Heads up on malicious website coding

[South Munjoy]

This morning, I spent nearly an hour and a half removing 'XP Anti Spyware 2009' as well as a trojan loader called brastk.exe from my system after I checked a website for lyrics, and the site in question performed a stealth/driveby install on my system.  Sad to say, this was not through any security issues with IE, as I have purposely avoided using IE for this reason, I was using Opera instead. --Sadly, the days of malware affecting just the IE  browser are now over.

If you utilise programs such as Spybot S&D, Ad Aware, etc,etc, I strongly encourage you to get the latest version of your malware removal programs, or at least perform an update on it's malware definitions.

Luckily I knew what was happening as soon as my computer shut down all apps and started to reboot, and I took precautions.

[missywolf]

This has happened to me before on my last computer (Windows XP). Different file name, same concept. I'm glad you knew what it was. Some people may not, and may think its a real genuine program. I was able to remove the program, but that computer is messed up now (hardware related, not from virus), so I got a Mac. 

Thanks for warning others about this.

[Arbutus]

That's happened to me as well in the past-- I opened up a keygen that turned out to have a trojan in it, and for the next few days I was getting tooltips EVERY FIVE SECONDS warning me that my computer was infected with spyware. Fortunately, I found a little program called ComboFix.exe (google it) which can be a bit dangerous, but which scours your system and kills every little bit of whatever viruses you may have.

Good advice, South Munjoy. I'd add that if an unfamiliar computer program or Web site ever tries to tell you that you have spyware or a virus or something, don't believe it. There's no way a website can even determine that about your computer in the first place. It's just a clever way to frighten you into installing unfamiliar software on your computer, which is never a good idea.

[Weisseman]

This seems similair the "Vista Antivirus 2009".

Wiki security helped my friend get rid of it (The page I linked him too).

[sniffswind]

I've been on default maintenence mode for these things since we first got an XP based machine.  when we started surfing, it was only VIRUSES you had to worry about, and they're getting rare.

I have at least three spyware removal programs on this computer along with an antivirus (so they catch what each other misses).  however, most of the features are locked up tighter than fort Knox on September 11th.  these 'pay for everything but basic features" companies are getting annoying.

a minor tip, cookies are now the main scource of infection.  with our previous machine, they would slow it down to a crawl, and I'd have to run a sweep every couple days.  my mother shares, and browsed clipart for craft ideas for a long time.  this brought in every possible piece of spyware you can imagine.