ara pehlivanian

Yesterday I got RickRolled (again), which isn’t so bad, except that this one did everything it could to act like a virus and not just a prank.

The offending link is http://internetisseriousbusiness.com/ (don’t go there!).

It resizes your browser and starts playing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” while moving the browser window into all four corners of the screen, again not so bad. Here’s the nasty part: you can’t close the window.

The page has an onbeforeunload event handler that gets triggered when a window/tab close attempt is made. It throws up an alert box with part of the song’s lyrics in it. Closing it just opens up another alert box effectively keeping you from ever closing the window. Most people have no choice but to force quit their browser, but here’s how to get out without losing everything you’re working on:

1. Keep your finger down on the Esc key till there are no more alert boxes
2. Turn off JavaScript (this is easier if you have a tool like the Web Developer Toolbar Firefox add-on or the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar)
3. Close the offending window
4. Throttle the jerk who RickRolled you

The Whois information for http://internetisseriousbusiness.com/ is:

Domain Name: INTERNETISSERIOUSBUSINESS.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS43.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS44.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Updated Date: 28-jan-2008
Creation Date: 08-mar-2007
Expiration Date: 08-mar-2009