Spyware--here's lookin' at ya baby

Spyware--here's lookin' at ya baby

Spyware is one of those annoying byproducts of the Internet -- a great experiment with a few other waste products, like spam -- which you wish would simply go away. But knowing that it won't, network managers are increasingly coming to regard Spyware as not just a nuisance but a threat. And they expect to see their security software vendors paying more attention to detecting and eradicating it from desktops.

"It's an insidious scourge of the Internet!" says Lisa Hagen, information technology manager at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based biotech manufacturing firm Labcyte. "These are pieces of software that get installed unbeknownst to you."

Hagen says Spyware that Labcyte employees may download inadvertently to their machines causes their computers to "act weird." She hates that Spyware, which is sometimes used for marketing purposes, "reports back to the mother ship" somewhere in cyberspace about her corporate employee's Web activities.

Hagen fights back by using a pop-up-blocker product, STOPZilla. Other IT managers agree that Spyware has become a hazard because it causes desktop computers to malfunction.

"Spyware, which includes adware, is anything that sends information off to third parties without your consent," notes Daniel VanMeter, system security specialist at Kansas University Medical Center. Van Meter says he has increasing numbers of network users approach the IT department to complain that their machines won't boot up or are malfunctioning. More and more often, investigations reveal that Spyware -- sometimes hundreds of different Spyware programs jostling and interfering with each other on a single machine -- ends up being the culprit.

VanMeter says the desire to stomp out Spyware is one main reason he's beta-testing Network Associates McAfee VirusScan 8.0 software, which includes an Anti-Spyware feature.

This is the first time that McAfee will be putting Spyware eradication into its anti-virus software. McAfee executives say they are targeting 200 of the most dangerous Spyware programs. But Spyware encompasses much more, according to vendors specializing in Spyware-blocking software, which until recently was considered more for the consumer market than the corporate.

According to Roger Thompson, vice president of development at PestPatrol, Spyware includes adware, and anything that tracks the user's Web-site movements, such as "cydoor" or "gator." In general, consumers have been the most upset about pop-up ad Spyware, so most Anti-Spyware software has focused on home use, but that is changing. PestPatrol expects to have a product out intended specifically for the corporate market later this year.

Several peer-to-peer freeware programs for distributing music and video files typically include Spyware, Thompson notes. He adds there's also the overtly dangerous category of Spyware, which includes Trojans and keyloggers, which the security industry has been mindful of for quite some time.

Trojans and keyloggers are designed to capture personal data, such as passwords and bank accounts, and send it back to those whose intentions are presumably to compromise networks.

One thing all these Spyware "pests" have in common, says Thompson, is that they are detected via "signatures" that define them much in the same way as can be said about viruses. PestPatrol keeps a database of these Spyware signatures-and it now numbers about 20,000. "We add 75 new ones every week," says Thompson.

Here's looking at ya, baby.

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