Security loophole?

[Matrixhasu77]

Does anyone know how to kill the windows XP loophole that lets a hacker send a pop up(a message) that appears on you desktop? I got one of these, I've known about the glitch for awhile, but seeing as how the patch for it was posted way back in about november, i dont remember what it was called. I have Service Pack 1(which supposedly fixed the glitch), and don't like the fact that my computer is vunerable to such a thing. I may be paranoid, but its better than having your computer screwed up by someone with evil intentions.
I used the printscreen button on my keyboard to take a screenshot of it but I have no idea if it worked or where windows placed it. Any ideas are extremely welcome. Thanks.

 

[Spock]

To use the Print screen button:
1 press the button
2 Go into a paint program
3 goto paste
4 save
Now you have a print(ed)screen

as for the first part i have not a clue

 

[Matrixhasu77]

Thank you spock. now I can attach the image I was talking about.
This is the message I got, and I want to know how to prevent a message like this from happening again.

 

[Solid Fro]

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14958

 

[Tom M]

If you installed anything with Gator Software, or DivX5 then you need to get used to those pop ups. (there are others too, but those are the 2 major ones off the top of my head.)
Basically that ad you got isn't someone hacking, nor is there an actual loophole (although there might be depending on your OS) but it's a scare tactic designed to get you to buy crappy software.(I know tons of people getting that exact message, and I used to as well before I did a clean install of XP last week.)

Beware what you install, and say yes to. (Comet software, Gator etc etc..) These will just lead to tons of pop up ads like that one.

 

[Matrixhasu77]

Thanks Viper_Zero. that information will help me to hopefully kill messanger sevices on my comp. And Tom, my computer is practically brand new, i havent had it for more than three weeks. I dont have any spieware installed on it(that i know of; i run spybot almost weekly to clear any cookies I may have on my system from surfing the internet. I just don't like the idea of someone sending me spam through that. I get enough spam in my email as is.

 

[Tom M]

Originally posted by Matrixhasu77
Thanks Viper_Zero. that information will help me to hopefully kill messanger sevices on my comp. And Tom, my computer is practically brand new, i havent had it for more than three weeks. I dont have any spieware installed on it(that i know of; i run spybot almost weekly to clear any cookies I may have on my system from surfing the internet. I just don't like the idea of someone sending me spam through that. I get enough spam in my email as is.

If your getting that message, you've already got spyware, no matter how new your PC is.

 

[Matrixhasu77]

That's not spyware though, its a known hole in XP. People use that hole to send you pop ups like that to convince you to buy crap software like you said. I probably have spyware installed on this thing, but I doubt it. Oh well, its killed and will never happen again now that I am running ZoneAlarm on this computer.

 

[Solid Fro]

Yeah, it is a loophole in XP. This tactic uses a service in XP called Messenger. It is used to notify users on a network.

 

[Josh]

Whoa.

Weird timing...

 

[Matrixhasu77]

thats funny, Josh.