Interview With an Adware Author 453
rye writes in to recommend a Sherri Davidoff interview with Matt Knox, a talented Ruby instructor and coder, who talks about his early days designing and writing adware for Direct Revenue. (Direct Revenue was sued by Eliot Spitzer in 2006 for surreptitiously installing adware on millions of computers.) "So we've progressed now from having just a Registry key entry, to having an executable, to having a randomly-named executable, to having an executable which is shuffled around a little bit on each machine, to one that's encrypted — really more just obfuscated — to an executable that doesn't even run as an executable. It runs merely as a series of threads. ... There was one further step that we were going to take but didn't end up doing, and that is we were going to get rid of threads entirely, and just use interrupt handlers. It turns out that in Windows, you can get access to the interrupt handler pretty easily. ... It amounted to a distributed code war on a 4-10 million-node network."
Seriously (Score:4, Funny)
It would be a damn shame if something bad happened to this guy.
Re:Seriously (Score:5, Funny)
Demonize him now, but when the aliens invade... (Score:5, Funny)
Unless the aliens AREN'T running Windows.
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:5, Funny)
He should be forced to forever use an unpatched Windows (9x, XP, 2000, etc) as his OS on every computer.
Re:Demonize him now, but when the aliens invade... (Score:4, Funny)
Keep him around once Skynet becomes self aware, we might need him!
Did you say Villian? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:5, Funny)
He should be forced to use Windows ME, at no higher than 800x600 screen mode, with a 56K modem.
He should also be forced to eat his own testicles.
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:5, Funny)
That's the trouble with browsing at +1...now I have to imagine what kind of comment that was a response to...
Re:You first, buddy (Score:5, Funny)
I grew up on a farm, where we did not have to dilute the whack-a-FOO experience with carnival games.
Juvenile groundhogs leaving the nest to dig their own burrow were frequent targets of a well-timed shovel strike.
Potentially-rabid raccoons, whether in the bottom of a 55-gallon drum, or in a wire mesh trap, proved no match for a well-placed pitchfork thrust.
Voracious, ridiculously fecund rabbits proved much easier to deal when their heads were separated from their bodies via garden hoe.
Pesky, time-wasting, crop-damaging field/woodland creatures QUIVERED before the mightiness of the farmer's kids.
It'd be a better world if malware writers trembled before the wrath of internet users.
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you should click the "whoosh" button.
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but malware authors are a bit gamey. I suggest buying a lot of rosemary before hunting them.
Re:You first, buddy (Score:3, Funny)
can someone help me with win98? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:5, Funny)
I can't find it.... where is it?
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:5, Funny)
OMG, you're right! I'll be over in 20 minutes to smash all your windows. You know, to stimulate the economy!
All these tools are doing is saving M$ money on code audits and proper beta testing at the expense of EVERYONE else.
Re:Not a complete jerk (Score:4, Funny)
he wrote adware. yes, he is a complete jerk. he worked for a corporation that did evil things.
What evil things? Did you read the article, or ignore the comment you replied to?
Are you new here? Advertising is EVIL!
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:1, Funny)
He should be forced to use Windows ME, at no higher than 800x600 screen mode, with a 56K modem.
He should also be forced to eat his own testicles.
I'm using Windows ME at 800x600 screen mode, on a 33.6K modem, you inconsiderate clod!
Re:You first, buddy (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, law (Score:5, Funny)
Lol, the only "other" profession where it can take 4 million lines of code and a dozen libraries to effectively state "Hello World".
-Matt
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I hate it when people venerate/elevate scumbags (Score:3, Funny)
Given a choice between the two, I might go with the testicles.
Sometimes, the bull wins.