Sneak Peek At Microsoft Anti-Spyware

Ant writes "Broadband Reports mentions Neowin's sneak peek of Microsoft's upcoming anti-spyware software recently acquired community favorite Giant spyware; Microsoft has code-named their re-hashed version of that software 'Atlanta.' It is currently in an internal beta test. There are screenshots of the application in action."

Comments

Hate to break it to Microsoft...

[CypherXero]

...but there's already plenty of free alternatives out there. Also, just stop using Internet Explorer. That move right there will cut down at least 90% of all spyware/adware.

Re:Hate to break it to Microsoft...

[pla]

but there's already plenty of free alternatives out there

I personally have always used (and liked) AdAware and Spybot, and as much as I hate to admit this about purely commercial software... I recently had a chance to try Giant.

Slower than a DOJ antitrust proceeding against Microsoft, and takes a similarly budensome level of system resources (100% CPU for over half an hour on a Pentium-M 1.7GHz!), but damned if it didn't find two problems both AA and SB had completely missed (completely as in, not just left inactive fragments lying around, but real live active spyware).


Also, just stop using Internet Explorer. That move right there will cut down at least 90% of all spyware/adware.

Agree completely. The above-mentioned two problems that Giant caught - Well, let me first say that I use Mozilla almost exclusively, only loading MSIE (in a maximally-locked-down configuration) perhaps once a month for sites that absolutely will not work (even with the user agent switcher add-on) in Moz/FF. And both the spies that Giant caught had latched on to MSIE.

Sad. I mean, good to see MS address (one of) their current major weaknesses; but sad that they would use something comparable to an antivirus scanner rather than just fix the security flaws that lead to massive spyware infestations in the first place.

What ever happened to SP2 as the end-all to MS's security flaws?

Coral Caches Of The Pics

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted AC of course:

http://www.neowin.net.nyud.net:8090/staff/creamhac kered/atlanta/install1.PNG
http://www.neowin.net.nyud.net:8090/staff/creamhac kered/atlanta/setup1.PNG
http://www.neowin.net.nyud.net:8090/staff/creamhac kered/atlanta/main.PNG
http://www.neowin.net.nyud.net:8090/staff/creamhac kered/atlanta/scan.PNG
http://www.neowin.net.nyud.net:8090/staff/creamhac kered/atlanta/realtime.PNG
http://www.neowin.net.nyud.net:8090/staff/creamhac kered/atlanta/advanced.PNG
http://www.neowin.net.nyud.net:8090/staff/creamhac kered/atlanta/settings.PNG
http://www.neowin.net.nyud.net:8090/staff/creamhac kered/atlanta/popup.PNG
http://www.neowin.net.nyud.net:8090/staff/creamhac kered/atlanta/systemsummary.PNG
http://www.neowin.net.nyud.net:8090/staff/creamhac kered/atlanta/messengerplus.PNG

Re:Interesting Move

[LiquidCoooled]

If you look at the images, it shows an example of trapping Messenger Plus.
It gives a description of what the problem is, explains that its not the actual Messenger plus program that has the problem, but the spyware installed around it, there is the option of ignoring it (selected on screenshot).
I cannot tell from the screenshots whether it comes up on ignore by default, but its at least giving more information than previously.

On a slightly different note, in the neowin forum, some folks are saying "i haven't got any adaware hits now I'm using Firefox, but couldn't part of that be Adaware ONLY looking at the IE cache, and not the firefox one?
After all, 90% of the crap Adaware ever moans about is data mining cookies.

Re:Sample

[Nik13]

Actually, one of the things I noticed about this Giant-Antispyware is the number of false positives. On some systems it found a half dozen of them (things like VNC and such). Also the slowest, high memory usage, and last I tried, cancelling a scan doesn't let you delete what was found on the partial scan.

Most likely they'll charge for this product, whereas it's completely unnecessary if you use firefox and IE and don't install apps like Gator and such.

Re:Ironic methinks.

[CritterNYC]

Also, it's hard to keep people from clicking "yes".

You don't have to click YES or ACCEPT to get spyware in IE. All you have to do is visit a specific website... or a website that's been hacked... or a website that shows ads from a network that's been hacked... and it will auto-install it for you through one of IE's lovely unpatched exploits.

I just cleaned 12 off my sister's Win98 laptop and then promptly installed Firefox and Thunderbird.