Spyware ID theft ring

[unixronin]

eWeek reports discovery of a massive ID theft ring powered by CoolWebSearch.  Yeah, only Windows is vulnerable -- anyone surprised?  ....No?  Didn't think so.  Why people put up with this shit is beyond me, let alone why people who surely KNOW how dangerous it is running around out there with an insecure OS will still just click on this shit and install it with no idea what it's actually doing and in the knowledge that they have no way to find out.  Sometimes I wish one of these crooks would come along and clean out forty million people's bank accounts, just because I can't help but think it'll take something on that scale to get people's attention.

Trend Micro has a free online scanner that will detect and remove CoolWebSearch.  Then again, anyone stupid enough to install a piece of untrusted code like that in this day and age probably isn't reading, or paying any attention to, this anyway.

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Footnote:  I don't particularly wish Microsoft would crash and burn.  I don't particularly wish Windows would dry up and blow away in the wind.  Not only are Unix and the Mac not for everyone, but a monoculture of ANYTHING is a bad.  I just wish Microsoft would start taking security seriously and actually make a real effort to make Windows secure.  I've heard some intimations Longhorn Vista may finally make some progress in that direction, provided that doesn't get dropped before release as well.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

"I *do* wish Windows as we know it would dry up and blow away in the wind."

Oh, I didn't say Windows doesn't need to CHANGE. Windows "as we know it" is an insecure crock built on top of multiple layers of half-forgotten legacy cruft that, in many cases, MS's own developers don't fully understand any more.

That's a different thing than saying that Windows, as a low-learning-curve OS-for-the-masses, needs to go away. It's possible to fix it. Whether Microsoft CAN fix it, or cares about doing so, is another question.

"But, no, actually, you know what would work? If IE and Lookout and Office dried up and blew away and got replaced by Firefox and Thunderbird and OpenOffice, with Postfix and LAMP on the back end, Windows wouldn't be half bad... provided no one EVER tried to use ActiveX in a browser EVER again... oh, and we cut the base price of the home OS back to $49 and eliminate DRM entirely."

Hey, I could go along with that....

"*ahem* Seriously. Microsoft will never completely fix the design flaws in their systems. Otherwise their sales of new versions would go totally flat, and so would those of the A/V and commercial anti-spam companies. Which would be bad for the shareholders, dontcha know."

And that's the sad part. They will continue to publish a product that puts everyone else's financial future at risk, so long as doing so ensures their own.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Which is about half the reason I hope they dry up and blow away. Their less than ethical business practices is the other.