PestPatrol Shares Spyware Lessons ( Company will offer database of known... free.)

BTTT!!!!!!!!!!

Spybot is another package in the arena.

List of threads turned up by search with phrase 'spyware':

______________________________________________________________________

MSN Spyware? ^

			Posted by OldCorps On News/Activism ^ 02/27/2004 9:47:06 AM PST with 62 comments Self ^ \| Feb 27, 2004 \| self

Opera is Spyware!? ^
			Posted by ShadowAce On News/Activism ^ 04/22/2003 11:38:23 AM PDT with 45 comments The Inquirer ^ \| 21 April 2003 \| Andrew Busigin

NewsMax installs Spyware ^
			Posted by MineralMan On News/Activism ^ 04/16/2004 1:45:56 PM PDT with 44 comments Self \| 4/16/04 \| MineralMan

Tenacious Spyware Problem (Vanity) ^
			Posted by Born Conservative On News/Activism ^ 06/16/2004 10:42:22 AM PDT with 105 comments 6/16/04 \| Me, Myself, and I

computer questions: ethernet, spyware, viruses ^
			Posted by Commie Basher On General Interest (Chat) ^ 09/21/2003 5:30:26 AM PDT with 86 comments

Programs: 'Spyware' Can Shatter Privacy, Trust ^
			Posted by Leroy S. Mort On News/Activism ^ 10/05/2003 8:20:05 AM PDT with 3 comments Reuters ^ \| October 5, 2003 \| Gene Emery

Dell Policy Forbids Spyware Removal Support ^
			Posted by Born Conservative On News/Activism ^ 12/04/2003 4:43:21 AM PST with 37 comments Spyware Weekly Newsletter ^ \| 12/2/2003

Drudge Site Ripe with Computer Slowing Spyware ^
			Posted by BJungNan On News/Activism ^ 09/21/2003 2:59:04 PM PDT with 101 comments AdAware ^ \| September 21, 2003 \| BJungNan

Patriotism? No, just more pop-ups (Spyware alert!) ^
			Posted by finnman69 On News/Activism ^ 05/21/2003 7:36:22 AM PDT with 27 comments msnbc ^ \| 5/20/03 \| Bob Sullivan

'Spyware' would be tricky to outlaw, group says ^
			Posted by steppenwolffe On News/Activism ^ 11/19/2003 10:04:50 AM PST with 9 comments cnn ^ \| 11-19-03

Spyware cures may cause more harm than good ^
			Posted by justlurking On News/Activism ^ 02/05/2004 7:40:54 AM PST with 151 comments C/Net News.com ^ \| 2/4/2004 \| John Borland

Got to Drudge website: get hit with spyware ^
			Posted by Grig On General Interest (Chat) ^ 02/19/2004 9:51:55 AM PST with 35 comments

Message To Spyware: Get Off Our Private Property ^
			Posted by j_tull On News/Activism ^ 04/10/2004 5:37:46 AM PDT with 29 comments Tech News World ^ \| Gene J. Koprowski

'Pop-up' firm seeks to block spyware act ^
			Posted by Excuse_My_Bellicosity On News/Activism ^ 06/11/2004 1:33:41 PM PDT with 65 comments Salt Lake Tribune ^ \| 6/11/2004 \| Glen Warchol

Spyware slowing computer - ad aware fixed it (not a commercial) ^
			Posted by BJungNan On News/Activism ^ 09/01/2003 8:22:33 PM PDT with 32 comments Lavasoft and me ^ \| Me

Heads Up! Someone is posting xupitor spyware link; Don't open it! ^
			Posted by FBD On News/Activism ^ 01/27/2003 8:09:44 AM PST with 100 comments 1/27/2003 \| self

Antispyware vendors come under fire (spyware alert from American Cnet News) ^
			Posted by gdyniawitawa On News/Activism ^ 02/11/2004 4:50:06 PM PST with 13 comments cnet news ^ \| Last modified: February 11, 2004, 11:08 AM PST \| Staff Writer, CNET News.com

PestPatrol Shares Spyware Lessons ( Company will offer database of known... free.) ^
			Posted by Ernest_at_the_Beach On News/Activism ^ 06/30/2004 10:27:16 PM PDT with 2 comments PCWorld ^ \| Wednesday, June 30, 2004 \| Emily Kumler, Medill News Service

Unlikely German Leads the War Against Spyware -- Spybot Seatch & Destroy Created by Anarchist ^
			Posted by TroutStalker On News/Activism ^ 09/25/2003 5:56:33 AM PDT with 8 comments The Wall Street Journal ^ \| Thursday, September 25, 2003 \| James R. Hagerty and Annick Moes

See you later, anti-Gators? (Gator forces sites NOT to call it spyware) ^
			Posted by mhking On News/Activism ^ 10/23/2003 10:01:42 AM PDT with 56 comments CNet News.com ^ \| 10.22.03 \| Paul Festa

Tech?:Did I get spyware from Google or somewhere else that affects my Google results? ^
			Posted by finnman69 On News/Activism ^ 05/06/2004 1:33:27 PM PDT with 91 comments finnman69 \| 5/4/4 \| finnman69

BTTT

Additional recent threads:

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New Microsoft IE Malware ^

And:

Internet Attack Exploits Microsoft Software Flaws ( Internet Explorer vulnerable )

Recommend:

Spybot Search and Destroy

and

SpywareBlaster 3.1

I have both and are finding them both useful, and have not had any problems.

But as with any software, read about it ( see above links), then download and run it at your own risk.

That first link was dead - here it is:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1086749/posts
MSN Spyware?

Thanks!

I think I missed the one that checked out the registry.

You need this also, Browser Helper Objects (BHO) scanning tool

See post #6!

And you can examine your cookies with Karen's Cookie Viewer

I think I erased my tracks to where I found that.

What a circus this spyware crap is turning into!!!

BTW, here's the best forum I found so far:

SWI Forums

Anyone have problems with spybot not updating ? Never sems to be an update for that search and destroy thang.........???

Stay safe !

Hugh Ping!

Check out the tool referenced in post # 6 to fight the NEWEST nasty.

It does not exploit a flaw in Windows it exploits a FEATURE.......

I use Pestpatrol, along with the others listed here, actually I filled in my security holes through suggestions on FR, so a big thanks to those who offer help to Freepers.

If anyone here is very fimilar with pestpatrol, I have a question I can't answer, the pestpatrol cookies screen, will erase the selected (or unselected) cookies, but those continue to reside on my computer. What's going on with that, does pestpatrol disable them but leave them in the computer, or am I missing something?

While we are sharing tips on how to get rid of this nasty garbage, here's a copy of the best email I got during the last outbreak, regarding various information... the links are invaluable:

To recipients of emails with the subject line: {Spam?} Re: {Spam?} RE: {Spam?} {Virus?} {Spam?} Check this out kid!!!

Okay, since all of you are sending ME stuff, I will send back to you some answers and cures. So far I have received more than four dozen of your emails complaining about me and the others of you sending a virus.

Here is my analysis of what is happening and what you, each of you, can do about it.

First of all, do not send anything to cis-announce or cis-outgoing or any variation thereof. Those might be their entire mailing list! So let's not perpetuate this thing. I am sending this email to all parties, including the firms named herein, and including an office in Homeland Security which is one of the senders to me!

It is possible that this particular virus is adding the word {Spam?} to its outgoing mail because I received from CIS their regular mailing with their regular subject line, but that word in brackets had been added at the beginning of the subject line.

Obviously, we are under attack from a virus, a Hungarian virus called Worm.Zafi.B. Right now, this particular virus is the most "widespread email worm at the moment" and you can read the whole story which came out just about an hour ago: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/15/1087244900422.html?oneclick=true. This is truly an international virus, as described here in the Virus Encyclopedia: http://www.viruslist.com/eng/viruslist.html?id=1666973. Down toward the bottom you will find the text of the emails YOU got, along with the description of the attachment that was deleted (hopefully). Note that I have received the original email with the attachment removed and replaced with text telling me what the virus is! Here is that text:

This is a message from the MailScanner E-Mail Virus Protection Service

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The original e-mail attachment "jennifer the wild girl xxx07.jpg.pif"

was believed to be infected by a virus and has been replaced by this warning

message.

If you wish to receive a copy of the *infected* attachment, please

e-mail helpdesk and include the whole of this message

in your request. Alternatively, you can call them, with

the contents of this message to hand when you call.

At Sat Jun 12 17:19:29 2004 the virus scanner said:

ClamAV: jennifer the wild girl xxx07.jpg.pif contains Worm.Zafi.B

MailScanner: Shortcuts to MS-Dos programs are very dangerous in email (jennifer the wild girl xxx07.jpg.pif)

Note to Help Desk: Look on the MailScanner in /var/spool/MailScanner/quarantine/20040612 (message i5CLDxhq003158).

--

Postmaster

Mailscanner thanks transtec Computers for their support

Someone's computer is infected, and typically a virus will get into one person's computer, look around for email addresses, then send itself out to a whole bunch of the addresses it finds.

You cannot tell who really has the infected computer because the virus "spoofs" the sender's name, making it look like it is coming from someone else, NOT the person se computer is infected. It will just pick at random one of those addresses that it found and use that as the "sender" and send itself to the other email addresses. That is called "spoofing" which is quite commonly done by viruses.

An example: Sharon's computer gets a virus which then sends itself to everyone in her address book but it looks like all those emails came from James! Poor James doesn't even know this is happening until he starts getting those "bounced" emails saying that he is sending a virus. He is innocent, does not have a virus, because all that is coming from Sharon's computer! And Sharon has absolutely no clue that her computer is infected and doing all this.

Only by looking at the header of one of those spoofed emails very carefully can you get a hint of where it might be really coming from. The following are two places where you can get a removal tool if you think you might be infected.

This is from http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/Print126242.htm

-- Update June 14th, 2004 03:01 PST --

The risk assessment of this threat has been raised to Medium due to increased prevalence.

If you think that you may be infected with this threat, and are unsure how to check your system, you may download the Stinger tool to scan your system and remove the virus if present. This is not required for McAfee users as McAfee products are capable of detecting and removing the virus with the latest update. (see the removal instructions below for more information).

Note: Receiving an email alert stating that the virus came from your email address is not an indication that you are infected as the virus often forges the from address.

And this from http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/zafi_b.shtml

F-Secure provides the special disinfection utility to eliminate Zafi.B worm infection. You can download this utility from our ftp site:

ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/tools/f-zafi.exe

ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/tools/f-zafi.zip

Disinfection instructions can be found here:

ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/tools/f-zafi.txt

I myself started getting these emails from "James Moore" on Saturday. I have received several by now. The header from one of the earlier ones is pasted below. (It is NOT infected as it is a copy and paste rather than any kind of forwarding, which could perpetuate the virus.)

I have bolded some interesting lines.   The "return path" appears to be CIS.ORG.

A couple of other possibilities are these: Numbers USA and The Social Contract are both clients of whetstonelogic.com, which appears in the header. Note that wslogic.com is another name for whetstonelogic which specializes in "political intelligence tools". Take a look at the header below.

You will see byromlaw.com which belongs to a law firm in Florida. Did the emails originate there? Or did they just go through their servers? We don't know. But in any case I sending all the these organizations a copy of this email. Any one or all of the them might be infected and unknowingly sending out the virus to everyone else.

All of these organizations should check for viruses. And so should you, the individuals that have received those emails from the "alleged" James Moore.

Here is the plan of action. I am the webmaster for Terry Anderson and last fall I designed a page when we had another virus outbreak. I called it "Got Virus?" and put up there the results of my research of what you can do to protect yourself and some free virus scans you can go to find out if you are infected. Just finding those scan sites took a great deal of time, so all the work is already done -- all you have to do is run them on your own computers. Everyone that receives this particular email should go to the following webpage and do your scans right away, and then at least once a week thereafter. Bookmark the page and come back every week. And update your Norton every day! Including the special page that is updated more often than the "Live Update": http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/download/pages/US-N95.html. I just ran all four scans and my computer is clean.

Also, make sure you have Norton Anti-virus and Zone Alarm (a free firewall). The links are on the "Got Virus?" page. There again, the link for Zone Alarm was hard to find on their website, so I saved you all that time by putting it there.

To summarize, it is imperative that all of these check for viruses and make sure that

        1.      CIS.org
        2.      Numbers USA
        3.      The Social Contract
        4.      Byrom, Miller & Coleman
        4.      Everyone else receiving this email

                        should immediately:

        A.      Get anti-virus if you don't have it.
        B.      Get Zone Alarm if you don't have it.
        C.      Set your "Scheduled Tasks" to update every day,
                        both Live Update and
                        http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/download/pages/US-N95.html.
        D.      Run all the scans on http://www.theterryandersonshow.com/Viruses.html
        E.      Run #D at least once a week.

These things need to be done immediately because this virus is proliferating rapidly! While I wrote I received two dozen more of the spoofed emails!

Good luck! If you have questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. We are all in this together, regarding immigration as well as these virii.

Carol
webmaster4terry@dslextreme.com

In the FWI department, AVG found a trojan that all other online scans had missed... a "schedA" hiding in that blasted index.dat file that microsoft squirrels away all over your drive... if you have tried to get rid of this space-hogging file, then you know that in normal mode you get an "access sharing violation" when you try to delete the bleeding thing. AVG sends it to their virus vault. You can then delete the folder it's in with no harm done.

Just on general principles, set your browser to "delete, empty, or flush" your "cache" or "temporary files" on closing, and use disc cleanup ( in System Tools ) and Defrag to flush most of this garbage and hopefully overwrite it.

AVG is what?

This is excellent.

Spyware has become as much or more of a problem then viruses.

Well done to PestPatrol, they seem to have the most effective solution that I have found so far.

Just on general principles, set your browser to "delete, empty, or flush" your "cache" or "temporary files" on closing, and use disc cleanup ( in System Tools ) and Defrag to flush most of this garbage and hopefully overwrite it.

Wonder how I do that with Firefox?