 |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
US
|
|
WEBATTACK® and SNAPFILES are trademarks of WebAttack Inc. All rights reserved. Home e-Mail Privacy Statement Terms of Use Grab a button © 1997-2004 |
I have heard good things about his stuff, but actually have not used any of it- yet!
Posted on 12/14/2004 6:22:01 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
A security firm named the top 10 spyware threats this week, saying that the secretly-installed software poses an "insidious" threat to consumers and corporations alike.
Webroot, which makes end-user and enterprise editions of Spy Sweeper, used its relationship with Internet service provider EarthLink to tally the most prevalent spyware, then selected the worst based on its knowledge of how each works and the damage it can cause.
"We use the P-I index," said Richard Stiennon, Webroot's vice president of threat research. "P is for prevalence, I is for insidiousness."
Each of the ten spyware programs cited by Webroot was spotted at least 50,000 times in the scans that the Boulder, Colo.-based vendor does free of charge on its own Web site, or in conjunction with EarthLink.
"The people who write this stuff are gaining sophistication in their coding practices as they attempt to evade detection and removal," said Stiennon. "These ten are the most insidious programs in terms of prevalence and effect."
Some of the software in Webroot's top 10 may be familiar to users, but most is a blur of anonymous titles that don't impart their potential impact.
Among the former is Gator (also known as GAIN), long infamous because it's bundled with the popular Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing software. Gator/GAIN, said Webroot, made the top 10 list because it spews banner ads based on your surfing habits.
Others on the list, however, are unknown to all but the most dedicated follower of spyware. They include such programs as PurityScan, which puts up pop-up ads and tricks users into installation by claiming to find and delete porn on the PC; CoolWebSearch, which can hijack searches, browser home page, and IE's settings; and Perfect Keylogger, a spy that records all visited sites, keystrokes, and mouse clicks to, for instance, divine passwords, account numbers, and other sensitive information.
The rest of the list is fleshed out with the likes of n-CASE and KeenValue (adware), TIBS Dialer (software the usurps the modem and dials toll numbers, typically porn pay-by-the-minute phone sites), Transponder and ISTbar/AUpdate (spyware posing as browser assistants), and Internet Optimizer, which hijacks Web errors and re-directs them to its own site.
"It's our goal to inform Internet users of the ramifications of having potentially unwanted programs on their systems," said Stiennon, adding that, "it's their choice to keep or remove these programs. We're just making sure they have that information so they are making knowledgeable decisions."
Webroot isn't the only ranker or rater of behind-the-scene spyware. Computer Associates, which earlier this year purchased Webroot rival PestPatrol, recently added a spyware-only section to its online alert center, where it regularly lists the top 5 threats based on the number of reports it receives from users.
It's current list puts Kazaa at the top, with GameSpy Arcade, Download Accelerators Plus, Ezula, and Adopt.Hotbar.com rounding out the five.
Spyware plagues both consumers and corporations, according to data from analysts. In a recent survey done by IDC, for instance, enterprise users labeled spyware as the fourth-biggest threat to their company's security. They're reacting to the problem by spending money on additional security, a trend that will grow dramatically in the next several years.
According to IDC, anti-spyware software revenues will reach approximately $31 million in 2004, but skyrocket by nearly 10 times to $305 million in 2008.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
WEBATTACK® and SNAPFILES are trademarks of WebAttack Inc. All rights reserved. Home e-Mail Privacy Statement Terms of Use Grab a button © 1997-2004 |
I have heard good things about his stuff, but actually have not used any of it- yet!
I stopped using FedEx online because Opera won't render it correctly (can't submit some of their forms without IE.) So I just bailed out to UPS/Opera.
Also, when I do need IE, I use the "browser" in Lotus Notes, which I think just does calls back through IE, but still, it seems like it's a more circuitous odd path for most nefarious hooks to be written that will actually work their dirty magic with this.
Guess I'm a successful "security by obscurity" proponent.
So you are wired into Lotus Notes pretty tightly?
re: Lotus Notes....
No. Not really. I've just got archives of every email since 97 (R4.6?) and the full-text search of it is brilliantly fast. And for my memory, that's great for CYA. It doesn't render embedded stuff in email hardly at all, which I love, and when Windows crashes, or if my battery craps out before closing, it ALWAYS recovers the mail file without error (20-30GB)
When I'm on a conference call and my boss or another employee is blaming something on me or some other nonsense, I have many a time pulled a quick search that finds their email long before they could even start a query on Outlook (blech.) That has helped my career out more times than I can count.
For any piece of code written back then to carry me this far with only one new version upgrade (R5), well, it's the only instance of that I can think of!
You talking about this? 
PROFS, IIRC, is a mainframe e-mail package.
Yes, I know, I had installed it at several customer sites, I understand initially Lotus involved a mainframe as well.
Correction.
I thought lotus Notes involved a server computer of some size.
WTF?
I can't believe you posted this and didn't even receive a single "Get a Mac, you loser" reply.
P R O F S!
WOW! I used that in, what, 91-92!? And on an old VT100 (and then eventually a VT100 "window" uner OS/2!) Heehee. MAybe that's what's wrong with me.
You must be an old feller!
Didn't work. Nothing worked, and Xena's Guy does tech support for a living. We formatted C and that worked nicely.
I ain't a young guy.....
ROFL!
Funny how that works so well!
If your backup methods and original CD's are in good shape.
And they are, because we keep all our program discs and back up religiously.
I somehow picked up CoolWebSearch a few months ago. It was a bear to get rid of – I used several programs, first in regular mode then in safe mode as administrator. I had to go through the whole thing several times to finally get it under control, eventually going into the registry and replacing the program with a dummy to finally get rid of it.
bump
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.