I was visiting a blog and there was a comment and a link there. The link went to the following (remove the spaces in the URL):
http : // xpantivirus.com/ 2008/2/_freescan.php?aid=880187
It promptly said that my machine (a Fedora 8 machine) was infected with some virus, resized my browser and then “started” a scan of my machine. It was funny to see that it was scanning file after file (a lot of *.dlls, *.exe etc) and at the end of it, said that it processed 1100 files, of which 10 were infected. Immediately it prompted me to download some anti virus program etc. My systems are immune. I am sure that there are a whole lot of innocent windoze lusers who have fallen for this. And thanks to the wonderful software engineering from Redmond, we have wide swaths of people unwittingly brought down a computing experience that is highly unsavoury. Sigh.
Same Problem
I’ve seen this problem on some blogs too, mostly my own! Foreign fools keep thinking that either I am stupid enough to open these links without checking the URL. Or even stupider, they actually think my blog gets any readers besides the odd person roaming through blogger blogs, who would actually fall for it!
The next phase
Haha, these error messages have gotten smarter since the days of the pop-up dialogue that says “your system is unprotected!” with OK and CANCEL buttons fooling the user into clicking on the ad regardless.
Unfortunately, what hasn’t changed is the typical Windows user’s naivety, which is why this form of spreading malware continues to thrive. 🙁
– victoria ho