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New Reviews Underway...

We just took a trip to CompUSA and came back with a ton of new products, including Cosmi's Spyware Killer Pro and a stack of DVD Copying utilities. Look for more reviews in the next two weeks!

October 28, 2005

Anti-Spyware Group Pushes Guidelines

by Wendy Davis, Friday, Oct 28, 2005 6:01 AM EST

MORE THAN SIX MONTHS AFTER it formed, an anti-spyware group headed by the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Anti-Spyware Coalition, released guidelines Thursday designed to assess how to evaluate spyware and other potentially unwanted software programs. The group's guidelines carry no legal weight, but might be influential with some members--like Aluria and Lavasoft--that manufacture anti-spyware removal software.

The proposed standards don't spell out whether any particular product should be classified as harmful, but instead provide various risk factors--a laundry list of traits of software programs, with each trait assessed for its degree of risk.

"The risk factors have general weights (high, medium, and low) that help show the relative impact to the user," states the document. "Although all behaviors can be problematic if unauthorized, certain ones tend to have a greater impact and are treated with more severity than others."

When programs serve pop-up ads, one of the key indicators of potential harm is whether the pop-ups "are clearly attributed to the source program," according to the guidelines.

The guidelines also look at factors that could indicate whether consumers have consented to the programs. For instance, in the case of bundled programs, one factor is whether consumers have opted-in to receive the bundled software (considered a high indication of consent) or whether consumers' only notification about bundled software came in an end-user license agreement (considered a low indication of consumer consent).

Similarly, the easier a program is to remove, the more likely it is that the consumer has consented to the program, according to the guidelines.

The organization is accepting comments on the guidelines through Nov. 27.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Spyware covers a broad category of malicious software designed to intercept or take partial control of a computer's operation without the informed consent of that machine's owner or legitimate user. While the term taken literally suggests software that surreptitiously monitors the user, it has come to refer more broadly to software that subverts the computer's operation for the benefit of a third party.

Spyware differs from viruses and worms in that it does not usually self-replicate. Like many recent viruses, however, spyware - by design - exploits infected computers for commercial gain. Typical tactics furthering this goal include delivery of unsolicited pop-up advertisements; theft of personal information (including financial information such as credit card numbers); monitoring of Web-browsing activity for marketing purposes; or routing of HTTP requests to advertising sites.

As of 2005, pundits have often characterized spyware as the pre-eminent security threat for computers running Microsoft Windows operating systems. Some malware on the Linux and Mac OS X platforms has behavior similar to Windows spyware, but to date has not become anywhere near as widespread.

History and development

The first recorded use of the term spyware occurred on October 16, 1995 in a Usenet post that poked fun at Microsoft's business model. Spyware later came to refer to espionage equipment such as tiny cameras. However, in early 2000 the founder of Zone Labs, Gregor Freund, used the term in a press release for the ZoneAlarm Personal Firewall.^[2] Since then, computer-users have used the term in its current sense. 1999 also saw the introduction of the first popular freeware program to include built-in spyware: a humorous and popular game called "Elf Bowling" spread across the Internet in November 1999, and many users learned with surprise that the program actually transmitted user information back to the game's creator, Nsoft.

In early 2000, Steve Gibson of Gibson Research realized that advertising software had been installed on his system, and he suspected that the software was stealing his personal information. After analyzing the software he determined that they were adware components from the companies Aureate (later Radiate) and Conducent. He eventually rescinded his claim that the ad software collected information without the user's knowledge, but still chastised the ad companies for covertly installing the spyware and making it difficult to remove.

As a result of his analysis in 2000, Gibson released the first anti-spyware program, OptOut, and many more software antidotes have appeared since then.^[3]International Charter now offers software developers a Spyware-Free Certification program.^[4]

According to an October 2004 study by America Online and the National Cyber-Security Alliance, 80% of surveyed users' computers had some form of spyware, with an average of 93 spyware components per computer. 89% of surveyed users with spyware reported that they did not know of its presence, and 95% reported that they had not given permission for it to be installed.^[5]

Spyware, "adware", and tracking

The term adware frequently refers to any software which displays advertisements, whether or not it does so with the user's consent. Programs such as the Eudora mail client display advertisements as an alternative to shareware registration fees. These classify as "adware" in the sense of advertising-supported software, but not as spyware. They do not operate surreptitiously or mislead the user.

Many of the programs frequently classified as spyware function as adware in a different sense: their chief observed behavior consists of displaying advertising. Claria Corporation's Gator Software provides an example of this sort of program. Visited Web sites frequently install Gator on client machines in a surreptitious manner, and it directs revenue to the installing site and to Claria by displaying advertisements to the user. The user's experience is that their computer begins displaying a large number of pop-up advertisements.

Other spyware behaviors, such as reporting on websites the user visits, frequently accompany the displaying of advertisements. Monitoring web activity aims at building up a marketing profile on users in order to sell "targeted" advertisement impressions. The prevalence of spyware has cast suspicion upon other programs that track Web browsing, even for statistical or research purposes. Some observers describe the Alexa Toolbar, an Internet Explorer plug-in published by Amazon.com, as spyware (and some anti-spyware programs report it as such) although many users choose to install it.

Routes of infection

Spyware does not directly spread in the manner of a computer virus or worm: generally, an infected system does not attempt to transmit the infection to other computers. Instead, spyware gets on a system through deception of the user or through exploitation of software vulnerabilities.

The most direct route by which spyware can get on a computer involves the user installing it. However, users are unlikely to install software if they know that it may disrupt their working environment and compromise their privacy. So many spyware programs deceive the user, either by piggybacking on a piece of desirable software, or by tricking the user to do something that installs the software without realizing it.

Classically, a Trojan horse, by definition, smuggles in something dangerous in the guise of something desirable. Some spyware programs get spread in just this manner. The distributor of spyware presents the program as a useful utility -- for instance as a "Web accelerator" or as a helpful software agent. Users download and install the software, only to find out later that it can cause harm. For example, Bonzi Buddy, a spyware program targeted at children, claims that:

He will explore the Internet with you as your very own friend and sidekick! He can talk, walk, joke, browse, search, e-mail, and download like no other friend you've ever had! He even has the ability to compare prices on the products you love and help you save money! Best of all, he's FREE!^[6]

The BearShare file-trading program is "supported" by WhenU spyware. In order to install BearShare, users must agree to install "the SAVE! bundle" from WhenU. The installer provides only a tiny window in which to read the lengthy license agreement. Although the installer claims otherwise, the software transmits users' browsing activity to WhenU servers.^[1]

Spyware can also come bundled with shareware or other downloadable software, as well as music CDs. The user downloads a program--for instance, a music program or a file-trading utility--and installs it; the installer additionally installs the spyware. Although the desirable software itself may do no harm, the bundled spyware does. In some cases, spyware authors have paid shareware authors to bundle spyware with their software, as with the Gator spyware now marketed by Claria. In other cases, spyware authors have repackaged desirable software with installers that add spyware.

A third way of distributing spyware involves tricking users by manipulating security features designed to prevent unwanted installations. The security features of the design of the Internet Explorer Web browser militate AGAINST allowing Web sites to initiate an unwanted download. Instead, a user action, such as clicking on a link, must normally trigger a download. However, links can prove deceptive: for instance, a pop-up ad may appear like a standard Windows dialog box. The box contains a message such as "Would you like to optimize your Internet access?" with links which look like buttons reading Yes and No. No matter which "button" the user presses, a download starts, placing the spyware on the user's system. Later versions of Internet Explorer offer fewer avenues for this attack.

Some spyware authors infect a system by attacking security holes in the Web browser or in other software. When the user navigates to a Web page controlled by the spyware author, the page contains code which attacks the browser and forces the download and install of spyware. The spyware author would also have some extensive knowledge of commercially-available anti-virus and firewall software. This has become known as a "drive-by download", by analogy to drive-by shootings which leave the user as a hapless bystander. Common browser exploits target security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and in the Microsoft Java runtime. Given that Internet Explorer remains the most widely-used browser and that many users neglect to update to more secure versions of their software, Internet Explorer provides an attractive entry point for the less scrupulous advertiser or computer-hacker.

Internet Explorer also serves as a point of attachment for spyware programs which install themselves as Browser Helper Objectplugins.

In a few cases, a worm or virus has delivered a payload of spyware. For instance, some attackers used the W32.Spybot.Worm worm to install spyware that popped up pornographic ads on the infected system's screen.^[7] By directing traffic to ads set up to channel funds to the spyware authors, they can profit even by such clearly illegal behavior.

Effects and behaviors

Windows-based computers can rapidly accumulate a great many spyware components. Users frequently notice unwanted behavior and degradation of system performance. A spyware infestation can create significant unwanted CPU activity, disk usage, and network traffic -- slowing down legitimate uses of these resources. Stability issues -- application or system crashes -- are also common. Spyware which interferes with the networking software commonly causes difficulty connecting to the Internet.

Spyware infection is the most common reason that Windows users seek technical support -- whether from computer manufacturers, Internet service providers, or other sources. In many cases, the user has no awareness of spyware and assumes that the system performance, stability, and/or connectivity issues relate to hardware, to Windows installation problems, or to a virus. Some owners of badly infected systems resort to buying an entire new computer system because the existing system "has become too slow". For badly infected systems, a clean reinstall may be required to restore the system to a working order--—a time-consuming project even for experienced users.

Only rarely does a single piece of software render a computer unusable. Rather, a computer rarely has only one infection. As the 2004 AOL study noted, if a computer has any spyware at all, it typically has dozens of different pieces installed. The cumulative effect, and the interactions between spyware components, typically cause the stereotypical symptoms reported by users--a computer which slows to a crawl, overwhelmed by the many parasitic processes running on it. Moreover, some types of spyware disable software firewalls and anti-virus software, and reduce browser security settings, opening the system to further opportunistic infections, much like an immune deficiency disease. There are also documented cases where a spyware program disabled other spyware programs created by the competitors.

Some other types of spyware (Targetsoft, for example) modify system files to make themselves harder to remove. (Targetsoft modifies the Winsock (Windows Sockets) files. The deletion of the spyware-infected file "inetadpt.dll" will interrupt normal networking usage.) Unlike many other operating systems, a typical Windows user has administrator-level privileges on the system, mostly for the sake of convenience. Any program run by the said user, intentionally or not, has completely unrestricted access to the entire system.

Spyware, along with other threats, has led some former Windows users to move to other platforms such as Linux or Apple Macintosh.

Advertisements

Many spyware programs reveal themselves visibly by displaying advertisements. Some programs simply display pop-up ads on a regular basis -- for instance, one every several minutes, or one when the user opens a new browser window. Others display ads in response to specific sites that the user visits. Spyware operators present this feature as desirable to advertisers, who may buy ad placement in pop-ups displayed when the user visits a particular site. It is also one of the purposes for which spyware programs gather information on user behavior.

Pop-up advertisements lead to some of users' most common complaints about spyware. The first is simply that the computer can become overwhelmed downloading or displaying ads. An infected computer rarely has only one spyware component installed -- they more often number in the dozens ^[8] -- and so while a single program might display ads only infrequently, the cumulative effect is overwhelming.

Many users complain about irritating or offensive advertisements as well. As with many banner ads, many spyware advertisements are animated, flickering banners designed to catch the eye -- that is, they are highly visually distracting. Pop-up ads for pornography are often displayed indiscriminately, including when children are using the computer -- possibly in violation of laws on the subject.

A further issue in the case of some spyware programs has to do with the replacement of banner ads on viewed web sites. Spyware which acts as a web proxy or a Browser Helper Object can replace references to a site's own advertisements (which fund the site) with advertisements which instead fund the spyware operator. This cuts into the margins of advertising-funded Web sites.

"Stealware" and affiliate fraud

A few spyware vendors, notably WhenU and 180 Solutions, have written what the New York Times has dubbed "stealware", and what spyware-researcher Ben Edelman terms affiliate fraud, also known as click fraud. These redirect the payment of affiliate marketing revenues from the legitimate affiliate to the spyware vendor.

Affiliate marketing networks work by tracking users who follow an advertisement from an "affiliate" and subsequently purchase something from the advertised Web site. Online merchants such as eBay and Dell are among the larger companies which use affiliate marketing. In order for affiliate marketing to work, the affiliate places a tag such as a cookie or a session variable on the user's request, which the merchant associates with any purchases made. The affiliate then receives a small commission.

Spyware which attacks affiliate networks does so by placing the spyware operator's affiliate tag on the user's activity -- replacing any other tag, if there is one. This harms just about everyone involved in the transaction other than the spyware operator. The user is harmed by having their choices thwarted. A legitimate affiliate is harmed by having their earned income redirected to the spyware operator. Affiliate marketing networks are harmed by the degradation of their reputation. Vendors are harmed by having to pay out affiliate revenues to an "affiliate" who did not earn them according to contract. [9]

Affiliate fraud is a violation of the terms of service of most affiliate marketing networks. As a result, spyware operators such as WhenU and 180 Solutions have been terminated from affiliate networks including LinkShare and ShareSale.

Identity theft and fraud

In one case, spyware has been closely associated with identity theft. ^[10] In August 2005, researchers from security software firm Sunbelt Software believed that the makers of the common CoolWebSearch spyware had used it to transmit "chat sessions, user names, passwords, bank information, etc." [11], but it turned out that "it actually is its own sophisticated criminal little trojan that’s independent of CWS." [12] This case is currently under investigation by the FBI.

Spyware-makers may perpetrate another sort of fraud with dialer program spyware: wire fraud. Dialers cause a computer with a modem to dial up a long-distance telephone number instead of the usual ISP. Connecting to the number in question involves long-distance or overseas charges, this can result in massive telephone bills, which the user must either pay or contest with the telephone company. Dialers are somewhat less effective today, now that fewer Internet users use modems.

Digital rights management

Most copy-protection schemes, while they do serve a legitimate purpose of attempting to prevent piracy, also behave similarly to spyware programs. Some digital rights management technologies (such as Sony's XCP) actually use trojan-horse tactics to verify a user as the rightful owner of the media in question.

Spyware and cookies

Anti-spyware programs often report Web advertisers' HTTP cookies as spyware. Cookies are not software of any sort—they are variables set by Web sites (including advertisers) which can be used to track Web-browsing activity, for instance to maintain a "shopping cart" for an online store or to maintain consistent user settings on a search engine.

Cookies can only be accessed by the Web site that sets them. In the case of cookies associated with advertisements, this is generally not the Web site that the user intended to visit, but a third-party site referenced by a banner ad image. Some Web browsers and privacy tools offer to reject cookies from sites other than the one that the user requested.

Advertisers use cookies to track people's browsing among various sites carrying ads from the same firm and thus to build up a marketing profile of the person or family using the computer. It is for this reason that many users object to such cookies, and that anti-spyware programs offer to remove them.

Typical examples of spyware

A few examples of common spyware programs may serve to illustrate the diversity of behaviors found in these attacks.

Caveat: As with computer viruses, researchers give names to spyware programs which frequently do not relate to any names that the spyware-writers use. Researchers may group programs into "families" based not on shared program code, but on common behaviors, or by "following the money" or apparent financial or business connections. For instance, a number of the spyware programs distributed by Claria are collectively known as "Gator". Likewise, programs which are frequently installed together may be described as parts of the same spyware package, even if they function separately.

CoolWebSearch, a group of programs, installs through the exploitation of Internet Explorer vulnerabilities. The programs direct traffic to advertisements on Web sites including coolwebsearch.com. To this end, they display pop-up ads, rewrite search engine results, and alter the infected computer's hosts file to direct DNS lookups to these sites. ^[13]

Internet Optimizer, also known as DyFuCa, redirects Internet Explorer error pages to advertising. When users follow a broken link or enter an erroneous URL, they see a page of advertisements. However, because password-protected Web sites (HTTP Basic authentication) use the same mechanism as HTTP errors, Internet Optimizer makes it impossible for the user to access password-protected sites. ^[14]

180 Solutions transmits extensive information to advertisers about the Web sites which users visit. It also alters HTTP requests for affiliate advertisements linked from a Web site, so that the advertisements make unearned profit for the 180 Solutions company. It opens pop-up ads that cover over the Web sites of competing companies. [15]

HuntBar, aka WinTools or Adware.Websearch, is a small family of spyware programs distributed by Traffic Syndicate. ^[16] It is installed by ActiveX drive-by download at affiliate Web sites, or by advertisements displayed by other spyware programs -- an example of how spyware can install more spyware. These programs add toolbars to Internet Explorer, track Web browsing behavior, redirect affiliate references, and display advertisements.

User consent and legality

Gaining unauthorized access to a computer is illegal, under computer crime laws such as the United States Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Since the owners of computers infected with spyware generally claim that they never authorized the installation, a prima facie reading would suggest that the promulgation of spyware would count as a criminal act. Law enforcement has often pursued the authors of other malware programs, such as viruses. Nonetheless, few prosecutions of writers of spyware have occurred, and many such producers operate openly as aboveboard businesses. Some have, however, faced lawsuits.

Spyware producers primarily argue in defense of the legality of their acts that, contrary to the users' claims, users do in fact give consent to the installation of their spyware. Spyware that comes bundled with shareware applications may appear, for instance, described in the legalese text of an end-user license agreement (EULA). Many users habitually ignore these purported contracts, but spyware companies such as Claria claim that these demonstrate that users have consented to the installation of their software.

Despite the ubiquity of EULAs and of clickwrap agreements, relatively little case law has resulted from their use. It has been established in most common law jurisdictions that a clickwrap agreements can be a binding contract in certain circumstances. This does not however mean that every clickwrap agreement is a contract or that every term in a clickwrap contract is enforceable. It seems highly likely that many of the purported contract terms presented in clickwrap agreements would be dismissed in most jurisdictions as being contrary to public policy. Many spyware clickwrap agreements appear intentionally ambiguous and excessive in length, with key contract terms made inconspicuous. These are all grounds on which similar agreements have been rejected as contracts of adhesion.

Nor can a contract possibly exist in the case of spyware installed by surreptitious means, such as in a drive-by download where the user receives no opportunity to either agree to or refuse the contract terms.

Some spyware EULAs characterize the removal of spyware once installed as "illegal". Such claims mislead, since by definition breach of contract involves civil, not criminal law; and breach of contract, by definition, does not involve illegality. Such notices may themselves class as criminal, however, if found to make a deliberately false statement for the purpose of material gain - a common-law definition of fraud.

Some jurisdictions, such as the U.S. state of Washington, have passed laws criminalizing some forms of spyware. [17] The Washington law makes it illegal for anyone other than the owner or operator of a computer to install software that alters Web-browser settings, monitors keystrokes, or disables computer-security software.

New YorkAttorney GeneralEliot Spitzer has pursued spyware companies for fraudulent installation of software.^[18] In a suit brought in 2005 by Spitzer, the California firm Intermix Media, Inc. ended up settling by agreeing to pay $7.5 million and to stop distributing spyware. Intermix's spyware spread via drive-by download, and deliberately installed itself in ways that made it difficult to remove.^[19]

Another spyware behavior has attracted lawsuits: the replacement of Web advertisements. In June 2002, a number of large Web publishers sued Claria for replacing advertisements, but settled out of court. Other spyware apart from Claria's also replaces advertisements, thus diverting revenue from the ad-bearing Web site to the spyware author.

One legal issue not yet pursued involves whether courts can hold advertisers responsible for spyware which displays their ads. In many cases, the companies whose advertisements appear in spyware pop-ups do not directly do business with the spyware firm. Rather, the advertised company contracts with an advertising agency, which in turn contracts with an online subcontractor who gets paid by the number of "impressions" or appearances of the advertisement. Some major firms such as Dell Computer and Mercedes-Benz have "fired" advertising agencies which have run their ads in spyware.^[20]

In a sort of turnabout, a few spyware companies have threatened websites which have posted descriptions of their products. In 2003, Gator (now known as Claria) filed suit against the website PC Pitstop for describing the Gator program as "spyware".^[21] PC Pitstop settled, agreeing not to use the word "spyware", but continues to publish descriptions of the harmful behavior of the Gator/Claria software. [22]