RE: [H] Some stats about infected machines
AOL! What the paper does not reveal is that almost all of the "93 spyware components" get nuked on the spot by an updated adaware. It's ones remaining that can be tricky if there is not a turnkey removal tool for the average user. From: "Mesdaq, Ali" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: The Hardware List To: "The Hardware List" Subject: [H] Some stats about infected machines Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:46:47 -0800 Here is a quote from a white paper from the University of Washington. "In the span of just a few years, spyware has become the Internet's most "popular" download. A recent scan performed by AOL/NCSA of 329 customers' computers found that 80% were infected with spyware programs [2]. More shocking, each infected computer contained an average of 93 spyware components. The consequences of spyware infections can be severe, including inundating the victim with pop-up ads, stealing the victim's financial information or passwords, or rendering the victim's computer useless." I only mention this because of our recent conversation about tools and philosophy about infected machines. Now I don't know about the rest of you but I don't feel like hunting down 93 components and cleaning that out. But when we discussed cleaning vs reformatting I want to make clear that I only would reformat on an end users computer that was not under my control. If I had a computer that got infected with something that was very specific and I knew there was only one piece of malware on it then I would definitely prefer cleaning rather than reformatting. It's only in cases where the computer has been infected for long periods of time and was never protected to begin with. The white paper is good and is the type of projects we work on at work. Pretty fun stuff you can read the paper here http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gribble/papers/spycrawler.pdf
Re: [H] Some stats about infected machines
I wonder how much taxpayers $$ was used to state the obvious. fp At 04:46 PM 2/16/2006, Mesdaq, Ali Poked the stick with: >Here is a quote from a white paper from the University of Washington. > >"In the span of just a few years, spyware has become the >Internet's most "popular" download. A recent scan performed >by AOL/NCSA of 329 customers' computers found >that 80% were infected with spyware programs [2]. More >shocking, each infected computer contained an average of >93 spyware components. The consequences of spyware infections >can be severe, including inundating the victim with >pop-up ads, stealing the victim's financial information or >passwords, or rendering the victim's computer useless." > >I only mention this because of our recent conversation about tools and >philosophy about infected machines. Now I don't know about the rest of >you but I don't feel like hunting down 93 components and cleaning that >out. But when we discussed cleaning vs reformatting I want to make clear >that I only would reformat on an end users computer that was not under >my control. If I had a computer that got infected with something that >was very specific and I knew there was only one piece of malware on it >then I would definitely prefer cleaning rather than reformatting. It's >only in cases where the computer has been infected for long periods of >time and was never protected to begin with. > >The white paper is good and is the type of projects we work on at work. >Pretty fun stuff you can read the paper here >http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gribble/papers/spycrawler.pdf -- Tallyho ! ]:8) Taglines below ! -- You tell 'em Goldfish, you've been around the globe.
