Monday, 1 November 2010

Fake Malicious Viewers in Circulation

All downloads from our website are safe.. do not ever trust downloads to ANY viewer that does not come directly from the website associated to that viewer... That said...

We just received a report from a credible source that there are Phoenix Viewers in circulation which have been built by others and offered as official Phoenix Viewer downloads on various hosts like mediafire. The source also tells us that there are reports that these builds have keyloggers and/or username/password loggers embedded in the code.

Please make sure that you only ever download Phoenix from our website here, and nowhere else. If someone offers you downloads to a Phoenix Viewer, or ANY viewer that is hosted outside of it's associated website, please Abuse Report them and include the link to the download being offered in the abuse report.
Linden Lab is aware of this problem and will respond accordingly. 

Our downloads are hosted on the domains of http://phoenixviewer.com or http://code.google.com/p/phoenixviewer. Do not download from anywhere else. 

Thank you.
The Phoenix Viewer Project Inc.

27 comments:

  1. Sometimes when i sign into SL with Phoenix, i get a pop-up saying my version was not distributed by Phoenix even though i downloaded it from your website. Is this connected and should i reinstall?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've had that happen too, mostly when the internet is down after a crash.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Likewise happens to me rarely. When I use Phoenix a little later in the day (no system restarts, no router resets, etc), I do not get that message.

    ReplyDelete
  4. So is that message a tip off? B/c I get it too on occasion....and now I'm worried....

    ReplyDelete
  5. If you're worried about it...I'd do a complete uninstall of Phoenix and reinstal it from the website.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I would like to see the ability to save outfits with a name .. it's the only thing i miss from Ver 2 of SL viewer.

    I like to mix and match different parts of an outfit. to be able to save in folders and label like (suit with vest) (suit with open vest n hat) then you just load that outfit like any other. That is a simplified example some of the outfits are coming with 25 or 39 pieces and I very seldom just load the outfit without making some adjustments.

    Echo

    ReplyDelete
  7. Robert, Apperance - > Save As - >

    Make sure you check the items you want to be in teh outfit folder.

    ReplyDelete
  8. me too, and then it started crashing out every three minutes.

    So I decided I needed to delete and reinstall.

    And guess what? Downloads are broken.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Re above: "Me too" means I've had this happen too:

    =Flutterby= said...

    Sometimes when i sign into SL with Phoenix, i get a pop-up saying my version was not distributed by Phoenix even though i downloaded it from your website. Is this connected and should i reinstall?

    ReplyDelete
  10. I thought that the comment re 'not being distributed/supported by phoenix' ONLY started when I accidently scrolled down to another colour, whilst on the 'schemes' page. Since choosing the 'non default', I, too, got the msg once or twice whilst attempting to log in.
    Am I barking up the wrong tree?! Haven't been overly worried as I DID get this from the 'site'!

    ReplyDelete
  11. If you got Phoenix from the main site ignore the build popup, it happens from time to time anyway.

    Once in a while something just goes wrong in the validation part of the code and boom popup heaven :D.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thank you Dan, I think that's what I'll do. :)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thank you Jeff also, I know you're right, bt just to be safe, I think I'll reinstall...although now I'm wondering if there are any rawback to oing tat...my inventory has been loading so quickly the last week or so, could doing a complete uninstall/reinstall mess that up?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Providing you downloaded from our website you can safely ignore the "Not made by phoenix" message. There is a file on our server that the viewer checks against to determine what version you are on. Sometimes the server hickups, or internet connection issues causes that file to fail to read, thus popping up the message. It is a bug that will be fixed in the next release.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I've never gotten the "Not made by Phoenix" message but I have just recently started getting a 2nd window that pops up when I start Phoenix. It looks like a DOS command prompt and it seems to run in the background and track everything that is going on while I'm on Phoenix. What is this? Has anyone else seen this?

    ReplyDelete
  16. If you downloaded the viewer from the Phoenix Website, you have nothing to worry about. The message that is popping up that says not an official phoenix build is just a simple miscommunication from the viewer to the server. It is safe to ignore that

    ReplyDelete
  17. Vixy Lune said...

    "I've never gotten the "Not made by Phoenix" message but I have just recently started getting a 2nd window that pops up when I start Phoenix. It looks like a DOS command prompt and it seems to run in the background and track everything that is going on while I'm on Phoenix. What is this? Has anyone else seen this?"


    This happens to me too, just assumed it was a new thing.

    My latest problem is crashing- ALOT

    ReplyDelete
  18. That "DOS Window" is just a debug thing, there is an option to turn it off somewhere in there.

    ReplyDelete
  19. One glaring area of concern, ... if the fake Phoenix is uninstalled, will the offending keyloggers (and others) remain?

    Once those spy programs are installed they seldom remain attached to the host program (fake Phoenix).

    ReplyDelete
  20. What would help a ton with this is to build a secure updater into Phoenix itself.

    If Phoenix does the downloading for you there's no chance of you getting it from the wrong place...

    ReplyDelete
  21. I hads been using the Emergence Viewer, however my SL kept crashing on me, so I downloaded phoenix. Now I am able to be online for maybe 5 minutes than it crashes.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I had the 'Not made by Phoenix' just once. I'd logged in on my netbook (s.l.o.w... Intel Atom) before the wifi had connected itself.
    Any clues to the cause there?
    Oh, Phoenix was 100% Phoenix from their website.

    ReplyDelete
  23. oops, just seen Jessica's post, please ignore above comment.

    ReplyDelete
  24. When I first came to SL 36 days ago,viewer 1.23 automatically loaded in with SL.I'd like to say that I had not one problem with the 1.23 viewer. On a friends suggestion,I tried the Emergence and Phoenix viewers one afternoon.Well,I had nothing but problems with Emergence;lots of camera angles blacked out,freezing and crashing very often.Then I tried the Phoenix viewer, which was not ideal for me either.Too many camera angles were blacked out,and craashing became the norm,rather than the exception,which I was guesing because my computer is 6 years old.A few days ago,I gave the Phoenix viewer another chance,and lo and behold,almost perfection.The only compalint that I have is that while trying to use voice chat,which I never did with viewer 1.23,sometimes it works perfectly,sometimes friends using the same viewer as I couldn't hear me while they came through crystal clear on my end,other times it doesn't work at all.I've tried with 2 different microphones(one just a mic,the other a headset/microphone combination).As of this writing,I still am experiencing the same trouble,using the better headphones/mic combination.Even long time residents of SL couldn't offer me any worthy explainations on how to fix this problem.Any ideas on how to make this continuously work for me in a positive way will be very much appreciated.....Stone D.

    ReplyDelete
  25. One last comment, then I will be finished for the time being. WHen I was introduced to SL at first by a real life friend who's been in SL for over 4 years, he told me that it was the best program he had experienced in 10 years. His enthusiasum was so great, that he recommended I go right home and load SL into my computer, which I did after immediately getting home, not even waiting to take my jacket off first. After a few initial false starts, I was able to get SL up and running, and have been running with it ever since. Being retired, I have plenty of time to be in SL, which I take full advantage of, sometimes staying on as late as 5:00 am, east coast time, USA.(not too many times though), talking with "friends", on the other side of the world. Second Life is better than any darn chatroom I've ever seen. My "friends" list is now up to 55 "friends", being from the west coast of the States, to Middle America, to all of the way on the other side of the world, places like Japan, Austrailia, England, and China, just to name a few. I have even made friends with some folks in "my" time zone(LOL). Keep up the great work and look forward to the new version of viewer coming out soon.........
    THANK YOU !!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  26. So, after all that has been done…Jessica decides to make a nuscence out of me again with her comments on me being the creator of neil life viewer…HELLO YOU DUMB PERVERTED FUCKING BITCH!! DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT MR POENTA IS THE CREATOR OF NEIL LIFE? I have nothing absolutely nothing to do with neil life or it’s production. Yes, i did use copybot for debugging purposes…Has anyone ever tried to go out of their way to make objects clothing layer protected as well? Imagine an object in-world that holds a texture based string only visible to the certain viewer creating the object..Like for instance we have clothing layer protections but we don’t have object layer protections now do we? Well, good thing i came along to use those so called bad features in second life to test that theory of creating an object-protection layer. It’s simple really and you don’t have to thank me jessica because you won’t ever get your hands on that peice of code…Your viewer will always be pruned to attacks and copybotters in second life. But heres what gets me. On your vids on youtube you have 80k lindens not more then an hour later you have over 150k hmmm…seems a bit fishy to me… also in her videos she talks about doing hackery actions on linden lab servers…wow!! So, we have someone who has attempted to break the terms of service on second life. Wonderful jessica!! Also jessica did you not know that defamation of character lying about someone is against the tos as well? Hmm…funny how i’m breaking tos but..you aren’t…”Sneezes…Oh i’m sorry jessica i’m allergic to BULLSHIT!!” She went out of her way to get me kicked off a good team…You really do have something to hide huh jessica? Some wonderful secrets ehh? I love it!!

    ReplyDelete
  27. Nothing more to say... I just thought i should end that battle with one last wonderful word xD

    ReplyDelete