Exploring Aurora

Well, I finally got my hands on the killer app everyone's been talking about - no, not the new handheld Playstation, I mean Aurora, brainchild of Direct Revenue. This thing has been out in the wild for a while, but only now is it becoming a major public nuisance - seems like everybody has this damn thing on their computer.

The results were amazing - amazingly horrible, that is. As there is already a wealth of information on the technical details, I didn't see the point in replicating already available information. What amazes me is that searching for Aurora doesn't actually give you much insight into what the thing actually does to the hapless user who ends up with it, and the amount of stress caused by its refusal to die! So with that in mind, here is what happens to a PC running Windows XP2, with all patches and fixes applied, all security tools in place and one end-user about to get a headache. Some of the pictures below contain vaguely rude images - so you may want to send the kids out onto the street for a while or something.

Getting my hands on the Aurora install files was something of an uphill struggle, as install sites are rather thin on the ground at the moment (though keep an eye out for Bittorrent premonitions of doom, coming shortly). And the astonishing thing about Aurora is just how damn aggressive it is. I find it very doubtful that anyone in their right mind would not feel like their PC was undergoing some form of digital assault with this thing on board.

After install, it wasn't more than ten seconds before the first popup slapped me in the face. A rather worrying pattern with Aurora popups is that the majority of them are screaming hardcore porn. Now, I'm sure screaming hardcore porn has its place - somewhere - but it's most likely not spread all over my desktop in five to eight individual popup boxes. After a while, you actually start to believe you're on location with Ron Jeremy and a gaggle of "method actresses".

Typically, Aurora lies dormant until you actively do something with your browser. Once this happens, you'll get one of these:



Many of the ads seem to want to worry you with tales of impending PC-related doom. Interestingly enough, the above program (when installed) pulls up hundreds of utterly useless registry entries that need "FIXING NOW!!!!", even though the below splash page states it will only actually "repair" 20. Big whoop-de-doo. The great thing about this program is that, instead of fixing things, it (perversely) causes a desktop error at every boot:



So now you've got a flavour of what wonderful programs you can expect to obtain using this "customer-centric marketing tool", we can quickly move on to another great aspect of Aurora:

Its intrusiveness!

God forbid any of the adverts would be subtle - it seems whenever there's a penis extension at stake everybody and their uncle needs to know about it. Talk about denting a guys confidence:



I'm quite sure anyone needing a "penile implant" doesn't want it becoming their new desktop screensaver, but there you go. Still, the guy in the picture looks happy. Maybe he has Aurora on his PC too.

And so...we come to Aurora's greatest feature - its talent for making every move you make on a PC equate with about six hundred porno popups. I opened up IE, closed it down again and left the PC for a while. Approximately four minutes later, this is what greeted me.

Now, is it just me or is that the kind of thing that used to happen to panicked teenagers about four years ago running Windows 98 whilst their parents were out of town? How on earth can Direct Revenue make one of their programs do something similar to a Cool Web Search infection (opening up shedloads of unwanted popups, all at once), and yet claim its a valid, non-harmful application that people will want to run? Does anyone at Direct Revenue actually work as a QA tester, or do they just ask the homeless guy off the bench to come in and have a play in return for some free cans?

Who knows. We haven't even touched on the other great features of Aurora yet - like how it randomly hogs nearly 100% of the PCs CPU and causes crashes galore, for example. But on my next trip to Direct-Revenue land, I'll be illustrating just how hard removing this thing for an end-user can be.

Until then, roll on the Swedish call girls and mecha-implants.