Archive for November, 2005

During last few months a lot of corrupt anti-spyware vendors and their numerous affiliates began to use an illegal technique to promote and distribute rogue products. They started to spread specific parasites like trojans, adware, browser and desktop hijackers that display pop-ups, advertisements, notifications and messages alerting victims about spyware infection and encouraging to downloading and installing a particular corrupt anti-spyware including the infamous SpySheriff, PSGuard, WorldAntiSpy and RazeSpyware. Messages and windows that pests show look like common system alerts generated by the Microsoft Windows operating system. More...

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) together with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week filed a complaint against Integrated Search Technologies (IST) and its affiliates for the illegal distribution of spyware and unsolicited parasitical programs. A complaint is currently under consideration. However, it sounds like it will be complied with. More...

The Federal Trade Commission has yesterday announced an official complaint against Enternet Media ordering to halt the latter’s illegal activity. A complaint names few other defendants responsible for similar illegal activity like spyware and adware distribution. Enternet Media is an infamous advertising company, which develops parasitical software including the widely spread EliteBar trojan and corrupt anti-spyware program called SpywareBomber. More...

Two Microsoft developers Jason Garms and Steve Dodson last Friday have announced on their blogs that popular Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta, also known as Windows AntiSpyware, will be no more. It will soon be replaced with Windows Defender, a broadened and improved version of the current application. Apparently this is not just a name change, somewhat regular in a software business, but a great step forward the release of a comprehensive computer security suite, which would offer both anti-spyware protection and antivirus defence. More...

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) came up with an initiative to standardize names of widely-spread viruses, Internet worms and other parasites by creating a new common name system, which should completely eliminate or leastwise partially reduce the confusion caused by disparate naming schemes used by numerous antivirus vendors and security-related software companies. Today’s situation is far from being acceptable. Thousands of virus and parasite victims striving to clean up their obsessed systems cannot figure out and all the more correctly describe what kind of infection they have, how a threat behaves and what payload it has. More...

Recently an unnamed Internet worm was found rapidly spreading through chat rooms and instant messages using AOL Instant Messenger program. This parasite varies from other AOL threats - it not only secretly installs itself to the system, but also downloads and drops numerous extremely dangerous risks including a rootkit, backdoor, another devastating worm and several spyware and adware applications like 180Solutions, MaxSearch, Zango, SearchMiracle, Freebrod and Media Gateway. Loxbot and Loxbot. More...

The Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC), an alliance of security software companies, academics and consumers groups, finalized official definitions of spyware and released them on October 27. The document is available at the ASC web site. It includes a table of technologies used by spyware, adware, browser hijackers and other threats and unsolicited programs. More...