Skip to main content

Do you want the following program to make changes to this computer

Similar to an item mentioned in another article, this is yet another annoying message from Windows:

Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?

Program name: Microsoft Windows
Verified publisher: Microsoft Corporation
File origin: Hard drive on this computer
CLSID: {BDB57FF2-79B9-4205-9447-F5FE85F37312}

[Yes][No]

The above is what you get. Who knows what it's about? Apparently, it is some program *using* Microsoft Windows to do something, but what? Unfortunately, Windows, which in my case was being hijacked by a malicious site won't tell you. You just have to take your chances.

In my case, the thing causing this was a 'pop-under' window attempting to serve up an advertisement for Match.com through a known adver-spamming outfit at cdn.optmd.com using a tortured series of obscured calls going from one server to another, planting web 'bugs', etc. This is not even close to anything legitimate which I did or would agree to start loading software on to my machine.

It should be against the law for these firms to do this sort of thing. In fact, it may already be against the law. Meantime, it flies under the radar by taking advantage of what I could only describe as a security hole in Microsoft Windows. It was *NOT* Microsoft or its operating system Windows that was actually originating this attempt to misuse the resources of my system. It was a source I would *NEVER, NOT EVER* trust. In fact, the domain 'optmd.com' is usually redirected to 127.0.0.1 (the address of your local machine) on most of my machines to prevent them from ever loading any pages on my system. The one particular machine had an out of date hosts file.

What sort of malicious stuff was it trying to do? Well, for one thing, it was somehow managing to circumvent security on my system by forcing a 'popunder' window to load. My systems usually employ a variety of methods to stop that from happening. These guys are constantly looking for cheats to bypass security on the systems of their victims. For another, it surely was attempting to plant tracking 'bugs' on my machine and as near as I can tell it was successful with this. Worse than those, though, is the fact that it attempted to hijack my CPU, my bandwidth and my attention.

This is SPAM, plain and simple. It costs next to nothing for the 'perps' to deliver that stuff on to my machine and costs me dearly to be infected by it.

The bottom line is that if you get that message you should almost certainly say 'NO' and may want to investigate which hostile site is attempting to misuse your trust.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The system cannot execute the specified program

It always annoys me no end when I get messages like the following: "The system cannot execute the specified program." I got the above error from Windows XP when I tried to execute a program I use all the time. The message is hugely aggravating because it says the obvious without giving any actionable information. If you have such a problem and you are executing from a deep directory structure that may be your problem. It was in my case. Looking on the web with that phrase brought up a bunch of arcane stuff that did not apply to me. It mostly brought up long threads (as these things tend to do) which follow this pattern: 'Q' is the guy with the problem asking for help 'A' can be any number of people who jump in to 'help'. Q: I got this error "The system cannot execute the specified program." when I tried to ... [long list of things tried] A: What program were you running, what operating system, where is the program? What type of

Coming Soon: General Artificial Intelligence

The closer you get to experts who understand the nuts and bolts and history of AI, the more you find them saying that what we have is not nearly General Artificial Intelligence (GAI), and that GAI seems far away. I think we already have the roots in place with Neural Networks (NN), Deep Learning (DL), Machine Learning (ML), and primitive domain limited Artificial Intelligence (AI). Things like computer vision, voice recognition, and language translation are already in production. These are tough problems, but in some ways, machines are already better than humans are. I expect GAI to be an emergent property as systems mature, join, and augment one another. I was around during the 70s AI winter, and was involved in the 80s AI winter as one of the naysayers. I built a demonstration system with a Sperry voice recognition card in 1984. I could demonstrate it in a quiet room, but as a practical matter, it was not production ready at all. Around 1988 we built demonstration expert systems usin

Your call is important to us, but not much.

Rogers entire network is down and Rogers either does not know why or sufficiently disrespects its customers that it won't say. I was on the advisory committee for the largest private network in Canada serving 150,000 employees countrywide. I was also an active participant building out that network. I installed the first Local Area Networks there. I wrote a code generator responsible for the most critical portion of Bell's mobile network. I also wrote a portion of code for a system in the United States that detected and pinpointed line breaks in their network before they happened. For a time, I held the title 'Networking Professor' at our local College. I registered my first domain name in the 1980s. I have administered Internet network servers for decades. In one capacity or another, I have worked with most of the telecommunications providers in Canada past and present. Nearly a billion devices use a small network codec written by me decades ago.  Except that Rogers was