Re: MS AntiSpyware beta 1 first impressions

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From: Adrian Lee (adrianlee_at_r-e-m.co.uk)
Date: 01/07/05 

Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 10:05:39 -0000

Just ran it on my machine, and though it found a few valid apps (TightVNC,
RealVNC and Dameware), when it displayed the results at the end of the
scan, I was pleased to see the information about them was along the lines
of "these are only problems if you didn't know they were there", and that
the default action was to ignore them.

It also found SearchSquire and Grokster (which I was a bit surprised
at...) and the default action for searchsquire was to remove it.

The real-time protection looks worth investigating more too. I'd much
rather stop the stuff getting on a machine in the first place, than have
to go round scanning machines when they start playing up.

More impressive than I was expecting, worth keeping an eye on I think.
Now if they'ed sort things out so I wasn't forced into using IE for
certain things, I'd be a lot happier and more secure.

Would be interesting to see how it performs on a friends home PC who
doesn't already use Spybot or anything too. They're the ones I get most
problems with!

Adrian

On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 21:45:19 -0000, David Elders
<david_elders@hotmail.com.nospam> wrote:

> Tried it this afternoon and it found various things that neither Ad-Aware
> nor Spybot had found.
>
> eBlaster - commercial key logger
> Spector - key logger [which I was evaluating and therefore caused me no
> issues]
> Searchsquire - adware
> Grokster - adware bundler
>
> I regularly scan my system with both Ad-Aware and Spybot, have SP2 and
> SpywareBlaster also installed. Google Toolbar to stop pop-ups in
> conjunction
> with the XP SP2 IE pop-up blocker, so the fact that it found a commercial
> key logger is in itself something from my point of view. I'm way more
> paranoid than any of our users and have to say its a timely reminder that
> *any* system is vulnerable...
>
> Findings are all positive so far however on the MS software...
>
> Cheers all,
>
>
>
> David
>
>
>
>
> "Jason Gerend, MVP" <jason@jasongerend.com.nospam> wrote in message
> news:uOf3KMC9EHA.3236@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
>> I just tried out Microsoft's new AntiSpyware program
>> (http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx),
>> and here are my first impressions:
>>
>> * It seems relatively polished
>> * I like its spyware protection features - they look similar to the
>> Windows Firewall
>> * I like that it can be scheduled to run automatically, and update
>> itself
>> automatically
>> * It didn't find anything on my system here. I then ran the latest
>> version
>> of Adaware, and it found 33 "New Critical Objects". They all are
>> Tracking
>> Cookies
>> (http://www.lavasoftnews.com/ms/display_main.php?tac=Tracking%20Cookie)
>> with Low risk levels. I find that Adaware really scares users with
>> these,
>> so I don't mind the fact that MS's program doesn't alarm users with
>> these
>> relatively benign cookies. However, it would be nice if it detected them
>> and gave us the option of deleting them anyway.
>> * It has some really cool system tools, such as the ability to disable
>> startup items in a more permanent way than msconfig, a very thorough
>> "tracks eraser" that cleans up history settings in various programs and
>> locations, and a nice Running Processes list that lets you see more
>> information than Task Manager and kill programs that you don't want
>> running.
>>
>> In summary, it didn't detect any spyware on my system, but neither did
>> Adaware (tracking cookies aside). My system should be relatively clean,
>> so
>> this perhaps isn't the best test of the program's capabilities, but I
>> liked what I saw. It is easy for end users to use, can be scheduled to
>> run
>> automatically, and has some nice features for power users.
>> I have not yet tested it on my SBS network, so I can't tell whether
>> there
>> will be any issues with its "Security Agents" and SBS features, though
>> hopefully it'll work fine.
>>
>> It will be interesting to see how this program matures. I'm going to
>> test
>> it on a wider variety of systems, and suggest that others begin
>> evaluating
>> this promising new program.
>>
>> Jason Gerend, MCSE, MVP - Small Business Server
>> Co-author of Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003
>> Administrator's
>> Companion,
>> Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Administrator's Companion,
>> Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Administrator's Companion
>>
>
> 

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