According to EDRi-member Chaos Computer Club (CCC), the German government has been using a backdoor Trojan, a spyware that can retrieve private data, and also offers a remote control for uploading and executing other arbitrary programs. CCC has reverse engineered … Read More
Anti-spyware programs often report Web advertisers’ HTTP cookies as spyware. Web sites (including advertisers) set cookies — small pieces of data rather than software—to track Web-browsing activity: for instance to maintain a “shopping cart” for an online store or to … Read More
Using a virtual machine (such as a pre-built Browser Appliance for VMWare Player) can inhibit infection by spyware, malware, and viruses. Virtual machines provide seperate environments, so if spyware enters the virtual environment, the host computer remains unaffected. One can … Read More
Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware, one of a few reliable commercial anti-spyware programs, scans the hard drive of a clean Windows XP system. Many programmers and some commercial firms have released products designed to remove or block spyware. Steve Gibson’s OptOut, mentioned above, … Read More
Gaining unauthorized access to a computer is illegal, under computer crime laws such as the United States Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Since the owners of computers infected with spyware generally claim that they never authorized the installation, a prima … Read More
A few examples of common spyware programs may serve to illustrate the diversity of behaviors found in these attacks. Caveat: As with computer viruses, researchers give names to spyware programs which frequently do not relate to any names that the … Read More
A browser exploit is a short piece of code that exploits a software bug in a web browser such that the code makes the browser do something unexpected, including crash, read or write local files, propagate a virus or install … Read More
Anti-spyware programs often report Web advertisers’ HTTP cookies as spyware. Web sites (including advertisers) set cookies — small pieces of data rather than software—to track Web-browsing activity: for instance to maintain a “shopping cart” for an online store or to … Read More
WinFixer is closely related to Aurora Network’s Nail.exe hijacker/spyware program. In worst case scenarios, it may embed itself in Internet Explorer and become part of the program, thus being nearly impossible to remove. The program is also closely related to … Read More
One case has closely associated spyware with identity theft. [1] In August 2005, researchers from security software firm Sunbelt Software believed that the makers of the common CoolWebSearch spyware had used it to transmit “chat sessions, user names, passwords, bank … Read More
Many spyware programs reveal themselves visibly by displaying advertisements. Some programs simply display pop-up ads on a regular basis—for instance, one every several minutes, or one when the user opens a new browser window. Others display ads in response to … Read More
WinFixer is a computer program that claims to have the ability to repair any computer system problem. However, due to its regular displaying of popup notifications, dubious installation (installing itself without the user’s permission), and advertisements of other products, WinFixer … Read More
