{"id":303,"date":"2008-09-07T19:41:05","date_gmt":"2008-09-07T19:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parkesy.wordpress.com\/2008\/09\/07\/stupid-is-as-stupid-does\/"},"modified":"2008-09-07T19:41:05","modified_gmt":"2008-09-07T19:41:05","slug":"stupid-is-as-stupid-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/09\/07\/stupid-is-as-stupid-does\/","title":{"rendered":"Stupid is as stupid does"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re on my Facebook friends list you’ll have got this message over the weekend <\/p>\n

\n

Hello All
If you’ve had a weird message from me (other than this one!) today please delete it
I got the same message from a friend and while allowing my curiosity to get the better of me i managed to infect myself
Highly highly embarrassed
Feel free to message me with abuse
Andy<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So I thought I’d explain what I meant when I said I’d allowed my curiosity to get the better of me <\/p>\n

On Saturday morning I got a message from a friend via Facebook. The English was terrible (the subject was – Gt you! Ha-ha, now watch and cr!)<\/em> and the link certainly looked “dodgy”. I figured my friend had his PC compromised and it was sending messages from his Facebook account<\/p>\n

It was the first time I’d seen this type of malware attack so I thought it might make an interesting blog post so followed the link<\/p>\n

It took me to a page that looked like YouTube (if YouTube was broken!) and I got a message displayed telling me that my flash player needed updating and I was prompted to download a file<\/p>\n

I downloaded the file and uploaded it to VirusTotal<\/a> for analysis which then identified the file as being the “KoobFace” worm<\/p>\n

Koobface.worm<\/a> – McAfee <\/p>\n

Win32.Worm.KoobFace.A<\/a> – Bitdefender<\/p>\n

W32.Koobface.A<\/a> – Symantec<\/p>\n

Koobface Family<\/a> – CA<\/p>\n

This was where I made a stupid mistake<\/p>\n

In my attempt to select the file so I could delete it I inadvertently double-clicked the file and it ran <\/p>\n

As you can imagine my language was colourful at this point<\/p>\n

I got a message on screen<\/p>\n

“Error installing Codec. Please contact support”<\/em><\/p>\n

Using the information links above I managed to remove the main worm program and a browser add-in it had loaded to Internet Explorer (I’ve since flattened the machine and reloaded )<\/p>\n

When I recently made the switch to Vista 64-bit as I was installing all my usual programs and thought it would be an interesting experiment to run without any anti-virus software (and blog about it here later!)<\/p>\n

I’ve been running without any anti-virus since mid-July. I use some of the well known on-line scanners as well as some offline tools twice a week to check all is ok and until yesterday everything appears to have been fine<\/p>\n

That said all the anti-virus software in the world can’t protect you from being stupid!<\/p>\n

So what have I learnt from this debacle?<\/p>\n

1) It may be a good time to end my experiment<\/p>\n

2) I rarely allow websites to keep me signed in but Facebook had been an exception. I’ll be going back to how I usually run!<\/p>\n

3) If you tell friends it’s ok to abuse you, then they will \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

As a side note it looks like Facebook have been doing some work too. When I now click on the original link Facebook blocks the page with a warning the site is dangerous<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re on my Facebook friends list you’ll have got this message over the weekend Hello AllIf you’ve had a weird message from me (other than this one!) today please delete itI got the same message from a friend and while allowing my curiosity to get the better of me i managed to infect myself<\/p>\n

<\/span>Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows-vista"],"yoast_head":"\nStupid is as stupid does - Andy's Techie Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/09\/07\/stupid-is-as-stupid-does\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stupid is as stupid does - Andy's Techie Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you’re on my Facebook friends list you’ll have got this message over the weekend Hello AllIf you’ve had a weird message from me (other than this one!) today please delete itI got the same message from a friend and while allowing my curiosity to get the better of me i managed to infect myselfRead More\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/09\/07\/stupid-is-as-stupid-does\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Andy's Techie Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-07T19:41:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andy Parkes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Andy Parkes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/09\/07\/stupid-is-as-stupid-does\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/09\/07\/stupid-is-as-stupid-does\/\",\"name\":\"Stupid is as stupid does - Andy's Techie Blog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2008-09-07T19:41:05+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2008-09-07T19:41:05+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/3534e8ac6b1bec765cd061feff56679d\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/09\/07\/stupid-is-as-stupid-does\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/09\/07\/stupid-is-as-stupid-does\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/09\/07\/stupid-is-as-stupid-does\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Stupid is as stupid does\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Andy's Techie Blog\",\"description\":\"Professional Geek\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/3534e8ac6b1bec765cd061feff56679d\",\"name\":\"Andy Parkes\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3824cbf53df51d7ca5cf809b6ad81a157fbfff2292e36ab8666f04ddad06bfcc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3824cbf53df51d7ca5cf809b6ad81a157fbfff2292e36ab8666f04ddad06bfcc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Andy Parkes\"},\"description\":\"Andy Parkes is Technical Director at Coventry based IT support company IBIT Solutions. 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