I think Konfabulator (now known as YaHoo! Widget Engine) has been Hacked!

[Up2Late]

What should I do?
First, I'd like to say that I loved the old version of Konfabulator, and I don't know why they went and changed so much of it in Version 3.x. I've had plenty of trouble with the new version.

Here's why I say I think it's been hacked: When I run it, I use mostly system monitoring widgets because I hate not knowing what's going on (and through) my computer. Lately I've been running:

Yahoo! Weather
PTemp30
SimpleMonitor
Digital Clock
UTC Clock
freeSpace
Desktop Calender

Sometimes, if those are acting strange, I get rid of Simple Monitor and switch to:

CPU Portal
Bandwith_Graph
Memory Gauge

Without the current version of YaHoo! Widget Engine running, my Processor (P4 3.2Ghz) idles at about 5% usage.

With YWE, my CPU idols at about 20% and my 100Mbps Network connection is working at at about 0.09% or 14.0KB/s (I'm connected to Cable modem that is supposed to Max out at about 500-700KB/s)

Normally, my Ram usage % is about 54% (according to Simple Monitor and Memory Gauge), but for some unknown reason, my Memory usage is at 82% today.

Anyway, here's what I've seen happen:

I will have these monitors working, and all are showing steady reading in the ranges I quoted above, but the last few nights, (usually very late 1:30-3:30am) while on DU reading something or typing a reply or something, I've looked up to find my CPU usage going crazy, usually between 70% and 100% usage. Most of the time it corresponds with really High network bandwidth usage too.

Normally what I do when I see that is, I use my Norton Internet Security program to "Block Traffic," which it does, it stops the through-put cold, and usually the CPU usage goes way down too, back to the 20-25% range. But last night, it stopped the traffic, but the CPU usage kept going (stayed at 70%). I should probably say, my hard drives are usually getting hit too while this is happening.

So when I saw the CPU still going, I started shutting things down, one of the first was the YaHoo! Widget Engine, and when I shut that down, everything went back to normal.

So that's why I think this has something to do with the YWE. So what should I do now? Who should I contact about this?:shrug:


BTW, I just remembered what could be behind my increased Memory usage, I went to a Microsoft Security (Beta) site last night, and downloaded a system scanning program, it might also be monitoring my system too, I'm not sure though.

[Maestro]

1. I've stopped using it.

I loved konfabulator before Yahoo got a hold of it. Heck, I was using it back when it was a for pay product and not free, but I too saw the usage go sky high with the Yahoo version. I don't think it has been hacked though. Rather I think Yahoo is putting stuff on our systems that, at least up until now, anti-spyware programs are not identifying. I took it off and went back to the hold version. Everything still works just fine and the new Yahoo version did nothing special as far as I could see.

[Up2Late]

2. That might be the way to go. Do you recall what the last non-YaHoo...

...version was? 2.11?

[Maestro]

3. 2.11 is the one. -nt