Without a Traceroute

Why, by cleaning up your Windows registry, of course! [OBVIOUS WARNING: NOBODY DOWNLOAD THEIR WORTHLESS SOFTWARE]

Ok, so this is kind of a stupid little phishing scam that one of my friends pointed out to me, but I found it pretty amusing. Basically, you can put anything you want in the URL after the “?k=”, and it will generate a page pretending to have a magical solution to your problem (one which just happens to involve downloading and running their obviously malware-ridden software). Some of the more amusing suggestions I’ve seen or come up with include:
http://errornerds.com/errors/?k=My-Marriage
http://errornerds.com/errors/?k=Human-Nature
http://errornerds.com/errors/?k=Cancer
http://errornerds.com/errors/?k=The-Tragedy-of-the-Commons
http://errornerds.com/errors/?k=Time-travel-paradoxes
http://errornerds.com/errors/?k=The-Nameless-Horror
http://errornerds.com/errors/?k=The-yawning-void-within-my-soul
http://errornerds.com/errors/?k=Radioactive-Robot-Holocaust-of-2029

Phishing scams like this one are interesting because they remind me just how little effort goes into most malicious computer attacks. Social engineering can be a form of hacking in some cases, but this page doesn’t even come close to the level of actual hacking.

I guess I can give them a few points for good web design. They have a lot of (stolen) logos on the right-hand side (Look, they’re hacker-proof!). The photo of “Andrew the PC Nerd” is a nice touch, too. You’d trust that guy with your computer, right? Look, he’s a youngish, slightly overweight white guy with glasses! He must know how to fix computers. And if that’s not enough proof for you, he’s standing in front of a Windows logo! Sidenote: It should be a tipoff that a site is a scam when every single image on the page links to the same download URL.

Shamelessly hotlinked without permission

Their comments section also deserve props for being convincingly banal (“errr…I hate Microdude sometimes, why couldn’t they make vista as good as xp?”). Although the 4th comment down takes its “username” from the search query, which can lead to some incongruous results. It’s also smart of them to have the comments supposed posting times listed in terms of days from the present, rather than fixed dates. It saves them the trouble of having to update their scam site. If you actually try to leave a comment, it redirects to a generic “windows errors” page, with your new comment on the bottom. Well done, although I have to penalize for crappy grammar (“Error Your Getting?”).

All in all, I’ll give the errornerds a 2/5, with points for presentation and comedy, if not for actual technique or skill.