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Bill Day wants a second chance. Day is chief executive of WhenU.com Inc., a New York advertising company that used to smuggle its ''spyware" computer programs onto millions of Internet computers. Spyware programs have long infuriated Internet users by installing themselves without permission, generating a flood of unwanted pop-up advertisements, and even preventing users from uninstalling the offending programs. ''That's the legacy that we're trying to overcome," Day said. Battered by public outrage, WhenU hired Day in late 2004 to chart a new course for the company. Spyware is a $2 billion industry, according to Internet infrastructure and security company...

People tell me I bash Microsoft too much; that Microsoft's products really are great. OK, so I won't bash Microsoft this time around. I'll let Microsoft's own friends do it.

In May 2005, a trojan called PGPcoder was discovered in the wild by Websense Security Labs. The trojan's purpose was to encrypt a user's files, then demand a ransom for their decryption. Although this scheme seemed novel, it is actually predated by over 15 years, by a similar scam in 1989. LURHQ's Threat Intelligence Group has now discovered a third such scheme involving ransomware which we are calling Cryzip. Unlike PGPcoder, which used a custom encryption scheme (which was subsequently reverse-engineered by LURHQ), Cryzip uses a commercial zip library in order to store files inside a password-protected zip. Although the...

SAN FRANCISCO – A California man was indicted Friday on federal charges of creating a robot-like network of hijacked computers that helped him and two others bring in $100,000 for installing unwanted ad software. The indictment from a federal grand jury in Seattle also accuses Christopher Maxwell, 20, and two unidentified conspirators of crippling Seattle's Northwest Hospital with a ”botnet” attack in January 2005. Authorities say the hospital attack caused $150,000 in damages, shut down the intensive care unit and disabled doctors' pagers. “Some people consider botnets a mere annoyance or inconvenience for consumers but they are highly destructive,” U.S....

A company that develops antispyware software believes it has found a massive identity theft ring that appears to be using the evil and persistent CoolWebSearch spyware program. Anyone who's been unfortunate enough to be infected with CoolWebSearch knows that a bear it is to remove. If Sunbelt Software is correct, while it clings to your hard drive it's sending private information to evildoers: In some recent research into a spyware exploit, our research team has discovered a massive identity theft ring. We also found the keylogger transcript files that are being uploaded to the servers. This is real spyware stuff-chat...

During the past two evenings a curious spectre has appeared in the lower right quandrant of my computer monitor. It is an appeal from "Viewpoint Media Ware" that demands I either a.) enable it, b.) visit their website, or c.) find out more about these people. A "right click" on the window did not bring up any menu to disable it, close it, or ban it. Far be it from me to click on any executables without knowing where I'm headed. I could not close the window without shutting down altogether, which I did. After booting up again, I did...

SAN FRANCISCO, July 15 - Add personal computers to the list of throwaways in the disposable society. On a recent Sunday morning when Lew Tucker's Dell desktop computer was overrun by spyware and adware - stealth software that delivers intrusive advertising messages and even gathers data from the user's machine - he did not simply get rid of the offending programs. He discarded the whole computer. Mr. Tucker, an Internet industry executive who holds a Ph.D. in computer science, decided that rather than take the time to remove the offending software, he would spend $400 on a new machine. He...

Unwanted software slithered into Patti McMann's home computer over the Internet and unleashed an annoying barrage of pop-up ads that sometimes flashed on her screen faster than she could close them. Annoying, for sure. But the last straw came a year ago when the pop-ups began plugging such household names as J.C. Penney Co. and Capital One Financial Corp., companies McMann expected to know better. Didn't they realize that trying to reach people through spyware and its ad-delivering subset, called adware, would only alienate them? "It irritated the heck out of me," said McMann, a 45-year-old former corporate executive from...

The next time you run a scan with your anti-spyware tool, it might miss some programs. Several anti-spyware firms, including Aluria, Lavasoft, and PestPatrol, have quietly stopped detecting adware from companies like Claria and WhenU--a process called delisting. Those adware companies have been petitioning anti-spyware firms to delist their software; other companies have resorted to sending cease-and-desist letters that threaten legal action. In most cases it's difficult for customers to determine whether their anti-spyware tool has delisted anything and, if so, which adware it skips. "When a spyware program gets delisted, users won't be aware of its presence," says Harvard...

Drudge is certainly becomming the clutter king of the net. To avoid being inudated by spyware and popups I'm not only running IE's native popup stopper under XP but I'm also forced to use Panicware's commercial version.Drudge is also one of the few sites that can defeat Firefox's Adblock extension. It may take 4 tries to eliminate his ever changing URL for his top banner during a single session and then the URLs are different the next day.If it gets worse, color Mat gone on the "Links' menu.

Can anyone help? When I click on a link I often get the message: Error Not Found The requested URL was not found on this server and the URL that pops up is: http://www.adsourcecorp.com/404_not_found.htm Any help would be appreciated. mcenedo

In an attempt to pre-empt computer hackers, Microsoft is developing "virtual" PCs to scour the web for previously unseen attack code. At the software giant's Cybersecurity and Systems Management lab, based in Washington State, US, researchers are building a squad of the virtual PCs - created in software rather than hardware - to explore the darker corners of the world wide web. To any website they visit, the machines appear to be a normal home computer. But the PCs are seeking out code designed to attack a computer and will sound an alarm if any code is executed in contravention...

New York (AHN)- Researchers at Symantec Corp. bought a brand new PC this year and connected it to the internet. They browsed without installing any kind of protection software. After one hour of surfing five or six children's sites and clicking around, they discovered the computer had been loaded with 359 different pieces of adware software. With travel sites averaging 64 adware programs and sports sites 17, kid's sites clearly lead the pack in adware inundation. The ads offer free Ipods or "punch the president" type games, which kids find inticing. Clicking on one of these banner ads is followed...

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a lawsuit against Web marketer Intermix Media on Thursday, charging it with being a source of adware and spyware programs that hinder online commerce and security. Spitzer's office, describing the suit as the "most sweeping case to date involving programs that redirect Web addresses, add toolbars and deliver pop-up ads," said it arose from a six-month investigation of Intermix. The probe found that Intermix was installing advertising software on home computers without informing the owners that it was doing so, Spitzer's office said. In a statement, Spitzer framed the case as an effort...

CoolWebSearch, adware that generates more than $300 million a year for its maker, is the "Ebola" of adware, and easily the most significant spyware threat on the Internet, an anti-spyware security firm said Wednesday. CoolWebSearch, which comes in multiple forms, can hijack Web search errors, usurp the browser's home page, and modify other Internet Explorer settings. Recent variants have taken to exploiting vulnerabilities in IE, such as those in the HTML Help system, to install on PCs. "It's only purpose is to get on a PC, and stay on that PC, even at the cost of killing that machine," said...

I have been a Mac user since the first one rolled off the assembly line. I love them, and still have one, which I am using to write this post. The problem is that I bought a notebook PC because I have some work related needs that I couldn't use my Mac for. My teenage son asked if he could check his email on the PC, and like an idiot, I said yes. He walked off with the notebook, and went to a web site that a friend had told him was "really cool". It became infected with spyware, ad...

Security experts issued a warning this morning after detecting infections caused by Searchmeup, the first adware to use the Exploit/LoadImage vulnerability which downloads itself onto computers without the user's permission. Panda Software's PandaLabs warned that the pages from which Searchmeup are downloaded also contain a series of exploits to download other malware onto the computer, such as the Tofger.AT Trojan, which steals banking passwords, Dialer.BB and Dialer.NO, and adware called Adware/TopConvert. Searchmeup is downloaded onto the computer when the user visits maliciously coded web pages. Once installed it changes the home page to that of a search engine that displays...

Free utility can reveal rootkits, hidden software used by hackers and crooks. Computer users have yet another tool they can use to find out if stealthy malware--such as a hidden virus, Trojan horse, or spyware application--has found its way onto their PC. The tool, called RootkitRevealer, permits Windows users to scan a computer for the telltale presence of certain kinds of malicious software. Advertisement That type of software, known in the security industry as a rootkit, "is a technology that's used by malware--viruses or trojans--to actively hide themselves," says RootkitRevealer's co-creator, Mark Russinovich. Rootkits can also help hackers gain greater...

The Department of Homeland Security has named Claria, an adware maker that online publishers once dubbed a "parasite," to a federal privacy advisory board. An executive from Claria, formerly called Gator, will be one of 20 members of the committee, the department said Wednesday. "This committee will provide the department with important recommendations on how to further the department's mission while protecting the privacy of personally identifiable information of citizens and visitors of the United States," Nuala O'Connor Kelly, the department's chief privacy officer, said in a statement. Claria bundles its pop-up advertising software with ad-supported networks such as Kazaa....

Security experts are advising that spyware that targets browsers from the Mozilla Foundation has been spotted--a threat that could worsen as its Firefox browser takes market share from Microsoft. Stu Sjouwerman, the founder of Sunbelt Software, said on Tuesday that the anti-spyware company has discovered what it believes is the first spyware to take aim at surfers using Mozilla browsers. Richard Stiennon, the vice president of threat research at Webroot Software, which also develops anti-spyware tools, said that the malicious software does not target Firefox specifically. "According to my research team, this site does not target Firefox, but it does...