in reply to Re: A minilanguage with the least effort?
in thread A minilanguage with the least effort?

avast claims that the link is malware :(

A Trojan Horse Was Found
...
File name:    http://billhails.net/Book/
Malware name: JS:Agent-AV [Trj]
Malware type: Trojan Horse
VPS version:  090216-1, 16/02/2009

[download]
So take care

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: A minilanguage with the least effort?
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Feb 17, 2009 at 19:33 UTC

    The link itself? Something on the page pointed to? Something linked to from the page pointed to?

    Google doesn't flag it?

    What's "avast"? An how much faith do you have in it?

    Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
    "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
    In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]
      avast is an anti-virus program (I suspect you already knew that), and it popped up the aforementioned warning when I clicked on the link you gave.

      Do I have faith in it? I guess I do, in that I believe it when it warns me about malware. Then again, I'm very cautious when it comes to anti-virus, and would believe any AV program's warnings. (Except of course for Norton AV. That's almost malware itself).

      Update

      The javascript (http://billhails.net/Book/book.js) looked harmless to me (but I know next to nothing about javascript). I took no chances and retrieved the PDF using a Linux console browser (elinks, FWIW).

      Thanks for the link.

[reply]

        I've looked at the pdf with AVG and BitDefender and they find nothing. I also attached a copy of the pdf to an email and sent it to myself so that my isp's multiple, expensive and constantly updated scanners would give it the once over, and they found nothing either.

        That said, Gavin's Symantec Av also flagged the link. So, you pays your maney and takes your choice I guess.

        I can tell that I have opened the pdf (with FoxIt) and there is no sign of anything untoward.

        Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
        "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
        In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]
        I took no chances and retrieved the PDF using a Linux console browser

        I routinely run with JS disabled. As far as I can tell, book.js is only used for the presentation of/links to footnotes in the online html version of the book (see the link bottom left).

        Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
        "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
        In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]

      It's also picked up by Symantec Antivirus as a downloader and cleaned by deletion.

      May still be a false positive.

[reply]
[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom