Beware the ad-punting crapware-laden Firefox, warn infosec bods Internet users looking for a US Green Card are at risk of being conned by a fake advert into installing an adware-laden version of Firefox, security researchers have warned. The ruse was spotted over the weekend after it began appearing in online ads peddling supposed US Green Card lotteries. Regardless of what make or version …
They are obvious targets as they are less likely to understand the language in which the scam is pitched (I am assuming that this is done in English), less likely to be computer literate, and less likely to call attention to themselves by asking for help from any official entity within the US. This is a formula for a higher percentage of successful victimization in something that is a numbers game. Too, I would not expect the victims in these cases to be the ultimate targets, but to provide computing power and platforms from which to launch other attacks.
...were going to bork their systems one way or another anyhow.
People who bring me their trashed laptops never have ONE thing they did wrong. It's always about 15-20 things they absolutely should never been stupid enough to have downloaded and installed. They install stuff that is so stupid, you would have to suspend reality to possibly believe its a good idea. Like installing 5 or 6 "coupon toolbars" for Internet Explorer. Or multiple Chinese illegal movie download programs.
These folks often have multiple P2P programs actively using up all their bandwidth, and have no idea how they got there or what their purpose is. They say things like - "well, I have Windows Defender - how could I have possibly gotten spyware on my system?"
And of course, the worst are the Macbook owners. They have no idea how to run a system, and just click "OK" to anything that pops up on their screen for years until the system is completely trashed. The good thing about them is that rather than bother to fix it, they just gleefully run out and plop down another $2,000 dollars for a new one.
The latest?
Would a version number like 6.1.298a be any better to give a people clue? We like it or not, them things will be updated continuously if we are to be kept (relatively) safe(ish).
The fact that the Firefox version number changes every three weeks doesn't mean anything to anybody.
Newsflash: 99% of people aren't diehard nerds like you. They barely know what browser they're using, never mind what version it is... People still use IE6 FFS.
At some point you have to ask: what is a version number for, exactly?
I can only come up with one good purpose, and that's for support queries. Since most of those are of the form "what the hell did you do with Control X?", that particular issue would pretty much vanish if they'd just stop arsing about with the interface six freaking times a year.
Honest to god, the internet isn't changing that quickly.
If they're going to update the version number on a fixed and fairly short cycle, they could do something meaningful like 2013-January, 2013-March, 2013 May, etc. If users are going to pay attention, they're more likely to pay attention to a date that they know, rather than a version number that they don't.
Re: Yahoo! toolbars!, McAfee scanners, Adobe Flash and the like
We have grotesquely invasive stuff on our machines from the people we are supposed to trust. You can't do much without eventually being coerced into signing up for things, downloading and installing things, etc.
To some extent, just as history is always written by the winners, malware is defined by the people who took illegitimate control first.
In this as in so many other things, we have let it go so far that 80% us don't even know where it belongs.
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