[wplug] Windows - Is this happening to you too?

[Tim Lesher]

On Sat, May 29, 2004 at 01:47:41PM -0400, Bill Moran wrote:
> I don't believe this for a second.  I use XP on one of the computers
> I use here at the office, and I do quite a bit of recreational
> browsing on it as well, yet have _never_ gotten any spy/adware.

It's true that some sites are worse than others for spyware/adware
installation, but it's not just the "embarrassing" ones you might
think.  A lot of the "free fonts", "free clip art", and cheapo search
aggregator sites are pretty shameless about what they'll accept as far
as advertising.

> AV software doesn't recognize or prevent ANY adware.  I have
> theories as to why this is so, but no proof.

Some do--I've had McAfee trigger on a few "automatic download" IE
exploit-based ones--but I think it's mostly because they all sell
anti-adware software as an add-on to their AV software.  It's more
profitable to sell them a la carte right now, but they'll probably
merge to suite-based software, the way lots of other categories of
Windows software have.

Having one foot in the closed-source, Windows world, and one foot in
the open-source Linux world (and a previous life in the adware world),
I can definitely say that the software out there is getting more
sophisticated.  I've analyzed the last couple of "insertions" on my
wife's and my father's machines, and they're doing more and more
interesting things with Windows shell extensions, explorer and IE
extensions, etc.

You're correct on one count, though: the biggest loss for Windows is
the lack of security in the default installation.  The newer
techniques are at a pretty close level of integration with the OS,
which really should require (at the very least) more and more flashing
red lights to install.

-- 
Tim Lesher <tim at lesher.ws>
http://www.lesher.ws