I’m all warm and fuzzy inside ’cause I get to be part of the important group now! I’m just like everyone else…I have malware! If I go to www.0scan.com/winscan, I am immediately greeted by this screen:

Since I run FF with NoScript, it doesn’t do anything, but if I allow scripts for that page to run, it’ll resize my browser window to a tiny box (I hate that) and this dialog box will pop up.

Any click (I clicked Cancel) on the dialog box will begin the scan, complete with progress bar. This must be a really effective malware scanner because it was able to find and scan DLL files on an Ubuntu system!

Oh NOES! My system is infected!!!11 I have 45 infected files, viruses, win32 spyware…some are even marked “Critical” in scary red letters! Look–there’s the Windows Defender shield-thing, so I know this is legitimate. Well, no wonder the computer isn’t running as fast as I’d like! You know what, though? I think I’d like to do a backup check with another malware scanner, just to make sure that none of these are false positives. I wouldn’t want to mess up my install by accidentally deleting important files. I’ll click, “Ignore”.

Oh, dear…it seems the malware threats were too important to ignore, so in spite of my click, I am offered the option to save the file AV2008install.exe, or open it with Wine. I’ve never changed the default, so “Save” is automatically checked for me. I guess I’ll just have to run it later, though it does seem rather strange to me that my dialog box doesn’t look like the one pictured on the page. Hmm…maybe it’s got something to do with Ubuntu? 🙂

I didn’t bother to save the file, even though running it might have been interesting. Wine works pretty well, but I don’t think I want to go to the trouble of using it to install Windows-only spyware on my Ubuntu PC. That actually was a pretty good malware installation attempt, though. Most people do surf without NoScript or disabled scripts, and most people do use Windows. A power user would certainly know the progress bar was an animation, and that a file called “AV2008setup.exe” from some random site calling itself “0scan” probably isn’t something that’s safe to run, but the average user? Nah–clueless. This is actually the reason that I believe Linux is not only for geeks. It’s for geeks because geeks like to tinker, but imagine how much less damage a clueless user could do if they were using locked-down Linux box? Windows can be locked down to a point, but many apps assume (usually correctly) that you’re running as Admin, so they don’t work (or at least don’t work correctly). Even Vista doesn’t do more than pop up a nag screen with a button you have to click (like the average Windows user doesn’t just click whatever makes the annoying box go away). Linux does not; it actively discourages users from doing day-to-day tasks as root, and every time you want to do something as root, you must enter the password. Yes, it’s annoying, but it’s a good kind of annoyance because it makes you pay attention to what you’re doing. I remember the first time I couldn’t figure out how to do something as root with the command line, so I logged out (this was Mandrake) and logged back in as root. My pretty blue desktop was gone, replaced by one in screaming-jesus red, and I had a big warning on login that I was operating as root and that was a very dangerous thing to do. Ubuntu won’t even let you log into a full session as root unless you first enable a password for the root account. By default, the root account has a randomly generated password that the user does not know, and the user is granted root privileges (assuming the user is a member of the allowed group) on a case-by-case basis. Let the Windows power users keep their XP or Vista or whatever, but I say give the clueless people limited-access Linux workstations, and a nearby geek to explain why they can’t install the “Really awesome screensaver!” that came attached to their email. It’s from a friend, so it must be safe, right? 😉