Oh You JUST Gotta Love Microsoft!

[Atrocities]

While doing a routeen Pest check, www.pestpatrol detected two interesting new pest, one was a Torjan, the other was BHO. Now I had just ran a nortan scan and neither of these were detected.

Given all the email virus I have been recieving as of later (26 today alone) I figured it was a good idea to run both checks on a daily basis.

The Trojan was Trojan.Win32.FTP Attack (A Clot Trojan) How it got onto my system is anyones guess.

The other was a BHO. Read this:

Browser Helper Object: (BHO). A component that Internet Explorer will load whenever it starts, shares IE's memory context, can perform any action on the available windows and modules. A BHO can detect events, create windows to display additional information on a viewed page, monitor Messages and actions. Microsoft calls it "a spy we send to infiltrate the browser's land." BHOs are not stopped by personal firewalls, because they are seen by the firewall as your browser itself. Some exploits of this technology search all pages you view in IE and replace banner advertisements with other ads. Some monitor and report on your actions. Some change your home page.

This is a Micrsoft product. Go figure.

If you do not have pest patrol, I recommend it. www.pestpatrol.com

[solops]

Yeah, I ran into the MS BHO thing a month or so back. Norton and Zone Alarm Pro never see it. I used SpySweeper to run it down.

[Arkcon]

That's nothing. Ad-Aware found a BHO called Alexa ... on my system after I had just reformatted and reinstalled XP. Sheesh. I never use IE, but still, what is this doing here at first install. If anyone ever wants to know why I gripe about M$ it's this: They work for advertisers, not for me.

[ March 19, 2004, 03:42: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Slynky]

"Oh You JUST Gotta Love Microsoft!"

Uhhhh, not really...

[PvK]

Where do advertizers want to go today?

[Baron Munchausen]

Interesting... does it work with any browser? Or just IE? Is it a Win XP thing or is it in all Versions? I switched to Mozilla several months ago and I've always been very aware of what my connection is doing when Online. I dont think I've seen any suspicious activity.

[PvK]

Depends on the programmers of the browser. Hopefully it's just IE. Personally, I like my browsers to just be browsers, and not try to also be my computer's operating system, or something that allows remote computers to run programs on my computer without my explicit knowledge, etc.

PvK

[Atrocities]

I use Netscape. I love it.