New Stripper Virus Entices Windows Users to Break Captchas for Spammers - If Melissa Asks You to Help Her Strip, Just Say No!   11/2/2007 - 1,804 views, 1 Comment

Summary: In a new twist, web spammers are using images of a stripper named Melissa to dupe naive Windows users into helping them break CAPTCHAs - those "enter this text" images that websites rely on to keep spammers from posting spam on their site. Dubbed the CAPTCHA.a or Captchar.a virus, an infected Windows computer will display a picture of Melissa, who promises to remove an article of clothing for each "puzzle" that the user solves.

Previous Article « How to Get More Online Traffic for Free! BlogRush - It’s Not Just for Blogs!
Read Next Article » Waterboarding Video Hits the Internet as Waterboard Water Torture Debate Rages Online and Around the Country

In a new twist, web spammers are using images of a stripper named Melissa to dupe naive Windows users into helping them break CAPTCHAs - those “enter this text” images that websites rely on to keep spammers from posting spam on their site.

Dubbed the CAPTCHA.a or Captchar.a virus, an infected Windows computer will display a picture of Melissa, who promises to remove an article of clothing for each “puzzle” that the user solves. The puzzles are actually CAPTCHA codes which the spammers have harvested, and by ’solving the puzzle’ the user is helping the spammers to break the code.

The virus then transmits the cracked codes back to the hackers and spammers who, according to security company Symantec, are in Israel.

So, no matter how enticing, if a stripper suddenly shows up on your Windows computer, give her the boot!

Have any of our readers seen this? We’d love screen shots!

Get FREE email alerts of new Internet Patrol stories!
    *We never share your email address with anyone

Email Address:
Date of first visit:
How you found us:

Be sure to watch for the confirmation email!

Subscribe to The Internet Patrol on your cell phone    Email the link for this page to a friend!

Read more:

»  Worm Entices Windows Users with Pics of a “Dead” Saddam Hussein

»  Video iPods Shipped with Windows Virus, says Apple - iPod Virus is Windows RavMonE Virus

»  AOL Offers New Spam and Virus Resistant Software for New Year

»  Stopping Spam - For Windows Users

For additional similar stories check out our archives on Around the World, Over 18, Security, Virus & AntiVirus, Windows

 

1 Comment »

  1. sorry “melissa” i prefer real girls, taking off real clothing, pixels on a screen just don’t do it for me.
    “gunner”

    Comment by "gunner" — 11/5/2007 @ 5:18 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

Warning! All comments which contain URLs and are clearly just spam to generate a link back to the URL will be deleted on sight. Don't bother wasting your time!

If you are going to include a URL in your comment,
please keep it under 25 characters in length,
or use TinyURL to shorten it before including it in your comment.

Line and paragraph breaks are automatic, your email address is never displayed.
HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)


If you have not posted a comment here before, we apologize for having to ask you to enter the letters and numbers you see in the image above to validate your comment, but we are being attacked by thousands of comment form spams every day! You only need to do this once; once you have successfuly posted a comment here you will not be asked to do this again. Thank you for your understanding!

 
The Internet Patrol
Patrolling the Internet for You!