No Honor Among Malware Purveyors

metalion writes "True to the saying 'no honor among thieves,' adware company, Avenue Media, is finding that competing adware company, DirectRevenue, is detecting and deleting their software. Now Avenue Media is crying foul and have filed a lawsuit against DirectRevenue stating that DirectRevenue 'knowingly and with intent to defraud, exceeded its authorized access to users' computers.' DirectRevenue acknowledges that it may uninstall competing applications in its user license agreement. A researcher at Harvard University, Ben Edelman, reasons that 'Once the computer is infected with 10 different unwanted programs, the person is likely to take some action to address the situation.' Just how far will adware companies go to continue to attempt to bombard us with their ads?"

Comments

Too funny

[networkBoy]

We all have been complaining about malware for years. . .
Now they are complaining about themselves.
When does it stop?
-nB

Spyware filing a lawsuit?

[CrazyJim1]

Reminds me of the stories of people calling the police because someone stole their weed.

Firmware ADS.

[Anonymous Coward]

" Just how far will adware companies go to continue to attempt to bombard us with their ads?""

When ads are burned into BIOSes.

Re:Firmware ADS.

[Computerguy5]

Already been done. IIRC, there was a public outcry and they gave the user an option to disable the 'feature.'

a pit

[gotem]

great idea, put all the malware to fight, and the survivor gets to be deleted by spybot.
More fun than core wars

Mr. Kettle's comments upon Mr. Pot's reflectivitiy

[wowbagger]

...knowingly and with intent to defraud, exceeded its authorized access to users' computers.

Mr. Kettle, a question upon your comments about Mr. Pot's absense of reflectivity to EM radiation between 680nm and 430nm....

Really, doesn't ALL adware exceed authorize access to user's computers?

After removing competitors, DR transmits ...

[bedelman]

Perhaps also of interest:

After DirectRevenue removes competitors' programs from users' disks, it also transmits extensive information about users' computers. Among the information: MAC address, Windows Product ID, all running tasks, and registry entrise for certain additional competitors (Gator, 180solutions) and removal programs (Ad-Aware, PestPatrol) if installed.

Cool!

[MillionthMonkey]

We may be witnessing the establishment of an entirely new biome with its own form of species and evolution.

What spyware writers need to do now is add the following features to their code:

• Random mutations
• Breeding and crossover with other spyware programs so that chunks of similar malicious code are exchanged
• A fitness evaluation function

The fitness evaluation should take into account:

• A penalty for network infrastructure damage
• Number of competing spyware programs "eaten" by an individual
• Number of idiots knocked off the Internet

I don't expect this kind of...

[bob670]

thing to be an easy answer to home users, but someone has to explain to me why corporate customers continue to tolerate this stuff that is directly targeted at Windows weak spots? It would be tough, and damn unlikely to get mom, pop and granny off of their Windows XP machines, but I have several customers who spend all day in Office, e-mail and the web for all of their business and I make a steady buck doing spyware removal. And they dont' want to talk prevention, every meeting ends with "well, we just won't allow employees to install things like this any longer" and 2 months later I get a call to come back.

Barring use of some Windows based Spyware prevention tools (most of which aren't free for corporate use), mirgating to some combination of Mac OS X and Linux would end virtually all of this and then I could charge them for stuff like implementing cool new tools for them to use instead of upkeep of a broken system. Of course, these are the same customers who won't try FireFox because it "just doesn't feel right"???

I'm truly torn between my ethics and the need to keep up my income in a crap economy.

Advertisers in general are going insane

[wowbagger]

I'd submitted this gem to /., but they obviously felt it wasn't news.

A lady in El Paso gets a telemarketing call. She says no, repeatedly. Telemarketer ignores her, repeatedly. She hangs up, forcefully.

She later gets a letter saying:

Jill Beyer,

Before you are rude to another telemarketer, you should keep in mind that he or she has your phone number and your address.

Many of them live in your own state and most don't give a (expletive)!

So, Ms. Beyer, the next time a telemarketer calls and you don't want to be bothered, a simple "not interested" will do.

Your son or daughter or next-door neighbor's daughter could very well be a telemarketer. A handicapped, wheelchair-bound person could be a telemarketer. A biker or ex-con is more likely to be a telemarketer. You really, really shouldn't (expletive) with them!

As they say in the telemarketing industry, "Have a good day Ms. Beyer!"

So, we have:

• Television stations prohibiting us from recording shows (via the broadcast bit)
• TV execs saying "skipping commercials is theft"
• Telemarketers threatening those who will not listen to their pitches.
• Adware companies fighting over who can infest your computer.
• Drive-by installs of adware

OK, I move that we commit all advertisers to institutions for the criminally insane, right now.

Any seconds?

Re:When it will stop.

[Anonymous Coward]

A RL parasite is benign to the host.

Not quite. A parasite, by definiton, is an organism that harms its host. According to something I read a long time ago, there are three types of cohabitating organisms. A parasite harms its host, a symbiont benefits its host, and a commensal neither harms nor helps its host. It's the last one you were thinking of.