Dumb trojan assumes you’re a pervert

Both the press and the blogosphere lately have been buzzing with news of a new “trojan” program known as “Yusufali-A“. This program, when the user types a number of words commonly used in porn, intersperses a verse from the Qur’an as well as Yusuf Ali’s translation of it. The reaction, from Muslims and others, is disapproving as one might expect. A blogger called Laura Mansfield says that this is a known cracker called Irhabi007 (Irhabi means terrorist), “better known for the hacking and cracking tips he posts on Jihadi boards, and for appropriating server space from unsuspecting companies and governmental agencies in an attempt to spread Islamist propaganda”. (From Nzingha’s Soapbox.)

This trojan is bad because it’s an unwarranted invasion of someone else’s machine. That, on its own, is bad enough, but there’s another reason why this is bad: there is this program lurking in your computer, which assumes the very worst about you. If you even mention something which is remotely related to pornography, it pops up and accuses you.

This is the same reason why I hate those right-click blockers some web masters use. The right click has a number of perfectly legitimate uses, and what they are trying to block (the copying and pasting of their article, usually into a mass email) has another route to accomplishment, namely the “Edit” menu at the top of the window or screen. The quoting of short extracts in a comment on the article, which is “fair use”, is also accomplished with the same two methods. The blocker can’t distinguish the two, until someone writes some program to block long, or repeated, copying.

But, you click the right mouse button to move back to the last page, and that message pops up telling you to fear Allah and that copying is haraam. And that’s the same thing this wretched program does: it assumes you’re a pervert just because you mention porn, or the words “teen” or “penis” or perhaps a few other words. Even though you might be talking about spam on your blog, or your fertility problem, or something else totally innocent.

Whoever wrote this no doubt based it heavily on someone else’s work (there are well-known to be “virus writing kits” for people who know where to find them). There’s no justification for it, not least because it will affect far more legitimate activity than immorality.