Want to see what spyware can do to your computer?

[giza]

Check this out, it's rather creepy:

Watch on YouTube

Granted, McAfee made it, but it does underscore the problems that spyware can cause.

I warned ya.

Comments

[flykat.livejournal.com]

been there done that, had it happen and lost 2 harddrives and a whole system :(

[omnibahumut.livejournal.com]

I've been rather careful in how I browse the web, and as such only use a firewall, and no antivirus or spyware scanning. I have the software installed should I need to use it, but I can't recall the last time I had a virus.

I have seen computers that are almost as bad as what they have in the video though, and its pretty scary- makes me wonder what they were doing.

I also wonder who these people are who write these spyware programs that seem to only cause problems on the computer. I know there are programs out there ment to make your computer DoS someone or something that transmits personal information, but some seem to exist solely to annoy you.

Bwahahaha...

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

When IE starts opening up command shells, it's much too late to stop it.

Vista, say what you will about it, runs IE in a chroot jail. It can only read and write to its own cache without explicit user prompting. Code such as ActiveX that runs inside IE is just as limited. You have to make a site "Trusted" to let it out. IE is spawned from and jailed by another process that runs in the user's context.

Every browser can and will have vulnerabilities. That's why you limit rights to the process. If there was an equally exploitable hole in both (say a big javascript interpreter bug,) IE on vista might actually be safer (not better, just safer) than Firefox.

Re: Bwahahaha...

[giza.livejournal.com]

> Vista, say what you will about it, runs IE in a chroot jail.

If you were talking about some UNIX daemon, I'd say, "cool".

But since this is Microsoft, I'll say, "we'll see how well that REALLY works out". They've made motions about improving security before, and it seems to have been mostly lip service to me. (No, I'm not bitter! :-P )

Re: Bwahahaha...

[taral.livejournal.com]

Actually, they did it right this time... it's constrained at the NT level -- and that kernel is basically a UNIX derivative.

Re: Bwahahaha...

[andrew7782.livejournal.com]

Actually it's not "Vista's IE", it's just IE7 (will come default with Vista, will be downloadable for XP). I'll stick with Firefox though.

[zorinlynx.livejournal.com]

I just use MacOS X and Linux. Haven't seen spyware yet on either platform.

Windows is for chumps.

-Z

[rexxwolfe.livejournal.com]

Hmm Been there had some of those I like using Adaware and Spybot S&D seems to solve alot of the issues you also tend to grab alot of spyware on sites that tend to pirate software music vids etc.. Its only matter of time really I find it funny that these sites actually GET customers with thier spam and spyware. And the sad truth is they do get customers otherwise allt he hours and time that goes into creating these codes would be wasted elsewhere.

[nidonocu.livejournal.com]

This begs the question, why at McAfee lobbying in Europe for Microsoft to remove the built in security applications Defender and Firewall from Vista when this can happen so easily?

[giza.livejournal.com]

Probably so that McAfee can add in their own protection, and charge the user for it.

Of course, the end users are screwed either way.

[nidonocu.livejournal.com]

Nothing is stopping them doing that. ;) Defender and Firewall are both designed so that if the user replaces them with a third party product, they deactivate automatically and are replaced in the Windows Security Center by the third party tool.
Its dumb though that a security company of all people wants the OS to ship with no security just so that they can fill a hole which shouldn't really of existed in the first place.

[giza.livejournal.com]

> Defender and Firewall are both designed so that if the user replaces them
> with a third party product, they deactivate automatically and are replaced
> in the Windows Security Center by the third party tool.

Oh, goody. So what this means is that we'll see trojaned code that tries to change this setting, the user gets prompted with a password or okay/cancel dialogue box, and they blindly follow it. Like I said, the user still gets screwed.

Wait, what were we talking about again? Oh yes, McAfee wanting the security in Vista disabled by default. Yeah, I can see them wanting to preserve their revenue stream and all that. On the other hand, it could be a legitimate concern that Microsoft will implement the security poorly. Time shall tell. :-)

[nidonocu.livejournal.com]

Well remember, security center pops up a warning if the services (or third party equivilants) are disabled (and if you disable the security center service, it warns you about that! ... Not sure how it does that..)
In these two cases, I can say both Defender and Firewall are pretty solid in Vista from my testing exprience..
Of course, virus writers are more worried about being locked out of the kernal but based on the fact that several free and pay for but not-symantec/afee anti-virus writers have got betas working of their products fine, I really don't see why they need it. Even MS are not letting themselves kernal patch with any application.

[firedhusky.livejournal.com]

Super cool !

all there is betwen my computer and the internet is a cisco 800 series router,

Keep the OS update and don`t go to silly sites and pretty much you are safe.

i like the music of the video.

[skippyfox.livejournal.com]

One of the worst spyware experiences happened to me many years back. I don't know exactly how it happened but my best guess is that I was using IE4 or IE5 at the time and some spyware tucked itself away and lay dormant. Then, when I wasn't even using the web, it unleashed a nightmarish attack, hogging 100% CPU and a vast amount of RAM for several agonizing minutes until it had finished automatically installing eye-bleeding toolbars and porn popup TSRs woven well into the internal organs of Windows itself.

I still twitch now and then when I think about that evening.