kichik.net

Over a year has passed since the NSIS Media menace. Mostly good things have happened since. I figured this could be a good time to recap and summarize.

• Download.com no longer contains NSIS Media infected downloads. I’ve received no response for my queries, so I assume I had nothing to do with it.
• NSIS Media malware update servers are no longer operational.
• I have received only one e-mail complaining about NSIS Media over the last year, compared to the dozens before I’ve released the remover.
• My remover was downloaded approximately 10,000 times from my website and probably a bit more from other websites as well.
• My lawsuit has failed miserably. I was trying to get back at Opensoft/Openwares and all of their Vanuatu-based friends with the help of the Software Freedom Law Foundation. We tried to track down someone we could sue, but failed. After a few unanswered queries and answers pointing at multiple directions from various related companies, the search was sadly brought to a halt.
• I was contacted by F-Secure for details of NSIS Media. I seem to recall there were more companies that asked for my help, but I can’t find the e-mails proving it.
• Most anti-virus or malware removal applications I’ve tested find only the most common infections of NSIS Media and skip the rarer DLL files.
• Opensoft is still up to no good.
• Openwares is still alive and kicking, spreading malware and using NSIS but no sane user will surf to that website.
• I have received no donations for my research or for creating the remover.
• I still don’t make 1000$ a day

So there you have it — the story of a deceased malware. I’d like to think I took at least a small part of its demise.

Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt the silence schedule to bring you shocking news. Hatred has reared its ugly head on the forsaken grounds of our dear old friend — Windows 98. It appears the bigots have set a new target for their cynical and non-politically-correct persecution. Big-boned dialogs and initialization-limited rectangulars are shamelessly discriminated against and abused for no acceptable reason. Exceptions, overflow errors, division errors and antique dialogs were thrown at the victims, reports say. We were unable to get comments from the alleged bigots.

We were unable to get pictures from the event, but luckily, it can be easily reproduced.

BOOL CALLBACK proc(HWND h, UINT m, WPARAM w, LPARAM l)
{
  return FALSE;
}
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
  char dt[24] = {0,};
  RECT r = {32757,};
  HWND dlg = CreateDialogIndirect(
    GetModuleHandle(NULL),
    (LPDLGTEMPLATE) dt,
    0,
    proc);
  MapDialogRect(dlg, &r); // BOOM!
  return 0;
}