False positive: about:blank

I think it's a bit ridiculous to consider starting a web
browser with a blank page as a High spyware threat....

-Mike

Internet Explorer Start Page: about:blank

Possible Browser Hijack
Type: Browser Hijacker
Threat Level: High

Mike Kienenberger wrote:

> I think it's a bit ridiculous to consider starting a web
> browser with a blank page as a High spyware threat....
>
> -Mike
>
> Internet Explorer Start Page: about:blank
>
> Possible Browser Hijack
> Type: Browser Hijacker
> Threat Level: High
>

Mike,

My system has about:blank as the Homepage and I'm not getting the
warning that you are. Try going to Tools, Advanced Tools, Browser
Hijack Settings Restore, and setting the Homepage from within there to
see if that resolves the warning message.

Steve Wechsler (akaMowGreen)
MVP Windows Server
AumHa VSOP

fwiw, Ad-Aware 6 on my Win98SE box, after a recent update
(original version didn't do this), also hits on
about:blank. You would think that such an entry would be
benign, but perhaps some spyware out there is using it.
Interestingly, it only hits on that for IE; I also start up
Mozilla on blank, but that's not flagged. Maybe the
Ad-Aware types don't know how to check Netscape/Mozilla
settings? Does MS' spyware-killer check
Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox?

Yes, I need to update Mozilla to Firefox, but haven't found
the hours to download it yet (still on dialup...).
>-----Original Message-----
>I think it's a bit ridiculous to consider starting a web
>browser with a blank page as a High spyware threat....
>
>-Mike
>
>Internet Explorer Start Page: about:blank
>
>Possible Browser Hijack
>Type: Browser Hijacker
>Threat Level: High
>

Some of the CoolWebSearch variants (among others) use this
as a browser home page. I think they actually change the
handler for about:blank so it launches the adware DLL
instead when you go to that page.

I agree it shouldn't detect it unless you are also
infected with CWS or similar.

Kyle
>-----Original Message-----
>I think it's a bit ridiculous to consider starting a web
>browser with a blank page as a High spyware threat....
>
>-Mike
>
>Internet Explorer Start Page: about:blank
>
>Possible Browser Hijack
>Type: Browser Hijacker
>Threat Level: High
>
>.
>