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https://zdnet.com/article/that-weird-captcha-could-be-a-malware-trap-heres-how-to-protect-yourself
March 2025 Security Warning about new malware attacks that use the Captcha routine with a twist. This doesn’t rely on strange pictures but a set of computer commands which allow access to files that are exploited to access the files that have different extensions including html and jpg extensions. The first point of access is that some surfers don’t know what’s going on and just assume this new con trick isn’t a con trick. So they blindly agree and then the malware gets to install itself.
Get the picture?
The do this, do that routine is easily accepted so we must avoid any switches to different screen displays such as the article explains.
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Thanks for some feedback as this malware situation is attacking on different levels and this one is deliberately set as a trap for Internet newbies and the impulsive link clickers. Behind the scenes there are different links to the malware that can’t be spotted easily because they could be image files rather than exe files. I can’t say that the jpg appears to get itself displayed to disguise itself or if it just doesn’t show itself at all. Furthermore, different web browsers change the jpg files so they have different names such as f_ then a number yet without the extension so we can’t tell if it’s HTM or HTML or FONT TTF or gif or webp or webm or mov or mp4 and so on.
I use Irfanview’s image viewer and editor. I load up the folder’s files and these get shown whether gifs, jpgs, pngs or webp files. I can’t see the th files unless I edit the extension such as webp by using the XYPlorerFree program. I then open these with Irfanview thumbs and see the webp files displayed. Now I sort out the images I don’t need before I even deal with the ones I can. Now I click an image to see if it tells me it’s a gif, a jpg or a png or an svg file. When I get the details I agree to rename these and finally I can convert some files into png files and start to file these into different folders. I learned recently that a folder can get explored to find certain files for me such as f_ etc or th or thm or thumb or small etc.
Apart from these situations I use the NIRSOFT programs to view Internet Cache folders for different web browsers. The alternatives are limited from then on except to use the Internet web browser extension called LOADFY or LOADIFY as that collects images as a separate web page and sometimes adds the larger image versions, too. Download hundreds of images that way or save the complete web page itself.
Talk about a palaver!
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