Favorite Third Party Tools Department: Webroot Spy Sweeper
I don't know about your system, but it seems that anytime I connect to the Web, I get some variety of adware, and occasionally, some real spyware. I run both Spy Sweeper, which I received from Webroot's giveaway at our March 2004 meeting, and SpywareGuard. Both of them work, because on occasion I get popup messages from one or the other letting me know they caught something nasty. Both of them have captured those dastardly keystroke loggers. Spy Sweeper appears to be the more active of the two, because it pops up more frequently, and is scheduled for a full run Friday (although I do run it more often than that). As I write this, for example, Spy Sweeper has found nine cookies, and traces of 12 somethings, not listed in its window, and has 32 more minutes to run. (And of course, I need to log back onto the Web now, so I'll have to re-run the program later!)
(Okay, I'm off the Web again, let's see if I picked up any more garbage...running Spy Sweeper again...)Yes, I'm off the Web now, and Spy Sweeper has found two more items, one of them, its own System Monitor, Spy Sweeper Update. It also found another system monitor, iOpus Starr. If you want further information on any threat that Spy Sweeper detects, such as iOpus Starr, simply click the Further Details button, and Spy Sweeper wisks you to their website giving you a page that looks like this:
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Name: | iOpus Starr |
Author: | iOpus Software GmbH |
Category: | System Monitor |
Threat Assessment: | High |
Description:
Iopus Starr is a system monitoring tool that logs keystrokes, usernames, passwords, chat conversations, visited Web sites and more.
Characteristics:
iOpus Starr is a monitoring tool that captures screenshots and logs keystrokes, including usernames, passwords, access times, window titles, chat room conversation and visited Web sites. The data is saved into an encrypted log file for later retrieval; the data also can be emailed to a remote PC. The program runs in the background, so it is completely invisible to the user.
Method of Infection:
iOpus Starr can be installed only by someone with administrative access to your computer, such as a system administrator or someone that shares your computer.
Additional Comments:
None
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Now that is useful information! It's obvious, I don't want iOpus on MY system! So I click Next... Spy Sweeper asks me if I want to remove its own update monitor, and I say NO, because I really do want their updates, as SOON as they released. The last page tells me that the application has removed 66 traces of spyware since installation. Actually, I think that's since the last time I cleared the quarantine folder, because I was clearing disk space. I'm sure there were something like 128 traces in that folder before I emptied it, a few months ago. (Yeah, my system does seem to accumulate a lot of crud. I have an AV scan done every Friday evening, as well, and last week's scan picked up nine new infections! If we average nine viruses and 12 spyware items during the average week, one may assume we are under constant attack by the Forces of Evil. Thank The Powers That Be for the wonderful people at Webroot!)
Spy Sweeper is easily configurable. You can select which drives, when, and even which software to quarantine on a regular basis. The interface is intuitive to use. Well, what are you waiting for? If you didn't install the free copy from the meeting, Fry's presently has Spy Sweeper available at a sale price, so stock up! You need this one. To find out more about Spy Sweeper and other fascinating Webroot products, go to http://www.webroot.com.
Next month, another look at 2xExplorer (unless someone has something else they'd like to tell us about).
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Opinions and Commentary Department
(Gripes-R-Us Dept.)
Some corporations seem to think that in order for software to be of any value, it has to be expensive. Their managers assume that inexpensive software or freeware is of no value. Some managers apparently assume that a GNU opensource license means that the software is either inconsequential, or that because they wouldn't have a piece of paper to show the software police, they'd better not have any such 'tainted' software on their systems. It's better to spend a lot of money for the license, than to take the chance that someone will try to sue us. Right?
But in this furiously fluxuating freemarket frightening economy, where costs must be held down at any cost (including, too often, the cost of the welfare of the employees), shouldn't we be looking for alternatives to expensive software? True the overhead costs of the Admin's is often higher than some of the applications, but that may not be the case if you need licenses for five thousand copies of an expensive app. So, should you be looking for cheaper alternatives, or not? Who makes the corporate software expense decisions, the accountant, the CEO, the IT managers, you? (And if it's someone other than you or the IT manager, to they have the knowledge and experience to select the proper application software?)
Another consideration is that companies that charge a high price for their software claim they also have the developmental resources to test it, extensively, under many operating environments and varying conditions, and in the operating presence of many other application packages. (Right...this is obviously why we are always told to shut down other applications when installing new ones. Obviously the new apps were so well tested that they couldn't possibly interfere or interact with anything else, could they?) And they have the resources to spend the time making sure the user interfaces are simple, intuitive, blah, blah, blah. If that's true, why do we still find so many bugs when we pay those high prices? Why do we still have to spend so much time juggling applications and making certain configurations do not interefere?
So, are they right to look first for the price tag, and the official license, or is what really matters whether or not the software does the job efficiently? What's your take on this?
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Reader Feedback
'Aaa Mahn, wha'chu got to say?
--Editor
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Final Notes…
> Be sure to be at the meeting by 6:30 pm for the MCT Corner lesson on !
> If you any ideas for an article that you might like to write for this Newsletter, or about any third-party software that you would like to share with our members, please submit your article to the Editor, contact information below. Please use the Rich Text Format (.rtf file) for your article, and in the subject line of your email, put the word, Newsletter, so I don't accidently delete your email. (I tend to delete emails from people I don't know unless the subject line clearly indicates something important.)
See you at the meeting on Thursday, August 12, 2004, enjoy!
Robert Holtzman,
Editor
rholtzman@socalitpro.org
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SoCal IT Pro/OCNTUG Newsletter
Volume 2 No. 8 08/01/2004
EOF