CometCursor : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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CometCursor: A thankfully defunct virus that changes your cursor to various icons including Nelson Mandela’s head or an angel. The program can somehow install itself without your permission when you visit certain websites. I suspect it uses a security hole in Internet Explorer or Netscape. I’m not bitching about the comet cursor plugin being installed without permission or with a single surreptitious click, I’m furious that the cometcursor application was installed without my permission. It starts itself outside the browser and starts itself afresh at every boot. The only thing that makes CometCursor any different from an ordinary virus is that its authors brazenly advertise their website. Not all viruses format your hard disk. You can block it in Internet Explorer by setting security setting to normal, rather than the low default, which leaves you vulnerable to ActiveX attacks like this.
PC World rated CometCursor the 16th worst technical product of all time.
virus

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