Black Screen Wallpaper from Sophos
Graham Cluley of Sophos made a Black Screen Wallpaper available for download. He also wrote:
Joking aside, PrevX's original blog post does seem to have been unfortunate. The claim that the problem could affect "millions" or Windows users was clearly far wide of the mark.
If there had been problem as widespread as PrevX's initial headline suggested then we would have expected many reports popping up on the net.
Obviously Prevx's alert has backfired on them, and I think they've shown good character in coming clean and apologising to the IT community and Microsoft specifically for any confusion that has occurred.
It's always challenging to get the right balance between warning the public of a security threat and checking your facts to the "nth" degree. Clearly on this occasion, Prevx got it wrong - but we should judge them more by how they act since the incident rather than from their one slip-up. Everyone's human - everyone can make a mistake.
Hopefully everyone can now move on to the more important and pressing real issues that face IT teams. But if you are feeling left out of the Black Screen of Death experience, please feel free to download the wallpaper.
Update: I've had a few people contact me saying that I've been far too kind to Prevx in my post above.
The truth is, I think they've been punished enough by the online community - and I don't really feel like joining in on the beating. Some of the debate is getting rather ugly, and there are more important issues for the security community to be focusing on.
http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/12/03/download-black-screen-death/
IMHO, that Black Screen wallpaper can be use by hoax distributors but anyone can make such anyway even without the above drama.
BTW, related to this Black Screen drama…Chief Security Advisor of Microsoft EMEA Roger Halbheer said:
Looking at that, you should now make your risk assessment and decide which source you want to trust. For me, the ultimate source for information you should build your assessment on is neither Twitter nor your brother’s sister in law’s father's brother (unless he works for Microsoft’s security) but our website.
http://blogs.technet.com/rhalbheer/archive/2009/12/01/black-screen-of-death-reports.aspx