Yahoo, July 04, 2002  (translated from German)

New Pirate Dialers fended off
 

Berlin (ots) – The new 0900 dialer programs were fended off shortly after they existence became known. As the IT information service "getfax" reported on Monday, the internet technology company Nutzwerk GmbH in Leipzig managed to find an anti-serum against the programs and to integrate it into their "all around internet protection" SaferSurf within a few minutes. All SaferSurf users were protected against the new attack from the internet as soon as it occurred.

"getfax" warned against dialers that installed themselves from seemingly harmless web pages. The new pirate dialer did not occur as executable program (as would be expected) but as a library containing the pirate program features. The library installs itself fully automatically and without user knowledge on the private PC. The subsequent control and dialing of the expensive phone numbers is carried out by embedded scripts in a common HTML page, using the Active Scripting features of the Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The new dialer were considered unvincible, even by experts. Some access providers had already started to offer their customers the blocking of typical dialer codes. Computer magazines recommended the installation of expensive protection programs on the user PC or to disable the ActiveX feature of the internet browser at home.

An unnecessary effort ... As "getfax" reported, the all around internet protection "SaferSurf" of the Nutzwerk GmbH in Leipzig protects even against this new dialer generation. Nutzwerk CEO René Holzer: "SaferSurf is also prepared for future attacks from the internet."

Background:
Nutzwerk has been developing base technologies for the internet since 1997. In 1998 René Holzer, founder of Nutzwerk, invented a real-time data filter (patent: DE 199 58 638) that analyzes the contents of data streams. It identifies and eliminates viruses, critical contents and ad banners. There is no installation of an anti-virus program on the user PC necessary.