Caveat Emptor

I've just come across a site called exelib, and on the surface it appears to be quite useful. It tells you what some of the programs Windows runs behind the scenes on your computer actually do. However, there is a page there which mentions a program called isass.exe. It says this is a keylogger program installed by a virus/trojan, and that may well be the case. It then says "hey look, we have a program that will get rid of this program for you - click here to find out more."

What's dangerous about this is that there's actually a perfectly harmless program that's part of the Windows installation, called lsass.exe (that's an L at the beginning there). A lot of people would open up task manager, see lsass running, and think it's Isass (with a capital i). They think they're infected, and then go and download a "protection tool" that could well cause more harm than it claims to fix.

As ever, keep your wits about you, and research a problem before downloading anything that claims to fix problems on your PC.

For more accurate information about lsass, look at the Wikipedia Entry