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Shock & Horror! About.Blank gets through XP SP2 Firewall!

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MeGustaXL

Technical User
Aug 6, 2003
1,055
GB
Last night I was connected using Firefox, running under XP SP2, with the firewall done up tighter than a fish's orifice.

Decided to do an update, so I selected the Windows Update option under the XP Security manager.

Up popped a slightly out-of focus error page from saying that it couldn't install any updates unless I allowed Active X Controls to run on my computer. The word "computer" appeared to be a link; blue text, underlined. So I clicked it!

I know, I know, I KNOW! [blush]

Up came the dreaded search page of our old pal About.Blank [curse]

Disconnect, disable System Restore, run HJT and there were the familiar symptoms:

Files called ffxzt.dll/dat/exe all over C:\Windows\System and \System32.
Home Page changed to "about.blank"

Got rid of those, then ran About:Buster (Thrice!) and it removed 7 more random entries, as well as clearing out the HSE, SE and SV keys.

Logged back on - all clear, no harm done - WHEW!!

When, Oh When is someone going to grass up the author of About.Blank, so we can go round his/her house and have a profound "talk" with them about their actions?

TBL: Get a pencil and some paper, and write this down 50 times:

Never, Ever click on a link in a blurry-looking page, especially if that page is a pop-up.


Chris

Varium et mutabile semper Excel
 
Have you reported them to the authors of Spybot S&D / Ad-Aware to get detection added into the next set of signatures?

John
 
Hi John,

Nope, don't know how [blush] E-mail?

Chris

Varium et mutabile semper Excel
 
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