Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Beware of xupiter.com

This is topic Beware of xupiter.com in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-25-2003, 11:57 AM:

I was nailed last week by a so-called "drive-by" active-x trojan. It targets IE6. Changes your default home page to xupiter.com (a bogus internet portal & search engine), and also installs various spyware and popup crap as well as a useless xupiter toolbar. I had a heck of a time getting rid of the damn thing. Xupiter's alleged uninstall program didn't work, and although I found instructions on how to manually uninstall it (which requires editing the registry), there was a lot of conflicting information on exactly how to get rid of it. I finally did 2 things: 1) Installed AdAware, which detected & removed all the xupiter & related crap as far as I can tell; and 2) Switched to Opera for my browser. I had resisted using Opera for a long time because of various problems I ran into with it under XP, but the latest version 6 build is working fine (version 7 is in beta, haven't tried it yet).

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 01-25-2003, 01:57 PM:

The default security level for "internet" in MSIE is "medium". Everyone should go into the security tab and customize the level to "prompt" or "disable" all ActiveX controls as well as several other options located there.

Additionally, one should never share the root directory of the C: drive.

AdAware is a wonderful thing! Get it for free here. (Note that Kazaa requires its spyware to be on the hard drive in order to run. The name escapes me at this time, but it begins with a "C".)

Posted by Aldo Baez (Member # 790) on 01-25-2003, 02:16 PM:

You can do a search for kazaalite which has no spyware. It was edited by someone who didn't like it and made into an installer.

Posted by Ron Lacheur (Member # 1126) on 01-25-2003, 03:54 PM:

spyware Kazaa installs is called " Cydoor "

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-25-2003, 07:35 PM:

My [weak] defense for allowing ActiveX without prompts is that several legitimate web sites I visit regularly use ActiveX, and I got sick of dealing with the prompts. It was like a dozen prompts to get where I needed to go. As for using IE6, I had problems with earlier builds of Opera on XP crashing the system and scrambling images (including Film-Tech images). Netscape was almost as bad, and the latest builds are as bloated as IE. Also IE is the only browser that can correctly render certain HTML code generated by MS apps like Word (surprise!) and I occasionally have to work with that.

Anyway now that Opera seems stable, I'll be using it as my primary browser and reserve IE for special cases. One unexpected benefit of using Opera is it renders most HTML code quite a bit faster than IE. Makes things snappier.

EDIT: I cannot log into Microsoft's MCSE member site using Opera. CRAP! [Mad]

Posted by Christopher Duvall (Member # 284) on 01-26-2003, 04:34 AM:

I got slammed by that POS [bs]

xupiter web site a few months ago. I did not have adaware yet so I had to manually go through the registry and take it out. I have never been so infuriated with a website before. It completely [sex]

's your bookmarks and browser and the firewall gets frantic telling you about how some program wants to access the net.

I got hit with it by some sort of pop-up ad. Apparently I had disabled the pop-up stopper and I was sleeping [sleep]

at the wheel when I was cruising the net.

Xupiter, this is for you... [fu]