I posted a car on Craigslist the other day and since then I've been getting nothing but scam emails that contain links the people want me to click. I know not to clink the links and that it's a scam, but nonetheless I am still curious as to what these people are up to. Is there a way to safely view a website that I know may be malicious? I know I could create a VM machine but was looking for another method that may be a little quicker than that.
For what it's worth, I'm running XP Pro SP3 and typically use Firefox (3.5.5).
5 Answers
Is there a way to safely view a website that I know may be malicious?
grab Sandboxie and safely view ANY website.
6You can use Sandboxie. I'd still be afraid, but only because I've never tried something like that. In theory though everything that a web site did would be completely isolated and undone by just deleting the sandbox. You could also get a text only (like Lynx) browser. You should be able to see enough of the web site to get an idea what they are trying to do.
3Boot from a linux live CD and browse the suspect sites from it. The odds are overwhelmingly high that the malware is targeting windows so you shouldn't have anything to worry about.
You can download and burn Knoppix. It is a bootable Linux designed to run entirely from the CD. Most distros offer live CDs, but Knoppix is specifically designed to run entirely from a CD.
Since you are running your OS from a ramdisk and the CD, you cannot do any harm unless you mount your hard drive, and even then the chances are very very very slim that any damage can be done.
1I've use a text-based browser to do this in the past. Usually, that would be w3m, but lynx will do in a pinch.
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