A year with Paperghost...

Yes, I'm aware that doing a "Year in review" in Antispyware is potentially madness, as the "next big thing" could leap off the page as soon as this is written up - if that happens, I'll just declare today the last day of the year and save the rest for 2006. For now, here's my personal favourites - memory lane time. I proudly present - my favourite Vitalsecurity.org posts of the year. I was going to do a summary of everything, outside the confines of my little website, but it would have taken forever and made my brain bleed. So I didn't. We'll leave that to CNET or something. It took all my time wading through the posts on my website, never mind the entire interweb.

Note that I haven't thrown about six hundred links into each entry - that's confusing. Just read the original piece and (if the mood takes you) have a rummage round. I'm sure you'll find the related posts. Or, just go here.

10. Direct Revenue: Busted June 3rd, 2005

What happens when you install software by having to read two different EULAs, both crammed full of links, each coming from different sites to install software from just one location? Answer - total and utter chaos! If you don't understand what I'm talking about - that's okay, neither do I. Just click the link and check out the pretty pictures. Ooh, shiny..

9. Beyonce kicks Adware installer's booteh: October 25th, 2005

Find out why Beyonce thinks I rule. Wonderfully deceptive installs here for all the family.

8: Enigma Software and the case of the missing weblog: February 3rd, 2005

This was fun. Mysterious vanishing entries on Wikipedia, rival additions in their place and a whole bunch of detective work finding out exactly what happened. At last you'll believe a man can fly. And look through thousands of bloody Wikipedia edits. I'm still wearing glasses because of this, you know.

7. Direct Revenue's tasty burger: October 11th, 2005

Direct Revenue change their branding, hook up with "chosen" partners for their installs, yet things still go wrong. Find out why.

6: 65MB Malware Install: March 3rd, 2005

Oh, this was fun - potential first sighting of the .NET framework installing without permission to power - well, we're not 100% sure what it was powering. Some crummy advert garbage, most likely. Or the dry run for something off in the future. Then those malware boys got pwned by Microsoft sticking .NET on automatic updates. Whaddya' mean, you switched updates off?!

5. Firefox spyware infects IE? March 9th, 2005

Oh wow! This one had it all! Excitement! Suspense! Something approaching an Internet Holy war, as opposed to your regular, everyday run of the mill flame war. Those things suck.

4. Spazbox Reloaded: April 19th, 2005

An interesting example of what happens inside an actual Botnet channel. The answer is....well, not a lot. But they had nice wallpaper and served me cake and tea, which was nice.

3. Direct Revenue: My Response June 16th, 2005

What, I'm not linking to the writeup about Aurora stomping through BitTorrent forums? Nope, because I find this post to be the most enjoyable of the BitTorrent lot. here, Direct Revenue get torn to shreds in a big way, resulting in lots of people pulling website installs and dropping out of BitTorrent distros faster than the speed of light. Well, that's what happens when you call me "deceptive", I guess. On top of that, we had John Dvorak weighing in, a rival Ziff Davis guy taking him to task, death threats, furious arguments and a whole heap of bad feeling.

I like to think of this post as what is possible when you beat people over the head with a large stick enough times. Effecting change with nothing more than a few words and a pre-built template is hard to do but not impossible, and I'm proud of what this post represents.

2. The Adware Ku Klux Slam: December 6th, 2005

This crashes in at number two, mostly because it's such a jaw-dropper. It seems to have provoked a right old ding-dong, and it doesn't look like ending anytime soon. Nothing like a touch of end-of-year excitement, kids!

1. The Rootkit Powered Botnet: November 17th, 2005

And at number one...well, let's face it, I wasn't going to put the story with the banana picture here, was I? Man, this story was huge. Building on the discovery of the rootkit we found in IM land, this thing broke the story wide open with Botnets, rootkits, IRC and probably some guys running round with guns and stuff. Scary, scary business. Webinar here, press release here.

And that concludes the round-up of "favourite postings" for this site. Some pretty crazy stuff in there, and 2006 is sure to hold yet more surprises....for the bad guys!

/ Muahahahaha!!!112eleventy!!12