Don't let the Christmas grinch ruin the season

[Miulang]

If you're letting your fingers do the shopping for you this holiday season and you use any of the search engines like Google to find the objects of your heart's desire, please read the following story about how phishers are able to direct you to load a Trojan horse just by clicking on a downloadable picture from the link.

Miulang

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5473663.html?tag=zdnn.alert

[adrian]

So, its a link, not an image?

I just hope that my spyware program can protect me.

[easTTriver]

If you're letting your fingers do the shopping for you this holiday season and you use any of the search engines like Google to find the objects of your heart's desire....

actually instead of google. try using Froogle (www.froogle.com). froogle is a search service provided by google. it brings up a search results of products. if you know what you want to buy and want to find the cheapest price, try it. you can also try pricegrabber (www.pricegrabber.com)

[pzarquon]

It's not clear from the story whether these scammers are using the JPEG trojan flaw (http://news.com.com/Trojan+horse+exploits+image+flaw/2100-7355_3-5385995.html), or if they're just using the usual SEO trickery to bring people to their sites, and simply labeling a link to an executable (.EXE) as a supposed link to more pictures.

The latter should be caught by most AV utilities, if not the browsers themselves. An attempt to download an .EXE file, even from a trusted site, should always be flagged as a possible danger.

As in the real world, buyer beware. You might get a better price from the guy in the alley, but you could also be taken to the cleaners. You don't have to shop at the shiny, gleaming, overpriced megamalls, but somewhere in between is a better bet.

[mel]

Mac users don't have to worry about .exe files.

[craigwatanabe]

yeah that's because Mac users need a real computer first...Ha ha ha ha ha......Oh crap I'm going to hell for that remark!!! :D

[808_m3]

Mac users don't have to worry about .exe files.

True. Macs have long since been invunerable to all the nasty viruses out there. Although after reading this article (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=18), I wonder if that will change. It makes sense though, since some of components of Mac OS X rely on some of the open source stuff out there.