full-disclosure - Re: Microsoft AntiSpyware falling further behind

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Date: Fri Oct 28 14:10:48 2005
From: valdis at antivirus.lv (Valdis Shkesters)
Subject: Re: Microsoft AntiSpyware falling further behind

Hi,

Maybe better to call the things their names and not to create havoc?
Let's there be adware, Trojan horses, backdoors, viruses, etc.
Hullabaloo with so called spyware has brought us up to such a state,
that on September 29th PC World wrote "While adware can be a major
annoyance, spyware can be very dangerous, so we focused on the latter type
of threat."
(http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,122496,pg,1,00.asp). Who
can tell where exactly spyware begins and where ends?

Maybe antivirus products should detect all dangerous and potentially
dangerous programs, leaving the choice which objects to exclude from
scanning to users?

Anti-spyware by definition are products which protect users against
something undefined. And the results are to be seen. This is the report from
infected computer, scanned Kaspersky Anti-Virus:

Trojan.Win32.Qhost.dg
Backdoor.Win32.Rbot.gen
Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.an
Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.gen
Backdoor.Win32.Wootbot.gen
Trojan-Downloader.BAT.Ftp.ab
Backdoor.Win32.Codbot.as
AdWare.Sahat.ao
AdWare.Cydoor.a
AdWare.WinAD.aw

Only actively dangerous programs are listed. The computer was "protected" by
Spybot - Search & Destroy and Microsoft AntiSpyware. As I summarize reports
on infected computers every month, there are many such an examples saved up.

Best regards,

Valdis

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Quark IT - Hilton Travis" <Hilton@...rkit.com.au>
To: <focus-virus@...urityfocus.com>
Sent: Friday, October 21, 2005 11:50 PM
Subject: Microsoft AntiSpyware falling further behind

Hi All,

It seems that not only does Microsoft AntiSpyware recommend that
Claria's spyware is ignored, but it also misses a significant amount of
cookies that are placed on a system - I have a VPC environment where I
browse the Internet so that anywhere I go won't affect my regular
Windows session/installation.  Regularly CounterSpy is detecting cookies
(such as Cok.ad.yieldmanager, CGI-Bin, Cok.AssassinTrojan2.0 and Zedo
(from yesterday's browsing)) that Microsoft AntiSpyware simply does not
know about.

Now, this is not only disappointing, but potentially dangerous.  Any
customer or end user running Microsoft AntiSpyware or CounterSpy is not
being protected from these cookies, and MSAS doesn't even detect them -
that's right, neither program's active monitoring is stopping the
installation of these cookies, but at least CounterSpy is detecting them
post-installation.

AntiSpyware is far, far from the accuracy of antivirus, especially
something like NOD32.  I wonder how long it will be before a decent
AntiSpyware application is released that, like NOD32 does with viruses,
actually stops spyware *before* it is installed?

--

Regards,

Hilton Travis                          Phone: +61 (0)7 3344 3889
(Brisbane, Australia)                  Phone: +61 (0)419 792 394
Manager, Quark IT                      http://www.quarkit.com.au
         Quark Group                   http://quarkgroup.com.au/

Microsoft Small Business Specialists

http://www.threatcode.com/ <-- its now time to shame poor coders
into writing code that is acceptable for use on today's networks

War doesn't determine who is right.  War determines who is left.

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