aldousd666 wrote:
> Hotbar has always been annoying, and it's even more annoying that it
> 'upgrades' itself. Yesterday, I discovered on one of my users's
> machines that it had downloaded the newest version of itself,
> installed it, and then my user was unable to see our exchange servers,
> or any of our internal IP addresses. I couldn't believe it. I looked
> in the network card configuration, under TCP/IP, and even though the
> adapter was set to use DHCP, it now had two new IP addresses for DNS
> servers, and what's worse it DELETED the internal DNS servers from the
> list altogether. I don't remembers the DNS servers that it was using,
> because I was so feverishly trying to disable it. I'd disable it, and
> look again 5 minutes later, and poof, hotbar had effectively
> re-installed itself, and again changed the dns servers to it's own.
> This actually caused my user to be unable to work! He claims that he
> didn't install it knowingly, and somehow this doesn't surprise me.
> The hotbar uninstaller (HBUninstFull.exe -- available from hotbar.com)
> did successfully get rid of it, as opposed to deleting all of the
> Apps, and DLL's (that weren't in use already) still allowed it to
> install and re-configure the dns settings as I've said. This is
> unbelievable, and I cannot understand why these guys don't get sued
> back into the stoneage. After looking at the Terms of Service, it
> mentions NOTHING about hijacking the DNS settings. Please let me know
> if you have any more info on the evils of hotbar, and why it's legal
> (or is it?) for them to change my DNS settings on my ethernet adapter.

A few ad parasites are even modifying/adding to the HOSTS file. That is
why the latest Ad-Aware checks for known HOSTS file modifications.
http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/ look for HotBar
http://security.kolla.de/index.php?l...spybots-hotbar

My HOSTS file for Hotbar.
# Hotbar

127.0.0.1 dynamic.hotbar.com
127.0.0.1 hotbar.com
127.0.0.1 installs.hotbar.com
127.0.0.1 promos.hotbar.com
127.0.0.1 puv.hotbar.com
127.0.0.1 reports.hotbar.com
127.0.0.1 skins.hotbar.com
127.0.0.1 updates.hotbar.com
127.0.0.1 vip-farm1.hotbar.com
127.0.0.1 vip-farm2.hotbar.com
127.0.0.1 www.hotbar.com