OT: Microsoft is really annoying

[Wilhelm Sanke]

On Apr 16, 2010, at 12:27 PM, Paul D. DeRocco wrote:

 > I use Windows day-in, day-out, for software engineering, electronic
 > engineering, math, Photoshop editing, mapping, and constant web browsing.
 > I've been a heavy Windows user since 3.0, and am currently running XP and
 > Win7 on three machines. Although I have a virus scanner, I don't even 
bother
 > to run it in the background, only invoking it manually when I download an
 > install file from the internet.
 >
 > Despite all this, I've _never_ had a virus or any kind of malware. My 
only
 > system failures have been the occasional result of a RAM or hard disk
 > failure. So either I'm doing something terribly right, or you all are 
doing
 > something terribly wrong.
 >
 > --
 >
 > Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
 > Paul                mailto:pderocco at ix.netcom.com

I repeat here for emphasis:

> So either I'm doing something terribly right, or you all are doing
>  something terribly wrong.


I tried to recapitulate what I could have done "terribly wrong". First, 
I have got both a virus scanner running in the background and one which 
I invoke manually from time to time.

I was searching for programs that use the Gluas-plugin for embedding the 
Lua language for image processing and - among other sites - arrived at

<http://www.thebest3d.com/gluas/>

which seems to be safe.

 From there I clicked the link to "Pixarra TwistedBrush Pro" and that 
seems to me to be the source of all the trouble, meaning simply just 
going to that site. I did not download anything from the TwistedBrush 
site. This happened twice, I will not test this a third time. Maybe 
anybody else could check?

The following malware was then installed on my WindowsXP computer:

Hsyfea.exe (in C:Windows)
sshanas21.dll (in C:windows\system32)

which then seems to have launched the Microsoft Internet Explorer about 
every 5 minutes (until I "disassembled" the Internet Explorer).--

Wilhelm Sanke