Microsoft AntiSpyWare
Check out Microsoft AntiSpyware (meaningful naming :) )
its still a beta version so there are some issues with it. Be careful when deleting any files, sometimes malware names conflict with some legit windows filenames. One such case is the file
Location: C:\winnt\system32\tapicfg.exe.
This is a legit Server 2003 file, should not be deleted. These issues are already bugged and being fixed. In case of something going wrong, there's a recovery option that might come in useful. ===> I have seen that the recovery option is not fully functional yet .. but its being worked on !
Comments
- Anonymous
January 09, 2005
cool - Anonymous
January 09, 2005
Have you tried it? What do you think is cool about it? - Anonymous
January 09, 2005
i have it installed on all my machines and by default set to run everyday at 2 am. So first then when i open my computer .. i have a nice report of how many files were scanned and if anything was found to be infected. It is also set up to update spynet with the latest spyware founds so that they can keep up their signatures.
It also has real time protection which protects your computer from spyware threats before they have a chance to exploit. It runs three types of agent -- Internet, system and application which guard various checkpoints that verify all possible spyware activity through SpyNet.
Another great thing about it is the System Explorers under Advanced options. its a one stop all info station about everything installed on your machine that can potentially be an exploit. It tells you about all the BHOs running in IE (even though you can find these on XPSP2 via IE's AddOn Manager). you can also find all the ActiveX controls downloaded on the machine. Not only is it informational, but it also allows you to remove or block the controls that you don't want to run on your machine.
Another (interesting) feature is from the perspective of privacy, wherein it enables you to remove all traces of your browsing history and other related tracks of you internet activity from the Windows Temporary Internet Files.
I haven't investigated into the recovery options that this software provides .. but i am sure that if there isn't much support for that already, work must be underway to provide that sooner rather than later.
The list goes on .. i think this is a good software to have for one stop inspection of various attack vectors that affect a common home user.
happy installing :) - Anonymous
January 09, 2005
I'm confused, are you guys in IE developing this software? Are you planning on integrating it with IE? - Anonymous
January 09, 2005
This is not a development project of the IE team, nor is there a plan of integrating it. This is a separate product which has just been released as a Beta 1.
you can find more information about it at http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/ - Anonymous
January 14, 2005
I just found out about this interesting issue with Antispyware .. i am sure a lot of ppl must have noticed it as well. Sometimes the notifications that are supposed to come up to inform you about certain anamolous activity going on in you computer simply whizzzzz by the computer screen from bottom right towards top right and then they disappear into oblivion and you have no way to get to them or even find out what the alert was all about.
This is a known bug and is being fixed. This will happen consistently IF you have your taskbar docked vertically to the right hand side of the screen. so a work around is to have the taskbar horizontally placed (as most ppl do) at the bottom of the screen. Also, for those of you who think that the alert has gone away, it hasn't .. its still running and you can see it running inside Task Manager's process tab as gcasServAlert.exe . so you might wanna go and end that process to stop it from using memory and CPU.
Hope it helps :)