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Antispyware Shootout
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has published a review of 8 antispyware products from Computer Associates, Lavasoft, McAfee, Microsoft, PC Tools, Symantec, Trend Micro and Webroot. Check out the Editor's Choice. Interesting winner ...." I've used quite a number of these scanners on and on & off basis, and I think the reality is that you if you are truly to clean a machine out, you're going to need to use like three - five of these. Each of them captures a certain area, but none are the One Ring or anything.
I wonder whether there will remain enough CPU power to run the applications once I will install three to four ofthose scanners.
Maybe some major fix in the operating system (as well as in the users' brain) could help a little bit.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Did tolkien's ghost roll over in his grave or something to make you people over-excited?
It frightens me that Microsoft has suceeded so well with their shoddy products that we all think that having to run a spyware tool is normal.
It is NOT normal to have to do this.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I don't understand this. How can you trust an infected machine without wiping everything out. Even MS accepted that it's not possible to clean some rootkit kind of spyware if you don't reinstall Windows. Even if it can, how can you trust, without checking every bit of the OS? This is not Windows issue, it's same with linux or any other OS. But it's also very hard unless you're very ignorant, to get a complete infection with linux than Windows.
I would not trust any machine which is infected once, because there can be countless ways to hide an application once a hacker got in.
How many average PC users would be able to maintain a Linux box? It's hard enough for most of them to simply use Windows let alone manage a PC. Can you really see a vast majority of people switching OS? The worst thing would be that once the Linux population gets to a significant proportion it would become worthwhile to write viruses and spyware for it. The elite niche that Linux users enjoy is part of it protection, not just because it's more robust. I'm sure given sufficient motivation there are exploits to be found in Linux as well. For now any reasonably clued up Windows users can avoid most of the problems associated with viruses and spyware.
I'm sure that this review was limited to either current or potential ZDNet advertisers. Tech journalism (web or print) has absolutely no credibility. The entire article is a thinly-veiled ad for the "contestants."
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
Why do the majority of commercial virus scanners seem to work flawlessly when kept up-to-date yet we're still at the point where you may need half a dozen anti-spyware programs to clean up an ordinary windows box? What is it about spyware that makes it seemingly so difficult to shift? Oh, and why are people even recommending routinely using antispyware when it's so much easier, cheaper and cleaner to sort out the problems at the source and just get your security to a tolerable, spyware-proof level?
First, installing and maintaining a Linux box is much easier than Windows. Try Ubuntu, for example, complete install with latest patches in less than an hour versus the 6+ hour install last time I had to reinstall Windows due to spyware corruption (Windows install, SP installs, patch updates, application installation - MS Office plus patches... don't forget to install and configure firewall and anti-virus).
Second, Linux was designed from the ground up as a multi-user system which means that the security to prevent viruses and spyware is built into the architecture, not patched on top of an insecure architecture like Windows. The fact that Linux users aren't plagued by viruses and spyware is because they are secure by default.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Hogwash. In Linux or Mac, you can accomplish all daily tasks as a user with limited privileges. This is often impossible in Windows. In Linux, you can easily choose to install software only from trusted sources (e.g. your distro's package repositories.) It comes with all needed apps. This is not true in Windows.
Need more proof? See this from the Register.
It's completely ignorant to say that Linux and Mac would be just as bad if they had more marketshare.
Penny - plain text accounting
(Fair disclosure - I run Linux)
I see that in a lot of the responses the knee jerk "blame Microsoft" response has come into play. If you buy a house without a lock on the front door and a thief comes in and steals something, he gets arrested. There may be a lot of eye-rolling at your stupidity for not installing a lock after you bought the house, but the fact remains that you didn't break the law, the thief did. In the case of spyware, it is the company that planted the spyware that should get the blame.
Certainly Linux and MacOS users would be more protected from remote exploits and other fun IE flaws. Yet trojans and phishers will still manage to infect Linux and MacOS peeps once the marketshare goes up. People will give their admin passwords to install the latest and greatest "screensavers" of Britney Spears. Hell, remember that they would give them up for a chocolate candy bar. So once the marketshares go up, you will see exploits go up sufficiently to require antispyware programs. Not as much as Windows, but enough to cause trouble.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
It's really annoying to me that all of the linux users keep on taking the holier-than-thou attitude to spyware. Spyware is not a virus and does not prolifirate on it's own. The vector of attack for spyware/adware is through the uneducated/uninterested user downloading his latest fun program. That means that as soon as those nice downloadable games will be available for Linux, the spyware will start coming out for Linux as well.
It doesn't matter if you are running as admin or as the user, because for spyware the only thing that matters is your user behavior. Therefore if you install it as the user, it will still be able to show ads, replace your mozilla start page, do popups, etc. The only difference is that it will be per-user rather than machine-wide. For most people that wouldn't matter as they are a single user on that machine and the difference between having it be user-process or admin-process really isn't large. As it has been previously pointed out - the only thing that matters on a personal workstation is the user's data and you don't have to be an admin to have access to that. The only good thing could be the fact that removing it could be just a tad simpler, assuming that the software doesn't try to exploit some type of local-root exploits.
The only reason Linux does not have that problem at this time is that there isn't a market for the spyware industry in the Linux world. The current Linux users are less likely to download those type of programs and more likely to ensure that the programs only do what they are supposed to. As soon as there is a noticeble increase in the average usage of Linux, the spyware will start to develop their expertise in that area as well.
But how's that prevent spyware? Most of it would work just fine as unprivliged code, just spyware the current user, espically since the current user is usually the only user. Or just ask for admin. Competent admins often check to see why, normal users never do. I've actually heard a Mac user say "Odd, that shouldn't need admin" as they were typing in the password. Ot's just another hoop to jump through, it doesn't provide any real protection.
Based off of how bad our clueless grad students get their Linux systems owned, I remain totally unconvinced alternate platforms offer any more inherant security. When it comes to protecting a user from themselves, there's not much you can do other than take away their administrative rights completely.
Time and time again I see people claiming that Windows REQUIRES admin permissions to be useful. I say baloney.
At our bank we have over 200 users running many different types of software. Not one needs to be "administrator" - heck, no one even needs anything above "power user".
Sure, some people will claim that in order to install software, and maintain the machine, you'll need admin permissions......but that is true on any system! Last time I checked, I needed to be root to install patches on my Linux machines.
The bottom line is that most users (non-computer savy) want to be able to install anything they like...and they don't want to log out, and log back in as admin to do it. This is true of ANY platform - not just windows. It is a human behavioral thing - not a systems design thing.
Some people will claim that "OS X prompts you for a root password when performing an install, you don't need to log out and log in". Sure, that's useful - but most of the OS X users i've seen blindly type in the root/admin password whenever the dialog box pops up. They never even read the box to see what is going on! Often times they ask if there is any way to get rid of that box.
So, in summary, as long as users can install anything they want on their boxes, there will be a spyware problem. Windows, Linux, OS X, solaris - it does not matter.
-ted
How about learning to operate a computer first? Most of these users with spyware problem stem from being computer illiterate.
I disagree for the most part. Users should not have to be computer experts to use them. There should be no link in an e-mail message or web site that will install spyware without any more user intervention. Software should be properly restricted by default, from access to your files, the internet, and the core OS. When I'm listening to the radio and I hear an ad for a new station on 143.6 AM, I don't have any fear of navigating the dial to that station, because just listening to a given station is unlikely to cause my radio to start reporting my listening habits and adding extra ads from that point on. Computers should be the same.
Take my brother for example he installs anything he wants on his computer and dosen't care because as soon as I come home to visit my mother guess who is going to format and reinstall the OS again and make everything beter again and this cycle goes on and on.
While what he is doing is ill informed (or he is just uncaring) he should be able to install anything he wants without worrying about it doing malicious things, unless he specifically allows it. Other OS's have sandboxes and good application level ACLs, although none are really up to snuff. Of course other OS's don't have a malware problem, so there is little need as yet. Your blithe acceptance of the problem, is part of the problem. If there were two major OS's competing in the space, based upon the quality of the solutions, the malware problem would 99% mitigated in a matter of months. The problem is not solved because MS does not care to solve it.
Yes, because it misses the point. Unlike many (students? singles? who knows...) hanging around this site, I don't have unlimited amounts of free time. So, I scan long articles. First I scanned the product names...no Spybot. Then I skipped to the conclusions. In the first paragraph was "Spybot". So, I could have read the rest of the article, but it was easier to ask the question...
Why does there have to be some "magical" (or technically rigorous) reason for the lack of malware on Unix-type systems?
There is a certain myopia among technically-minded individuals that makes it seem that only a technical solution can solve a technical problem. This is not necessarily the case. Moving to a Unix-type system is the electronic equivalent of moving from a blighted inner-city ghetto to an upperclass suburban neighborhood. There's no technical reason why it should be any safer or cleaner--but it is. You might think that this is a "head in the sand" approach. But as far as I'm concerned, it's taking advantage of reality.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
"You are missing the point. The machine was _clean_. There wasn't Alexa on the machines at all. " No he is not... There has been an Alexa reg key on all versions of Windows since 95.
Check for yourself... and it is impossible to get rid of, IE recreates it everytime it is started...br...and I've checked this on a fresh installed W2K, before connecting to the Internet and with Ad-Aware installed from CD (and nothing else installed).