John Pierce wrote:
> Has anybody run across a spyware that won't allow you to open
> certain sites, and redirects? Friend of mine was telling me that he
> could not get to yahoo.com. I visited his house and realized that he
> had been hi-jacked. But instead of just resetting his home page, this
> bug seemed to redirect some of his URLs. When he wanted to go to
> yahoo he was being redirected to a site that looked like an official
> "Can not find server...." but it also had links to search, shop, and
> play games. Dummy me I didn't try to figure out the URL he was being
> sent to I just downloaded and ran the latest version of ad ware and
> it recognized 208 pieces of junk, which I removed. Now instead of
> getting redirected it just won't allow him to open certain sites like
> Microsoft, and Yahoo, he now gets the "server down, try home page /
> refresh" error. I am going to have him reset his browser settings and
> see what that does. I tried to get him to update IE to version 6.0
> but like I said, he can't even get onto MS sites. Any suggestions?
>
> thanks in advance

Some nasties modify the HOSTS file. Nowadays the HOSTS file is used for
ad blocking.
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm