RE: Microsoft AntiSpyware falling further behind

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't MS Anti-spyware "beta" software?
Does it not specifically say it is beta and use for testing only, etc.? 

Did the original poster provide the MS team with any info on what they
felt was missed so the developers can continue to develop the "beta" in
to a finished and functioning production software?

Best Regards, 

Dan Bartley

-----Original Message-----
From: Drew Hunt [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 18:20
To: Shaffer, Bruce; Quark IT - Hilton Travis;
[email protected]
Subject: RE: Microsoft AntiSpyware falling further behind

I know it is fun and easy to disparage MS products, but is it possible
that other spyware vendors go overboard? Not all cookies are bad. Is it
possible that some of this might not be considered spyware. 
You mention Zedo. I bet they don't think their product is spyware. Have
you been to their website?
You also mention "Cok.ad.yieldmanager" I didn't know what this was so I
did a search. According to Counter Spy research database, it says, 
"Threat risk: Low Risk -Low risk threats pose a very low risk or no
immediate danger to your computer or your privacy," 
How much better do you feel now that the cookie which exposed you to
little or no risk is now off your machine?

I know we have Trend in my corporate environment, and now they seems to
classify, worms, viruses, trojans, useful utilities that I use (like
superscan), real spyware, ad ware, and seemingly every cookie as a
virus. We have thousands every day and I don't feel any safer. But we
can report that Trend blocked X thousands "viruses" last week when
really it just deleted cookies. 

My point is that one man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist.
Before slinging mud at MS and other vendors for their "effectiveness"
maybe we should define what we consider "effective" and what is
considered excessive? 
If you don't want any cookies follow one of the other posters advice and
selectively accept them.

My 2 cents.

Drew


-----Original Message-----
From: Shaffer, Bruce [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 4:25 AM
To: 'Quark IT - Hilton Travis'; '[email protected]'
Subject: RE: Microsoft AntiSpyware falling further behind

I read about a year and a half ago that there were over 30 million known
pieces of spyware of which over 5 million were active executables.
Given the fact that many of the worms slithering across the net out
there have "call home, self updating capabilities" there will never be a
comprehensive signature based antispyware that catches even 10% of the
threats.  We need to get out of reactive mode and go proactive, and
blah, blah, blah.

It is not at all surprising that MS avoids certain spyware.  After all,
when you install MS operating systems out of the box you get Alexa
before you connect to any network.
-B-

-----Original Message-----
From: Quark IT - Hilton Travis [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, October 21, 2005 4:51 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Microsoft AntiSpyware falling further behind

Hi All,

It seems that not only does Microsoft AntiSpyware recommend that
Claria's spyware is ignored, but it also misses a significant amount of
cookies that are placed on a system - I have a VPC environment where I
browse the Internet so that anywhere I go won't affect my regular
Windows session/installation.  Regularly CounterSpy is detecting cookies
(such as Cok.ad.yieldmanager, CGI-Bin, Cok.AssassinTrojan2.0 and Zedo
(from yesterday's browsing)) that Microsoft AntiSpyware simply does not
know about.

Now, this is not only disappointing, but potentially dangerous.  Any
customer or end user running Microsoft AntiSpyware or CounterSpy is not
being protected from these cookies, and MSAS doesn't even detect them -
that's right, neither program's active monitoring is stopping the
installation of these cookies, but at least CounterSpy is detecting them
post-installation.

AntiSpyware is far, far from the accuracy of antivirus, especially
something like NOD32.  I wonder how long it will be before a decent
AntiSpyware application is released that, like NOD32 does with viruses,
actually stops spyware *before* it is installed?

--

Regards,

Hilton Travis                          Phone: +61 (0)7 3344 3889
(Brisbane, Australia)                  Phone: +61 (0)419 792 394
Manager, Quark IT                      http://www.quarkit.com.au
         Quark Group                   http://quarkgroup.com.au/

Microsoft Small Business Specialists

http://www.threatcode.com/ <-- its now time to shame poor coders into
writing code that is acceptable for use on today's networks


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