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Study: Tools Let Spyware Slip Through Cracks
Ryan Naraine - eWEEK
With the threat of a sophisticated
spyware attack looming, a renowned security researcher
says the most popular detection and removal tools "fail
miserably" at addressing the growing spyware/malware
scourge.
Just days after hackers seized
control of a banner ad server and used it to
load malicious programs on vulnerable machines, researcher
Eric Howes issued failing grades on all anti-spyware scanners
he tested during a two-week stretch in October.
Howes, a graduate student
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
found that the best-performing anti-spyware scanner
failed to detect about 25 percent of the "critical" files
and registry entries installed by the malicious programs.
"One thing I found out
for sure is that no single scanner removes everything," Howes
said in an interview with eWEEK.com.
"I had an inkling before
doing the test that the results would come back like
this. But it still is disappointing to find that the
tools, in many cases, are basically useless."
"The anti-spyware tools
missed things that simply reinstalled what was deleted," Howes
said, likening it to a cat-and-mouse game being won
by the bad guys.
The results rated
the Giant AntiSpyware detection tool as the best of
the 20 scanners tested, but even then, Howes said the
software detected only 100 out of 134 "critical" files
and registry entries.
"Some of them are just
terrible. In some cases, there were only 18 critical
detections. What's the point of missing critical files?
It's all going to come back anyway," he said.
"Critical" detections include
executable files (.EXE or .COM), dynamic link libraries
(.DLL), BHO-related registry entries, toolbar-related
registry entries and auto-start Registry entries.
Howes said companies that
stealthily load spyware are using elaborate tricks
to hide component files on computers. "They hide the
files very well on the system and use complicated techniques
to detect and replace component parts. If you rip out
one or two parts, the undetected parts will come in
and replace the files that you took out," he said.
During the tests, which
pitted the top 20 anti-spyware scanners against spyware
that comes embedded with peer-to-peer programs such
as Grokster, Howes said he discovered that the malicious
applications were capable of blocking the scanners.
"In the second and third
group of tests, one of the installed programs prevented
the anti-spyware scanners from running on reboot," he
said, noting that reboots are a common method used
by anti-spyware scanners to remove stubborn spyware
and adware that remain in memory on a PC.
Is spyware a virus?
During the first round
of tests, Howes found that McAfee's AntiSpyware rated
very poorly, picking up only 56 of 134 critical detections.
InterMute's SpySubtract (72/134), Aluria's
Spyware Eliminator (42/134), Lavasoft's Ad-Aware (82/134)
and the popular Spybot Search & Destroy (40/134)
also scored very low on detecting "critical" files.
Howes said things go so
bad that, at one point during the tests, he found that
he had missed a single executable file. "When I started
the test box the next day, the next set of tests was
compromised because of that one executable. Within
a couple of minutes, the box was completely loaded
again with spyware," he said.
Howes, who maintains a privacy and security
page, recommends that users infected with spyware
use two or more scanners in combination, as one will
often detect and remove things that others do not.
Benjamin Edelman, an anti-spyware advocate who researches
the methods and effects of spyware, said he was not
surprised by the test results. "Eric's work proves
that paying more for spyware detection doesn't mean
getting more. He found that the more expensive programs
aren't necessarily better than the free versions." Edelman,
a Harvard Law School student, has been monitoring
spyware installations and chronicling the research
findings on his
Web site."We're very, very far from having a
magic bullet solution. We're not dealing with fly-by-night
operations," Edelman told eWEEK.com. He also warned
that many bogus anti-spyware programs are circulating
and exacerbating the problem for consumers.Check
out eWEEK.com's Security
Center for the latest security news, reviews
and analysis. And for insights on security coverage
around the Web, take a look at eWEEK.com Security
Center Editor Larry
Seltzer's Weblog.
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