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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday January 10 2016, @02:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the those-bastards dept.

The Forbes 30 Under 30 list came out this week and it featured a prominent security researcher. Other researchers were pleased to see one of their own getting positive attention, and visited the site in droves to view the list.

On arrival, like a growing number of websites, Forbes asked readers to turn off ad blockers in order to view the article. After doing so, visitors were immediately served with pop-under malware, primed to infect their computers, and likely silently steal passwords, personal data and banking information. Or, as is popular worldwide with these malware "exploit kits," lock up their hard drives in exchange for Bitcoin ransom. The exploit used was a version of hackenfreude.

Forbes has recently taken some flack from Soylent News readers for its heavy-handed approach to ad blockers.


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 10 2016, @11:44PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 10 2016, @11:44PM (#287867) Journal

    Netgear and Linksys are fairly common home routers. If your customer doesn't own one, recommend one. You set it up. Or, you just sell him one, already flashed and set up for use. It isn't like you have to sell them a thousand dollar enterprise router to accomplish this little thing.

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  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday January 11 2016, @12:02AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday January 11 2016, @12:02AM (#287875) Journal

    Uhhh most Netgear and Linksys don't support installing WW-DRT or Tomato either, wanna try again? BTW the majority of routers out there in actual homes? Trendnet/Zonenet, and most folks aren't gonna go drop $70+ on a new router when a simple .BAT and GWX control panel can fix the issue for $0.

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 11 2016, @01:47AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 11 2016, @01:47AM (#287895) Journal

      You're kinda missing the point. I know that you're as hardheaded as I am, so I'm probably wasting time, but let's try one more time.

      Linksys and Netgear do support third party firmwares. It's kinda up to you to know which ones support the particular firmware you wish to use. And, it's up to you to recommend those routers to your customers. Are they going to spend upwards of $200 on the best of those routers? You say no, but I've witnessed plenty of people dragging their machines off to a shop, to spend $150 to $500 to "fix" those machines, when all that was required was a simple fix.

      You can honestly recommend a $200 router, properly configured, to block ads and malware, and anything else you deem proper to block. The router can also be configured to run a VPN, of course. You can optionally block the Win10 BS. You can recommend this in good conscience, knowing that every machine on the customer's network will be protected - not only the machine that you are servicing. If the customer declines the upgraded router, fine. If he accepts, you pocket a couple dollars profit for supplying it, and configuring it.

      Options are options - offering these options and services can reduce your load of headaches, and at the same time, increase your profit marginally. It will always be the customer's decision, of course, but offering him the option can't possibly hurt you, can it?

      • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday January 11 2016, @05:43PM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday January 11 2016, @05:43PM (#288278) Journal

        And again you are missing MY point, let me highlight why would they spend $100+ on a new router when there is a fix that cost $0 and takes all of 4 seconds to implement? And if you are talking about doing all this to take the spyware that is Windows 10 then your post just shows its a worthless OS with the actual "cost" of owning the OS more than every previous version for an OS that honestly performs worse in just about every metric.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 11 2016, @07:15PM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 11 2016, @07:15PM (#288312) Journal

          I'm certainly not arguing about the "value" of Win10 - My only argument is that implementing spyware, adware, and malware blocking on the router has it's own value. If a customer should happen to need a new modem/router, it is well worth the investment to recomment one that can perform these functions. Even if the customer doesn't really "need" a new router, but he simply wishes to upgrade, you can recommend this. It's an idea with value, no matter what OS that customer happens to be running. It benefits me, primarily because my crappy 2 Mb connection won't support the garbage adware downloading to as many as six computers at a time. I don't own all of those computers, much less the telephones and tablets that family members use while at my house. Therefore, I can't install ad blocking or alter HOSTS files on all of them. But, I do own the router, and I block all that crap before the requests ever go out from all those devices. Meaning - even when two or three people are using my connection, I still have more bandwidth that I would have all alone, without adblocking and the rest.

          Yes, Win10 sucks worse than any OS that has ever preceded it, but Win10 isn't the only reason to control the connections going through your router. It's just one of the best reasons to block the crap.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday January 11 2016, @05:19PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday January 11 2016, @05:19PM (#288261)

      Actually, FWIW, I have a pretty nice TrendNet router that runs DD-WRT just fine.

      That said, I think the idea of doing blocking at the router level is pretty stupid. Modern ad-blocking requires no only blocking domains but also looking at the HTML code, and that's something that's much easier done inside the browser with Ublock Origin. Also, installing and updating Ublock Origin is simple and easy and keeping it updated is automatic; keeping software on the router up-to-date isn't. Finally, the last thing I need is my router wasting tiny-ARM CPU cycles on blocking when it needs to be as high-performance as possible for my VoIP/telephony needs.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday January 12 2016, @06:27AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday January 12 2016, @06:27AM (#288540) Journal

        I agree 100% and would only add why would I slam the weak ass little ARM chips in the average home router when even my users on 10 year old systems have more cycles than they can ever use thanks to how insane the IPC on a multicore X86 chip is?

        Hell I replaced the Q6600 I was using at the shop for my late father's Phenom I 9600 quad for sentimental reasons, figuring it would probably be struggling, what did I find? Even with multiple downloads and a pile of websites running AND background music blasting I still rarely went above 50% CPU and never once had the auto OC kick in, so why would I want to slam the ARM chip so hard its about to melt to do router blocking when you have programs like uBlock and ABP that will do it on the system where there is plenty of MHz left unused?

          Its easy to update on the PC, won't hurt the system performance, not to mention as you pointed out you slam the router the whole network goes to shit, so it just doesn't make sense to go through all that to do it on the router.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.