Spyware Immunization

I recently did some outside work for a family setting up their cable modem and home network. The lady of the house knew about spyware’s existence and some of the products out there to defeat it. Since they were behind a NAT box and I figured they’d know not to click “yes” on everything that pops up while surfing with IE I left with out installing any kind of spyware removal tools. Bad mistake on my part (even though I any getting more money now to come back out and fix it). The guys from the Apple store that the lady buys some of her stuff from came in to fix what they say was a bad router, and in the process hooked her sons Win 98 se box straight to the cable modem, no firewall or anything. When she called me back in to fix it, the 98 box was hosed. Spybot S&D, Adaware and HIJACKTHIS were powerless against whatever spyware was on her son’s machine (Neo Bar was one thing), it kept coming back like Jason Voorhees. Right now I’m nuking and rebuilding the system, making sure it has Antivirus and Spyware tools on it. Besides telling them to start to use Mozilla/Firefox instead of IE what else can I do to help immunize them from spyware? I notice that Spybot S&D had an “Immunize” feature that blocks know spyware sites, how well does it work? Any other ideas? Thanks.

http://forums.net-integration.net/in...15&#entry91816

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There are four levels of protection currently offered by Spybot S&D.

The first level of protection is immunization (a passive protection). When you “Immunize”, entries are added to the system Registry. This blocks cookies from some sites, places other sites in the restricted zone and blocks the download of selected ActiveX scripts. If you are interested in learning how this type of blocking works, see Note #1 below. Also Note: If you use Spybot S&D and SpywareBlaster (and other products) together, there is an overlap of some of the protection offered. If you undo or disable the protection in one product, it may remove some of the protection installed by the other. You should re-immunize or re-enable the protection in the other products as appropriate.

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I think it works with your host file too.

On top of Spybot's Immunize feature, I use Spyware Blaster. It's recommended by Spybot's author and blocks like 3,000+ things from ever installing in both IE and Mozilla/Mozilla Firefox. Check it out, it's freeware.

Regards,
Xierox

I wonder, I have some old boxes I can fool around with. It might be interesting to deliberately infect them with spyware and see what anti-spyware programs work best. Anyone know of a good spyware zoo out there where I can download a bunch of spyware (on purpose)?

Hmmm. Well, most porn sites would do it, but I wouldn't know from personal experience. :p If you don't mind doing it this way, go to all the "free" ones and download their "free" sortware. You're almost guaranteed to have tons of Spyware with that. If you don't like like porn (like me) try visiting lots of warez sites or try deliberately infecting yourself with CoolWWWSearch or LOP.com (not sure if this one still exists, but from what I heard it's a real doozy. Puts flash animations in place of your wallpaper and more...) Anyways, that help at all?

Regards,
Xierox

Yeah, quite a bit. Since I do like porn I will have to try porns ites as well. :) Thanks.

lol...? I have to admit that wasn't quite the response I was looking for. Make sure you download lots of .exe's when doing this. Get that computer good and loaded! :D

Xierox

Don't just look for pron do a google on warez then go look at all the hits, at least thats what i have been told. :)

Iron: I recommend Winpatrol, (easy google job), to my users.... It pops up an alert via a cute little scottie dog that barks.... :rolleyes: .... every time something tries to add something to most of the common areas, (startup, registry run keys, BHOs, start pages etc.). The simple rule I tell them is that if "Scottie" pops up and you aren't installing a program then the answer is "NO". My users love it, it's unobtrusive, efficient and they find it cute..... Can't beat that.... :D

start off installing these products:
BOnziBuddy
WeatherBug
AOL
Limewire
Kazaa
Gator
Aol "free" trial
shareware screensavers
Grockster
Morpheus

I think that most of the above can easily be taken care of by spybot/adaware etc. If you want to see some real nasty **** look for coolweb search and it's variants.