Flash virus

[Musicman]

some idiot managed to pack a flash animation and a load of malicious vbscript into a file called "christmas.exe" about 40k small

So, obviously, not every exe that plays flash movie is actually a projector file

Musicman

[Sjekke]

it is allways a Flash player, only some funny guy used a exe-binder to add a virus/trojan or whatever that can be executed.

point is : just allways scan files en keep virus software up to date

[HowardTheDuck]

i wanna see a 40k flash projector file ... every projector is at least > 360K

the virus-kiddy created a vius and added the icon of flash at max.

so people who know just delete, people that use scanners have no problem and all others don't deserve to be virus free.
Yours
HTD

[edeveloper]

why are you guys opening ANY exe's sent thru email?

[lentil dal]

do you work for friends of ed edeveloper?

[edeveloper]

Hi,
I have written for them for flash 5 dynamic content studio.
chpt. 11

[lentil dal]

ah, that explains the sig. (sorry thats a bit of a tangent - didnt mean to interupt your post musicman :-/)

i have that book, i found it very useful as a starting point but also found that it covered too many different subjects. bit expensive really as i can only use a few chapters from it, and when you dont have the knowledge in the first place its hard to know whether you need to get one particular book or another. still it kind of got me into doing backend stuff so thats good i guess, i just cant afford to buy any food this christmas.

[apollokiev]

HAHAHAHA
Well that sucks !!!

[Musicman]

Hi there,

I guess it was VB script calling the real flash player, but this probably does not make too much difference to the victims. They get some file advertised as flash, they see flash movie playing, and following that they have a problem.
I wonder why the exe format is still an option for flash movies. When flash was created, many people would not have a player at all, maybe not even a browser, and many internet accesses were prohibitively slow, so shipping a complete movie with player made sense. Today most new computers come with flash player already installed. I know that there are some functions in the standalone player that the browser plugin does not support for obvious security reasons, but projects requiring these features could still pack a standalone player along with the swf - plus some instructions to optionally download the player from Macromedia website

Musicman

[HowardTheDuck]

Hi

sending the player with the swf is again a security risk - then i'd pack the virus in the installer. getting the real version from macromedia.com is probably the most secure solution.
sending executables (no matter which OS) by email is always a bad idea. i think the .exe feature was only implemented for CD-rom presentations or thelikes. and people without flash-player installed normally don't like (or aren't able) to see flash content.

Yours
HTD

[Musicman]

Hi,

would you even trust an advertising cdrom someone snail-mailed to you? At least the particular one I have in mind had a notice in very fine print that they would not guarantee that the cdrom itself (miniature size) did not do physical damage to some drives...

Musicman

[HowardTheDuck]

hi
hm... good point. but when i get a cd snail-mailed and it causes harm to my pc, i definitely know who to piss at. even when they write some stuff about "no guarantees" on it.
At least the image of the company is lost and i wont buy anything from them then. If e.g. the "range-rover presentation cd" i have had a virus i think i wouldn't keep this company on my favourite list...
of course it's possible that a cd contains a virus but i think it's far more unrealistic to obtain a virus from a presentation cd than via email, because no company sending out cdroms can afford to be known as virus-distributors (well a german pc-mag once did , i think it was about 1995 when they had the parity boot-b virus in some popular packages of their shareware-cdrom).

Yours
HTD

[edeveloper]

it's sad when you think about all the folks out there trying to make a living that are targets for some new virus everyday. I'm not microsoft or some big company just some guy with a family and a mortgage trying to do good. i have to suspect everyone who sends me any attachments(and between boards and the flash book - i get alot!). the worst thing is it doesn't even have to be an exe file. folks are making swfs that will bring down your box(search http://www.astalavista.com ). - SUSPECT EVERYONE!

happy new year everyone