Google,Hacked?

is it possible that google got hacked?

Conduit Toolbar - Another Scam?

Ok,this time,we have a company that claims to workout a customizable toolbar for you,all for free!! But the fact is,this company infact hasn't been maintaining a good profile.The company,formerly known as "Effectivebrand" (now "Conduit") had been working on toolbar extensions for IE and Firefox which can be customized by us.But the fact is,this company was removed from Mozilla's Add-ons site since thier toolbar fetched javascript from a remote server.Moreover,their License agreement statements unfortunately did not reflect what their toolbar really does.whats more is that they even modified their statements after this incident.Rob Marshall (Robert Daniel Marshall) has written some beautiful articles on this toolbar,the company.He has also written beautiful write-ups on the company's tactics on changing their name to "Conduit" from "Effectivebrand".They also had supposedly claimed to give away 5000$(Now,they've modified it) if someone one proved that their toolbar contained Spyware.This too,was removed from their page.

Is it Spyware?

Well,according to Some,it was.The behaviour of the toolbar was Considered as Spyware by Some users here as well as here ( Michael Schwartz's comment).

The Company has also been cited as "Not trust-worthy" from the Bug-Zilla Site,here.

The company,though had made it to the top of the rankings in Mozilla'a Addons site,It certainly has got plenty of oppositions here,here and here.

Listing out ALL the users unhappy with this toolbar is beyond the scope of ths post.You may see this forum thread to know more about them,as well as to get an idea on the whole story.You may also read a few threads from here and here.

A BIG "Thank You" goes out to all the persons (Especially Rob) who were involved in the elimination of this Tool bar,(which has also been quoted as "Garbage Bar" , "Junk" (The very first post,by Meatus))
though the Tool Bar has now manifested in a new form,under a new Name(Conduit),it still hasn't satisfied Some users completely.

The funny part of the story is there is another site from them which displays the number of users around the globe using their Toolbar.Surprisingly,just like they have mentioned it in their site,there is a new user every for every 2 seconds,that too from different parts of the globe.I suspect that it could be more of an animation than just plain statistics,as the animation plays for a few seconds even after you plug-off your internet connection!

The best advice for now,is to stay away from unknown Apps.,unless otherwise they're from reputed companies like Google,Yahoo and the like.

Webfetti - a Scam site?

Webfetti, a new site that claims to provide free graphics,3d generators etc,by asking you to install their toolbar....well..the free giveaway of graphics stuff seems nice,however...the toolbar here poses a problem.The toolbar is suspected to contain some adware and also poses a risk to your computer's security.Watch Avira in action.


So,Next time,Dont trust neatly designed sites nor toolbars.The toolbar mentioned above can be found here->www dot webfetti dot com (Not recommended to visit)

[Edit] You may read their License Agreement from here.Doesn't seem to be appealing,atleast not to me.

Threat details:

Avira - Adspy/Adspy.gen

Full Report:



(Courtesy:Avira)

Our First Virus

Well,I was going through a few video sites over the net,searching for some Tutorials...I came across a particular site,that asked me to download some codec in order to view its contents,but before I could try to click ok,the so called "codec" itself was downloaded automatically and tried to execute.An awesome feature in Vista is the Administrator's confirmation message.So,when the executable tried to execute itself,Vista prompted me for confirmation.



Thank goodness,I wasn't a XP user,else,my day would have sucked.This had crashed my browser in the process,but lucky yet,the executable file was still there,but I guess my Anti-Virus packages didn't enjoy it much.Look below to see what I mean.


So..next time,if you see anything asking you for a codec,you must close it immediately....incase you're an XP user,you need to stay on caution and avoid such .

In this case,all the 3 anti-virus packages have seemed to perform well except Counterspy.I have sent the sample to the Counterspy Network through one of their passionate bloggers.



Threat Details:

Avast-Win32:FaDrop[Drp]
AVG -Trojan horse Downloader.Zlob
Avira -DR/Autorun.ltd dropper

Welcome to my Research Blog !

This is where I post ugly stuff that I tend to come across while surfing the net,especially those nasty trojans and spy-wares.I wanted to share with the world the mistakes I've made so far,what you should NOT do,etc.

This blog may also contain comparison between different anti-virus platforms,etc...So,Incase you are planning to invest on an AV,do peep in here before you do so..

Hope this Blog helps one and all :)