: Attention : Blizzard adware

[Dope_Man]

Hi all ^^

Just found something very interesting and really shocking on Eurobattle.net forums:

Recently it was discovered ( by Phoenicks ) that blizzard new banner system ( 1.23 patch ) was in fact a adware or for some a spyware to your warcraft 3 game.

http://eurobattle.net/showthread.php?t=89976

[Blood.Bank]

lol >.> blizzard going nuts :o

[lyne]

Do you know if running their patch fix, will affect your normal battlenet?

[NETRAT]

this patch does affect any connections to madserver.net, so this affacts any adware or spyware which connects to this server, no matter if u start euroloader.exe or simply war3.exe
but this patch is safe


Registrant:
Microsoft Corporation
Domain Administrator
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
US
Email:

Registrar Name....: CORPORATE DOMAINS, INC.
Registrar Whois...: whois.corporatedomains.com
Registrar Homepage: www.cscprotectsbrands.com

Domain Name: madserver.netthis domain is owned by microsoft

[Spasmolyt]

This "patch" is just a batch file that places those lines into your hosts-file:
127.0.0.1 madserver.net
127.0.0.1 ad.madserver.net
127.0.0.1 imp.madserver.net
127.0.0.1 media.madserver.net
127.0.0.1 locate.madserver.net

Which were in my hosts file anyway. You can find it in %windir%/system32/drivers/etc.
I recommend getting the one from here (http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm) not only to block banners, but also to help block cross server scripting attacks (often via banners), cut down on tracking cookies, save bandwidth, cpu power, display space and generally to make most website look better and load faster without all those distrating flashing advertisings everywhere.

[Sir Rogers]

Sometimes you get random disconnects from games on bnet. That is due to the adware making connection attempts.

The patch will generally make your normal wc3 experience on bnet and eurobattle better.