HOSTS file

  • Thread starter Thread starter Marc Hillman
  • Start date Start date
M

Marc Hillman

My HOSTS file, the start of which appears below, seems to contain a very
large list of undesirable sites, all 'revectored' to 127.0.0.1. What is the
purpose of this? I thought the DNS cache was suposed to be full of sites
frequently used, not sites never used. Can anyone explain what this
accomplishes?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------
# localhost: Needs to stay like this to work
127.0.0.1 localhost

# KaZaA related:

127.0.0.1 desktop.kazaa.com
127.0.0.1 www.altnetp2p.com
127.0.0.1 alpha.kazaa.com
127.0.0.1 shop.kazaa.com
127.0.0.1 www.bonzi.com
_______________________________________
Marc Hillman, Melbourne, Australia
web: http://users.tpg.com.au/mhillman/
 
Marc Hillman said:
My HOSTS file, the start of which appears below, seems to contain a very
large list of undesirable sites, all 'revectored' to 127.0.0.1. What is the
purpose of this? I thought the DNS cache was suposed to be full of sites
frequently used, not sites never used. Can anyone explain what this
accomplishes?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- --
---------
# localhost: Needs to stay like this to work
127.0.0.1 localhost

# KaZaA related:

127.0.0.1 desktop.kazaa.com
127.0.0.1 www.altnetp2p.com
127.0.0.1 alpha.kazaa.com
127.0.0.1 shop.kazaa.com
127.0.0.1 www.bonzi.com
_______________________________________
Marc Hillman, Melbourne, Australia
web: http://users.tpg.com.au/mhillman/
Click to expand...

Seems you got yourself a little virus. I've heard of a virus of
voulnerability in IE, or whatever, that messes up the DNS settings and the
hosts file.

The hosts file is not a part of the dns cache in the client. It is a highly
manually updated file, so if you didn't add those sites, someone else, or a
virus, did it for you.


Arild
 
Sean said:
Are you running any spy ware killers, if so that is the
issue. The list of sites you have list are all well know
spyware. If anything in your system calls on those
websites they will be redirected to the loop back address
(127.0.0.1). That way the info they collect will not be
forwarded.
Click to expand...

Sean's right. It's for blocking unwanted sites ( doubleclick.com,
spyware crap, hit counters, trackers or whatever). I have a hosts file
I downloaded from somewhere and it comes in real handy. Here's the link
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm .. Other nice stuff on that
site too..

jason
contain a very


127.0.0.1. What is the


be full of sites


what this
Click to expand...


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My HOSTS file, the start of which appears below, seems to contain a very
large list of undesirable sites, all 'revectored' to 127.0.0.1. What is the
purpose of this? I thought the DNS cache was suposed to be full of sites
frequently used, not sites never used. Can anyone explain what this
accomplishes?
Click to expand...

I don't think it's a virus or anything like that. You (or some other
user) must have installed Kazaa Lite, a spyware-free version of the
regular Kazaa file sharing programm. Kazaa Lite, puts those extra
lines in your hosts file, in order to stop ad sites from appearing. It
actually redirects any request from your machine to these sites back
to your machine, so they can never be resolved and never displayed.
Maybe you have noticed that after intalling Kazaa Lite, some ad
banners don't appear anymore in your browser. This was good-intended
but if you don't like it, you can manually remove those entries from
the hosts file. Remember to leave the 127.0.0.1 localhost line.

HTH
 
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