Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stryke 9 on December 08, 2003, 04:05:57 am

Title: Bah.
Post by: Stryke 9 on December 08, 2003, 04:05:57 am: Bah.

Bah, bah, bah, bah.

Some evil corporation has put a particularly irritating piece of adware on my machine that changes the homepage to some random corporate whore page (last time it was an anti-spyware software page, go figure), and I can't get it off. Can't even find it, which is annoying, as Ad-aware is supposed to have the best track record for this sort of thing, which I suppose means I'm just ****ed.

Anyway. Advice. It's really ****ing annoying, and until I find out who put the thing on here (which involves getting at it) I can't mutilate the perpetrator, so don't bother suggest it, I'm already working on that end of things.
Title: Bah.
Post by: delta_7890 on December 08, 2003, 05:14:32 am: If you can, look through your processes with the task manager. Look through and see if there's anything that looks odd, fishy, out of place, etc, and try to delete it manually. By that, I mean running a search for the thing and deleting it through there. Most adware/spyware things run off of exes.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Fineus on December 08, 2003, 05:46:59 am: Yeah, and have you installed anything lately? Try looking at the installer and see if there's some random little "we reserve the right to **** you in the ass" clause that you didn't see when you agreed to install it.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Stryke 9 on December 08, 2003, 06:00:27 am: Not that I know of. Don't see any processes that are outright malicious-looking, either (though it's anyone's guess what "hpotdd01" is- might be spyware, might be keeping my computer running).

I'm reasonably sure that I picked the thing up at HOTU, as this problem roughly coincides with a visit there after a long hiatus and they're absolutely clogged with horrible ads, but more specific than that I cannot get.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Nico on December 08, 2003, 06:06:01 am: that happened to me too. Don't remember what kind of page it was, but I couldn't get rid of it. Then, one day, it just went away and I could set my own homepage again ( the button for that would be turned grey so couldn't use it ). Never understood, never even tried to, actually.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Stryke 9 on December 08, 2003, 06:08:24 am: Yeh. This is actually kinda handy in that it calls attention to my webpage; maybe now there's a chance in hell I'll update it with stuff that isn't made in ugly ugly Ray Dream.

Plus, this wouldn't have annoyed me so badly had I not been pissing myself off with Wasteland for hours before then. Friggin' rangers keep trying to drown themselves, and take a week at it to boot. When they're not stumbling into cacti, walls, and the Scorpitron, that is. Little electronic morons...
Title: Bah.
Post by: IceFire on December 08, 2003, 07:02:18 am: Started using Netscape 7.1 because of these kinds of problems.
Title: Bah.
Post by: karajorma on December 08, 2003, 07:08:39 am: You could try Spybot Search and Destroy. That has at least as good a reputation as Ad-Aware
Title: Bah.
Post by: Nico on December 08, 2003, 07:34:12 am: Quote
Originally posted by IceFire
Started using Netscape 7.1 because of these kinds of problems.

That's indeed one of the reasons why I switched to Mozilla.
But I have to say: don't listen to geeks, Mozilla is far from being as good as they say, there's lots of crappy stuff with it ( what's with it merging frames, for exemple? and it doesn't like labels either, it seems - you know, when you put the mouse over a pic, and you get a small window with a description appearing over it. well, they won't appear with Mozilla. Just to name a couple things).
I have yet to find a good browser, myself ( IE is fine on the basics, but it has the MS syndrom, of course: after a while, it doesn't work well anymore ).
Title: Bah.
Post by: 01010 on December 08, 2003, 12:39:08 pm: Use Spybot S&D, Ad aware doesn't get everything and neither does spybot but use both combined and you get pretty much everything.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Arc on December 08, 2003, 01:10:54 pm: "hpotdd01" seems to be part of some sort of Hewlett Packard digital imaging s/w (probably C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\Digital Imaging\bin\hpotdd01.exe).

Ad aware seem to release new definition files about as regularly as antivirus companies, have you got the lastest one?

Where does your homepage get hijacked to? Might be able to find out some more details about what you've got and how to remove it with that if the other spyware removal programs don't have any luck.

Hope it helps...
Title: Bah.
Post by: Kosh on December 08, 2003, 02:51:09 pm: Boot to safe mode, then look up the processes running there (and write them down). That will tell you what Windows runs normally. Now go to regular windows and start ending all the other processes one by one. See if that works.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Sandwich on December 08, 2003, 03:09:26 pm: As for running processes (although I doubt it's something actively running) feel free to haphazardly "End Process" (assuming Win2k/XP) anything you want - if it's a crucial process, it won't let you terminate it. Note, however, that explorer.exe is not a crucial process, and can be safely ended, although you'll make your taskbar disappear. To get it back again, CTRL-ALT-DEL, Task Manager, File -> New Task (Run)... and type in "explorer.exe".

ANYway.... it's more likely to be a service or run-on-startup registry key IMO.

Quote
Originally posted by Nico

That's indeed one of the reasons why I switched to Mozilla.
But I have to say: don't listen to geeks, Mozilla is far from being as good as they say, there's lots of crappy stuff with it ( what's with it merging frames, for exemple? and it doesn't like labels either, it seems - you know, when you put the mouse over a pic, and you get a small window with a description appearing over it. well, they won't appear with Mozilla. Just to name a couple things).

Merging frames? What do you mean?

As for the mouseover tooltips, trust me on this - Mozilla does support them. And as with many "standards"-related problems today, the problem can be laid squarely in IE and MS's laps. Here's the lowdown:

For images, most people specify the alt="..." attribute of the < img... > tag as the mouseover text. This behaviour is wrong. The alt="...." attribute is to specify what text should be displayed instead of the image if, for whatever reason, the image cannot be displayed. For example:

[q]
The image below has the alt="..." attribute set to "missing image one":

[/q]

What you should see above is an outline of the image (since I also specified a width and height), the little "broken image" icon, and the text "missing image one" inside. Internet Explorer tries to be "helpful" and also displays that text as the tooltip text when you hover over the image with the cursor.

But, as stated before, this behavior is wrong. There is a specific attribute to the img tag for specifying the mouseover text, and that is the title="..." attribute. Watch:

[q]
The image below has the title="..." attribute set to "missing image two":

[/q]

The (missing) image above should be displayed as a border with the "broken image" icon, and no text inside. The "missing image two" should only appear when you hover the mouse over the image.

Finally the third example:

[q]
The image below has the alt="..." attribute set to "alternate text for image 3" and the title="..." attribute set to "title for missing image three":

[/q]

Now we have both methods used, with different content for each. Both Mozilla AND IE correctly display the alt="..." text inside the image border and the title="..." text in the tooltip. But the problem is caused by IE's "extra help" in the first examlpe - webmasters became careless in writing HTML code, expecting the alt="..." attribute would generate the tooltip text, as it does in IE. Then they don't understand why it's "broken" in a browser that follows the rules. :rolleyes:
Title: Bah.
Post by: aldo_14 on December 08, 2003, 03:14:43 pm: For point of reference, standards are pretty much dictated by the browser, not any body. Basically, what happens is that Ms of Netscape create some innovation to try and give them an advantage (in terms of what their browser supports), the other copies it and eventually it get incorporated into a standard. i.e Javascript has multiple implementations - MS ones (Jscript i think), the original Netscape one and a 'unified' standard based on the both of them.

The reason Ms is lax in enforcing HTML rules (and XML, because HTML is really becoming a subset of it), is simply to make it more appealing to potential users.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Sandwich on December 08, 2003, 03:50:31 pm: Quote
Originally posted by aldo_14
For point of reference, standards are pretty much dictated by the browser, not any body.

:rolleyes: http://www.w3.org/
Title: Bah.
Post by: Kamikaze on December 08, 2003, 06:46:18 pm: Good web designers will try to abide by w3c standards, the problem is that most websites are made by amateurs.

I do not agree with the notion that "The reason Ms is lax in enforcing HTML rules is simply to make it more appealing to potential users." There are many standards that, if implemented, will make webpages much more interesting. Good examples are SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), PNG (Portable Network Graphics), and CSS2. There are no benefits from lack of adherence that I'm aware of.

It's just that MS is intent on maintaining its stance of making up their own sucky standards and can't be bothered to actually update IE to keep up (because most users will use it whether it's good or not). Additionally MS is trying to introduce its own new standards for a graphics addition to hypertext, which is designed to replace Flash and/or SVG/SMIL.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Fozzy on December 08, 2003, 07:10:54 pm: you think you have it bad i have to stair at AOL homepage eversinse i installed AIM so i can chat to friends from college, i wish they would use MSN.....

does anyone know how to permently chanfe my home page to what i want, instead of what AIM wants me to look at.
Title: Bah.
Post by: StratComm on December 08, 2003, 07:27:40 pm: Unless you've got the evil greedy AIM, you can just reset your homepage to whatever you want. I've never heard of that problem before.

As for identifying suspicious processes, googling them works pretty well. It will usually turn up a description within 2 hits, and will definitely do so if the process is malicious.

EDIT: Speaking of which, has anyone tried running a search for "miserable failure" on Google lately? If you haven't I suggest you try it out.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Bobboau on December 08, 2003, 08:29:17 pm: do a search for files that have been made/modified in the last (however long it's been doing this)

search for files containing text [url of site you are being direced to]

also check the registry
Title: Bah.
Post by: Bobboau on December 08, 2003, 08:31:00 pm: Quote
Originally posted by StratComm
Speaking of which, has anyone tried running a search for "miserable failure" on Google lately? If you haven't I suggest you try it out.

let me guess.... Bush :doubt:
Title: Bah.
Post by: StratComm on December 08, 2003, 08:39:20 pm: It's just funny, I didn't realize before just how easy it is to google-bomb someone. We should do this for Freespace sometime, see if it gets us some more hits.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Woolie Wool on December 08, 2003, 08:55:21 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Fozzy
you think you have it bad i have to stair at AOL homepage eversinse i installed AIM so i can chat to friends from college, i wish they would use MSN.....

does anyone know how to permently chanfe my home page to what i want, instead of what AIM wants me to look at.

:wtf:

I have AIM and I have full control over my startup page.
Title: Bah.
Post by: WMCoolmon on December 08, 2003, 09:23:37 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Fozzy
you think you have it bad i have to stair at AOL homepage eversinse i installed AIM so i can chat to friends from college, i wish they would use MSN.....

does anyone know how to permently chanfe my home page to what i want, instead of what AIM wants me to look at.

Use Trillian (http://www.trillian.cc) or GAIM (http://gaim.sourceforge.net). :)
Title: Bah.
Post by: beatspete on December 09, 2003, 04:19:43 am: Got XP? Try a system restore, it normally pwns any nastyness. You can reset your computer to a previous date's setup, its handy if you've installed soemthing by accident.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Stryke 9 on December 09, 2003, 10:03:06 pm: Bob: found some 2500 files, about a third of which aren't game, graphic, or otherwise accounted for. None of which are executables or otherwise particularly suspect-looking at first glance. Hoo-boy.

Beat: Yeah, right. Might as well reformat my drive, while I'm at it. See above.

01010: Thanks, I'll look into that. Might pare down my search time a good bit.

Stratt: Don't joke, it's disgusting behavior and the people who do it should be banned from all telecommunications activities for life. And castrated, so that they don't spread their vile, irritating seed. Plus, you'd need a set of blogs- actually, strike that, all blog owners in general should be castrated. Except for the, like, four who don't suck ass, who should just recieve a stern warning.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Kamikaze on December 09, 2003, 11:13:53 pm: Sandwich: Just found out that the HTML techniques for WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20031209/) document recommends not using the title attribute on imgs (in Section 10.2 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20031209/#image-title)). It's still a draft though.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Sandwich on December 10, 2003, 01:03:43 am: Quote
Originally posted by Kamikaze
Sandwich: Just found out that the HTML techniques for WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20031209/) document recommends not using the title attribute on imgs (in Section 10.2 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20031209/#image-title)). It's still a draft though.

Huh! Very interesting. Note this part (esp. in bold):

[q]The semantics of title are too easily confused with alt and longdesc and user agent support is extremely inconsistent.[/q]

And from here (http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#adef-title):

[q]Values of the title attribute may be rendered by user agents in a variety of ways. For instance, visual browsers frequently display the title as a "tool tip" (a short message that appears when the pointing device pauses over an object).[/q]

Basically the reason they recommen against it is because f the inconsistent support on browsers.. however, apparently the latest versions of the main browsers (except Opera and Mac browsers - I can't test those) do support the title attribute properly.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Stryke 9 on December 10, 2003, 05:12:07 am: Shut up, the both of you. The little highlight **** doesn't matter. At all. Just code your own pages properly, there won't be a problem- the ****ty way other people do their pages shouldn't be an issue.

Anyway. For the record, the perpetrator appears to be InternetAntiSpy.com (though for the first few days the actual page cycled between several, making it hard to pinpoint) who, among other slimy actions, use the fact that they can read and display your IP when you visit their page as a sample of how "at risk" your computer is. Lovely people, really, must say I'd love to share a room with them for about half an hour, and that the pleasure wouldn't be mutual.

And adding the page to my "restricted sites" seemed to work, though it may be too early to tell.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Sandwich on December 10, 2003, 03:49:05 pm: lol - I guess we did derail your (wonderfully titled :p) thread rather drastically. :lol:
Title: Bah.
Post by: Stryke 9 on December 10, 2003, 11:10:38 pm: I don't care about that- derailed threads are fine in my book, give something to look at. What I do care about is it being derailed by something so stupid. This was getting to be worse than a "Windows/Linux sucks" back-and-forth, and getting worse than that without dragging in Star Wars is pretty impressive.
Title: Bah.
Post by: Sandwich on December 11, 2003, 01:24:58 am: Bah.

*goes to start a Stryke-free HTML coding thread*

:p
Title: Bah.
Post by: Stryke 9 on December 11, 2003, 02:21:28 am: [follows, haranguing all the way]
Title: Bah.
Post by: Sandwich on December 11, 2003, 04:44:23 am: *creates HTML coders forum and denies Stryke posting rights in said forum*

Nyah! :p
Title: Bah.
Post by: Stryke 9 on December 11, 2003, 04:55:18 am: [has like a dozen alt profiles here by now]
Title: Bah.
Post by: Sandwich on December 11, 2003, 04:34:54 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Stryke 9
[has like a dozen alt profiles here by now]

I can grant access as opposed to denying it. :p
Title: Bah.
Post by: Stryke 9 on December 11, 2003, 06:44:25 pm: Well, good luck with that. :p