An interview with Ad-Aware's Nicholas Stark

Andrew Leonard writes: "In the wake of the Ad-Aware/RadLight spyware vs. anti-spyware showdown, Salon has an interview with Ad-Aware's Nicholas Stark, who explains in no uncertain terms Lavasoft's determination to match every move by the spyware developers."

Comments

Spyware -> Trojan horse

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I couldn't find a definition for the term trojan horse on CERT's website, a link was provided to the comp.virus FAQ. According to it, a trojan horse is:

A TROJAN HORSE is a program that does something undocumented that the programmer intended, but that some users would not approve of if they knew about it.

What RadWare's software is doing makes it perfectly clear that spyware should be treated as a trojan horse (with legal implications where applicable), beacause that's what it is.

Re:Radsoft

[_Sprocket_]

But how is it an unrelated product? Ad-Aware goes out and specifically prevents programs like those put out by Radsoft from working properly. While I agree it isn't right that Ad-Aware is removed from the user's program without due warning, it is far from unrelated.

Its pretty simple. Radsoft's package can function perfectly well with Ad-Aware also installed. They have nothing directly to do with each other.

Granted, the politics and business of the two clash. I could understand that Radsoft feels threatned by Ad-aware. And it wouldn't be suprising if they took measures to protect their revenue. However, I would expect them to take steps to ensure all installed components remain installed for their application to function.

Of course, Radsoft has done a great job at displaying their attitude towards their users. Not only does their revenue apparently depend on the questionable (and apparently unappreciated by users) practice of spy-ware, but they take the same attitude to underhandedly remove software with which they have a political axe to grind.

One final point. Ad-Aware is considerably different in intent and attitude than any of the software it targets. First, the Ad-Aware user actively selects what components (including applications, libraries, registry entries, and cookies) to remove. Secondly, it is widely supported as it provides even fairly non-technical users the ability to discover hidden software installed on their systems and remove it despite the great lengths that software goes to hide and resist being removed.

If Radsoft and their clients, as well as the apparently growing number of like-minded business and applications developers, dislike the power provided by Ad-Aware then they should seriously re-examine their business plan. There is considerable resistance towards their methods. And simply attempting to remove Ad-Aware does little more than reveal their contempt for their user base.

Re:boot disk ad-aware needed

[Technician]

Actually I run AdAware over my LAN. I attach the drives of all my machines and scan them from the admin console periodicaly. None of the workstation machines have privilages of any kind on the admin machine which does the scanning over the LAN. The admin machine is not sharing any drives. The scan is done at the same time the LAN is swept for viruses in additon to the local machines anti-virus software.

This catches any software that tries to attack the anti-virus software and the AdAware software.

Re:The Legality Of Spyware

[foobar104]

Oh, for the love of god. For the nth time, it's viruses, not virii. One of the characteristics of the English-speaking geek culture is the use of specialized jargon or shibboleths; but another characteristic is an above-average emphasis on correctness and precision. Using a made-up word like "virii" doesn't make you cool; it makes you sound stupid.

First, the Latin word "virus" meant slimy liquid or offensive odor or taste. It was an abstract noun that didn't lend itself to pluralization, and in fact Latin had no plural for it. Modern languages have all invented their own plurals when "virus" entered their vocabulary: German, Viren, French and Italian, virus (they use the same word for singular and plural, like we use "deer").

Second, and most important, the OED gives only "viruses" as a proper plural for "virus."

More details on the etymology of "viruses" can be found here.

Oh, and before you ask, it's "boxes" and not "boxen."

Thus endeth the lesson.

Linux reinstall Philosophy

[hopeless case]

This issue is one of the reasons I started studying linux. Control of my machine.

The only real way to be sure you are free of viruses and trojans is to wipe the hard disk and reinstall your operating system and personal software.

With linux, it turns out to be simple to arrange things so that even with a lot of complicated, customized software installed on a machine, you can reformat your root partition, reinstall linux, and have your non-standard software installed and configured in under an hour. This makes it feasible to do every few weeks for your home computer.

The main reason is that most of the software configuration consists of ascii text files in /etc and a few other locations which in any event are well known, or easy to figure out.

Keep your compiled software directories on a separate partition and write a script to descend into each of them and run a "make install". Then keep copies of all the /etc files you modify in your post install config in another directory (again, off of the root partition), and have a script that copies each file to its proper place on the root partition.

When it comes time to reinstall, reformat the root partition, reinstall linux, and then run your 2 scripts and you are back where you started, minus any viruses and trojans and exploits that managed to infest you since the last time you did this.

I wrote up an article with more detail on this on rootprompt at:

http://www.rootprompt.org/article.php3?article=3 91 2