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Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas, Dr. Bombay Computer Column: Warning! Warning! Weaselware Inspires Righteous Indignation

Posted on: Friday, 2 June 2006, 00:00 CDT

By Dr. Emilio Bombay, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Jun. 1--Warning! Warning! Weaselware inspires righteous indignation

Dear Dr. Bombay: On Saturday I got a yellow triangle with an exclamation-point message saying "System Errors: Some system files are corrupted. [blah, blah, blah-bity blah] Click this balloon to fix this problem." Then I clicked it and got a pop-up message from "System Security Center" to download System Doctor 2006, WinAntivirus Pro 2006 and WinAntiSpyware2006. I thought the warning triangle was legit, so I started the download, but I started to get Norton Antivirus warnings saying WinAntivirus is a high-risk threat. I stopped the download and went into Remove Programs and completely erased it. I still get the warning triangle about 15 to 20 times a day, and I can't get rid of it. What can I do now?

-- Weasel Bait

Dear Bait: If I were you, I'd think about taking a few practice swings with your Louisville Slugger, although I can't officially condone any sort of behavior that may escalate toward violent assaults against the vermin that plant this kind of crud on your computer, hoping you'll be dopey enough to fall for their insidious marketing schemes.

It's worse than adware -- a marketing tool that borders on the legitimate -- or spyware -- software that surreptitiously keeps track of what you do on the computer. We've all come to expect those things as part of life, and there are plenty of defensive measures you can take. But weaselware -- like the thing that's making your life so much fun right now -- makes you think you have a problem with your computer, then bamboozles you into downloading some totally unnecessary piece of software that won't do half the job that widely available freeware will.

Does that tick you off? It ought to.

In your case, it sounds like you may have been infected with the Vundo trojan, a nasty little piece of work that downloads pop-up ads for dubious system utilities. It has been associated with shilling for the products you mentioned. If you blindly click on the download button, some of these "utilities" will give you a free scan, then expect you to pay to fix any "problems" they find. Gee, thanks, but I think I'll pass.

The bad news for you is that Vundo is really, really hard to get rid of. I've tried and failed with Norton's FixVundo (securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/FixVundo.exe). Most manual removal instructions you can find in geek forums are difficult, convoluted and work only in isolated instances. You can try all the standard spyware killers, like Ad-Aware, Spybot or Windows Defender, and still come up empty-handed.

If I'm working on a Vundo infection, I generally throw up my hands after a few days and nuke the drive, starting from scratch. There are a couple of new tools out there you can try, though. Cleanup with VundoFix and VirtumundoBegone are described at www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic18610.html, and there's a scanner called ewido anti-malware that you can try for free for two weeks, at www.ewido.net/en/. Will any of this work? Beats me.

Dear Dr. Bombay: I am a teacher in a school system that years ago bought Macintosh hardware. I have been the sponsor of a sixth-grade newspaper for five years, and we have been using an old Power Mac and software called Presswriter to create our paper. My principal has offered to purchase a new computer for our newspaper students to use; however, I need to request which one I want. When I talk with computer-literate people at school I hear a variety of opinions. I am not sure if should request another Macintosh or a PC. I would eventually like to change software as well, from Presswriter software to either PageMaker or QuarkXPress and perhaps expand our paper to the entire school. What would you recommend for educational desktop publishing?

-- Back to School

Dear Back: Gee, I didn't know that kids today could read, much less put out a newspaper. Don't they get everything they need from reality shows, MySpace.com and Fox News? Why do you want to complicate things with, ugh, words?

It doesn't really matter which platform you decide on, Mac or PC. Who's going to be taking care of the computer and fixing it after some iPodder manages to wreak havoc on the operating system? If your school system has an official computer guru, that's who you should get a recommendation from. And what computer are you most comfortable with? After all, you're the one who's going to wind up doing most of the work.

Companies such as Apple and Dell will cut great deals for educators, although you usually have to go through the school's purchasing department. And it doesn't really matter which platform you choose, because outstanding desktop publishing programs are available for both. QuarkXPress, the big gun, may be a bit overwhelming, in terms of both complexity and price, although your kids would get practice using something that real newspapers use. PageMaker will do the job, too, and the price is considerably lower. But if you really want to do it on the cheap, there are plenty of minor-league programs out there, such as Microsoft Publisher or Ready, Set,Go! or dozens of other packages that you can find in a computer store. Remember that these cheapies aren't going to allow you to do any elaborate designs, but then again, what does a sixth-grader know about that kind of stuff? Just run a lot of pictures of Lindsay Lohan, and everybody'll be happy.

Dear Dr. Bombay: Two hundred of my sermons have been saved onto four discs. How do I print the title list?

-- Preacher Man

Dear Preacher Man: And, yea, verily didst the gooberheads at Microsoft beget Windows Explorer. And the people looked upon it and said as one, "This thing bites."

It's always chapped me that Explorer doesn't include something as useful as the ability to print the contents of a folder on the computer. Maybe somebody at Microsoft decided paper was a thing of the past. Boneheads.

You can do it at the command prompt (find it in the Accessories menu). Type in "dir d:\ /b > prn" and press Enter (assuming D: is the drive where your sermons are stashed). Too difficult? You're right. Get FreeSoft Labs' Windows File Explorer at www.freesoftlabs.com/down_fileexpl.asp. It's free, and it will print your file listings. Is that so difficult, Microsoft?

Dear Dr. Bombay: When do you plan to publish THE BOOK of solved problems with an index so I can find the solution and not expose my ignorance to the populace at large? My wife already knows, and that's enough.

-- Bookworm

Dear Bookworm: It ain't gonna happen. First of all, that sounds like a lot of work. Second, when it's made into a movie I'm afraid they'd do the same thing to it as they did to The Da Vinci Code. Tom Hanks as me? My hair's nowhere near that bad.

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

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Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas)

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