Free Republic

ALBANY, N.Y. - 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...

Microsoft is investigating a piece of malicious code that targets the recently released beta version of its AntiSpyware product. On Wednesday, antivirus company Sophos reported a new Trojan horse, dubbed "Bankash-A," which suppresses warning messages displayed by Microsoft AntiSpyware and deletes all of the files in the program's folder. The Trojan also steals passwords and online-banking details from Windows users. "Microsoft is actively investigating new public reports of a criminal attack, known as the 'Bankash-A Trojan'," the company wrote in an e-mail statement. "Microsoft is not aware of any significant customer impact resulting from the Trojan. Microsoft continues to recommend...

Users have a lot to worry about when downloading and playing media files. Are the files legal? Can their computers play the required file formats? Now there's yet another problem to add to the list: Will a media file try to install spyware? When Windows Media Player encounters a file with certain "rights management" features enabled, it opens the web page specified by the file's creator. This page is intended to help a content providers promote its products -- perhaps other music by the same artist or label. But the specified web page can show deceptive messages, including pop-ups that...

Hi All: PC World has a pair of articles about a potentially dangerous new development on the spyware/adware front: WMA (Windows Media) files being used to install adware and spyware. See: Risk Your PC’s Health for a Song? http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119016,00.asp Protect Yourself From Audio Adware http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119063,00.asp In short, the well-known copyright management/protection firm Overpeer has figured out how to install adware through Windows Media files. The technique exploits features of the Windows Media DRM functionality to launch special Internet Explorer windows that display popup ads and that also attempt to download and install adware/spyware. This happens when the user opens the...

Spyware used to be defined as applets, cookies or any other method used to collect statistics on your browsing habits. Gone are the days of such a benign interpretation. Spyware has evolved into a problem that surpasses those posed by traditional worms, viruses and Trojans. Today, these once relatively innocuous apps have evolved from anonymous, and often invisible, traffic statistics gatherers into beasts capable of crippling your PC's performance by installing unwanted toolbars, pop-up ads, desktop icons and many other nuisances. If that's not bad enough, some Spyware will modify system files, change security zone settings, keylog your sessions, spawn...

Microsoft Acquires Anti-Spyware Leader GIANT Company New Offerings Will Help Customers Keep SpywareAnd Other Deceptive Software Off Their Computers REDMOND, Wash. -- Dec. 16, 2004 -- Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has acquired GIANT Company Software Inc., a provider of top-rated anti-spyware and Internet security products. Microsoft will use intellectual property and technology assets from the acquisition to provide Microsoft® Windows® customers with new tools to help protect them from the threat of spyware and other deceptive software. In addition, key personnel from GIANT Company will be joining Microsoft's security efforts. "Spyware is a serious and growing problem for...

The site has multiple forums for various computing problems, but the overwhelming number of inquiries in the last year has dealt with spyware, which on the site has a variety of less neutral names, "scumware" being one of the more polite. Scumware had been an epidemic; in the last year it grew into a pandemic, said Steve Wechsler, one of those drawn to Eshelman's site. Wechsler was tending bar at a public golf course in South San Francisco when he bought his first computer less than a decade ago. "I brought it home and turned it on, clicked on Netscape...

One evening late in 2001, Julian Green's 7-year-old daughter came upstairs from the computer room of their home in the resort town of Torquay, in western England, and said, "The home page has changed, and it's something not very nice." When Mr. Green checked the machine, he found that the family PC seemed almost possessed. The Internet home page had somehow been switched so that the computer displayed a child pornography site when the browser software started up. Even if he turned the machine off, it would turn itself back on and dial the Internet on its own. Mr. Green...