Posted on April 18, 2006 at 2:59 PM in thoughts
Note: The below is an archived entry from Earthling, formerly EarthLink's official blog. The blog itself has been decommissioned and is no longer updated, and comments are trackbacks are no longer accepted.
There's a bad piece of adware/malware called Yapbrowser making the rounds. Once installed, it redirects URL's to child porn sites.
The Vitalsecurity.org blog has great coverage of what this thing is, how it works, and what it looks like if you have it. It includes a video clip (this software needed to see the video) captured by Andrew Clover showing what the whole installation and browser hijacking process looks like from a user's perspective. He's obscured any dirty pictures that might come up during the process.
According to the VitalSecurity article, all of the Yapbrowser servers are now unreachable. Maybe all of the press coverage sent them into hiding.
I checked with Product Manager Ben Kaplan, and he confirmed that the EarthLink Protection Control Center guards against 180 Solutions malware including Zango and Yapbrowser.
If you think you have a virus, spyware, or malware problem of any kind that has gotten out of control and is affecting how your PC works, you can also contact the experts at EarthLink CyberCheck for a consultation and removal.
Update: The Yapbrowser people have replied at Revenews and VitalSecurity.org.