a Vista computer. Seriously. I had fewer problems being productive on my old DOS boxes than many, many folks I helped tame Vistacrap issues.