Saturday, October 12, 2013

The Quest to the Master Race, or how I probably got a virus from trying to get Pokemon X




Alright, let me start off by saying that the only reason I'm cataloging this is so A) I actually post something today and B) So people know why I'm not going to be posting for the next few months

As you all know, Pokemon X & Y just came out recently. Everyone I know is talking about it, mostly because everyone I know is a "m-muh pokemons" fag, but I digress.

Anyway, I wanted to try my luck to see if there happened to be a 3DS emulator that I could use to play the game. Sure enough, googling "3DS emulator" comes with this result.

This is bound to be legit, right guys? Guys?
So I watched the video, and it led me to an extremely sketchy blogspot website, like one you go to to get free WoW characters. As it turns out, it was exactly like that.

First of all, the download link was blocked by this thing that made you either tweet about it, like it, or + it. I went with Twitter because it was the only one that you were able to delete everything and post something completely off the topic, so instead of "LEL I GOT POKEMANZ FOR FREE [link]" it ended up just being "poop".

After tweeting "about" it, it led me to a survey page.

Most of my luck with these stupid fucking surveys have just been "hueheuheu you are trapped in an eternal survey!!!!" that never ends and in the end you don't even get to download the virus in the first place. However, that day for whatever fucking reason I was so determined to get Pokemon X I got my hands dirty.

The first one said "WIN A FREE IPHONE 5", so I just told myself "might as well" and clicked it. This led me to perhaps the worst fucking survey page imaginable -- about fifty iphone 5's made in a square format outlined the background as the annoying tone of the default iPhone ringer went through my ears at decibels greater than a plane taking off. Still, I preserved. Eventually I got to the point where you had to put in all of your personal information, a place where I had stopped at most of the time. However this time I just decided to put in all of David Baszucki's public information.


At least he'll know it was for a good cause.
Even after I had put in "my" personal information for the NSA to spy on me and give me boatloads of ads, the surveys continued. There was some for health insurance, car insurance, and dental insurance. No matter where I went, the surveys followed.

I had just about given up when all of a sudden one window named "Save As" popped up (then followed fifty more but that's besides the point). At first I thought it was trying to download some virus, but I realized -- it was the 3DS emulator and game.

At that point was when the virus had potential to hit. I checked the download -- the game was a standard, non-suspicious .nds file while the other was a slightly-suspicious .exe file.

After checking both with Security Essentials and AVG at least 30 times, I pondered the idea of opening up safe mode, but decided to go big and try doing it on default anyway. The only thing that popped up was this window.

Ruh roh.

This is it. This is where the virus was going to attack.

I'd seen "Missing .dll" windows before from such likes as audacity, but this one seemed to have a, thisistotallyavirusandifyouclickityouarefuckingretarded feel to it. Of course, I didn't click the "DOWNLOAD FOR VIRUS" button, but instead decided to try my luck in googling the .dll. Surely not more people could be playing along with this malware, right?

After googling and finding the NoDevice link, it had turned out that the data.dll was actually a Windows-made .dll file. This should mean that it already came with the computer, but nevertheless I decided to download it anyway.

After downloading the .dll, I decided to open up the emulator try and verify the .dll. So, what happens next? You'll find out the next time I update this post, either in 10 minutes or 2 years.

EDIT

Unfortunately, this was neither a virus nor a legitimate copy. 

After trying to use the .dll I had downloaded, I noticed it didn't work. So instead I just went to go download the one it sent me to, which lead to a bunch of "$1 offers!!!!". So I decided to stop there.

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