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MS AntiSpyware vs Ad-Aware vs. SpyBot
An anonymous reader writes "Flexbeta.net compares Microsoft's new spyware fighting tool, Windows AntiSpyware, to Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D; the two leading spyware tools on the market today. The review sets up an infected PC using VMWare Workstation and scans the machine using all three tools to see which tool detects the most spyware. Though still in beta, Microsoft AntiSpyware does an amazing job at detecting spyware by finding twice as many infected files as Ad-Aware and nearly three times as SpyBot."
They just bought a company and rebranded..
Wait a few generations, then it will be a 'true' Microsoft Product..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Adaware and Spybot report a lot of cookies. MS's program didn't. On the other hand, the AntiSpyware program found stuff the other two didn't. Total "hits" weren't 2-3x, but I've decided to keep AntiSpyware in addition to the other two programs.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
You can download without having to validate your license. Just select, the "No, leave me the hell alone" option when downloading.
MS just bought giant AS and rebranded their product as Microsoft. As far as I can tell there's very little change to the program itself beyond the branding.
Giant has always been among the top antispyware products, as evidenced by Failing Grades for most anti-spyware tools so this "MS should know their own security holes better than anyone" stuff isn't strictly relevant. I think MS should foucus more on fixing the secuity problems in IE that are responsible for 90%+ of spyware infections rather than sticking plaster over the holes by buying up anti-spyware solutions. Is this even going to be free when it's released?
Personally I prefer webroot spysweeper anyway, Giant has always generated too many false positives for me.
"Now, MS were naive to think that no-one would ever exploit that feature maliciously"
At least in the beginning they took measures to stop it; the original outlook couldn't even receive pop or imap email and hence the only incoming email was supposed to be from the corporate Exchange server.
It was only later, when the internet became popular, that, uh, by popular demand they produced add-on packs for exchange with which you could use pop, smtp and imap.
Then the email viruses began to take advantage...
I reckon that they should now go the other way around; produce a special add-on pack for the VB scripting and just leave it right out of the default install.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Among the things MS Anti-Spyware found on my system (which is actually well-maintained, so perhaps not the best test-bed) none was a real hit, they were all false positives.
It even managed to warn against registry settings put in place by SpyBot to ensure a malicious site runs in internet explorer's restricted zone!
Also, it reported with glee that TightVNC is a dangerous hacking tool. I happen to use it to help out people, exactly the kind of people who are likely to remove it if AntiSpyware complains about it (e.g. my mom).
Then a load of DLLs that are actually dummy DLLs shipped with the "lite" version of a (once upon a time) popular ad/spyware ridden app - again, it's detecting its competition!
And then there are the residual files/empty directories/registry settings that adaware/spybot didn't remove some months ago when I tried an app that came with ad/spyware. No active components at all.
Another thing I don't like about it is that it's user interface doesn't scale properly when you've adjusted your DPI settings.
Also, its on-access scanner (for want of a better word) comes with an enormous performance hit, and is mostly concerned with Internet Explorer hacks. Those are a minor concern for me since I use firefox, and besides, Microsoft should fix IE, not ship cycle/ramhungy monitoring applications for it (though that's hardly GIANT's fault).
In other words, I'm underwhelmed.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
I've noticed adaware often does this. It says there are 300 infections, but only 3 of them are program executables and only 1 is running. Many of them are cookies, so I suppose those could count individually, but seperate dlls for the 3 programs it found should not be counted as seperate infections.
Usually they do show what each file belongs to as well, so you can see roughly how many products they're removing. The number of files removed _is_ relavent however - many spyware programs tend to make multiple copies of themselves that'll happily restore each other when one is removed.
Why?
Some of what it detects are definitely false positives. On my machine, it claimed to find registry traces of eDonkey and Grokster, which it says contain adware. But the keys it found were put there by Shareaza, a non-spyware open-source client.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I second that.
Serv-U FTP Server is appearantly a "Trojan FTP", default action is to "quarantine" in MS's view.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
The same problem happens with legislation. The Bono anti-spyware bill as currently drafted would make most of the anti-spyware programs illegal. its not intentional, its just bad drafting. The problem is that what is spyware is at some level a consent issue and so drafting is horribly difficult.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Some of what it detects are definitely false positives. On my machine, it claimed to find registry traces of eDonkey and Grokster, which it says contain adware. But the keys it found were put there by Shareaza, a non-spyware open-source client.
Yeah, it wanted to kill off pieces of eMule, Shareaza and Unreal Tournament 2004 on my box.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
It shouldn't suprise anybody that Spybot and AdAware miss a lot of stuff. There's a lot of crap out there -- I've heard reports of people having thousands of infections. The big problem is keeping those databases up to date. Since Spybot is basically some guy's hobby, and Lavasoft has never put a lot of effort into maintaining AdAware (a product that was given to them by its original author, on the condition that they always provide a free version), naturally their databases have lagged. It was inevitable that somebody with deep pockets would invest the time and money to do a better job.