{"id":552233,"date":"2007-05-09T15:54:37","date_gmt":"2007-05-09T15:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/552233-spyware-and-viruses-two-separate-problems-requiring-separate-defences.html"},"modified":"2007-05-09T15:54:37","modified_gmt":"2007-05-09T15:54:37","slug":"spyware-and-viruses-two-separate-problems-requiring-separate-defences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/552233-spyware-and-viruses-two-separate-problems-requiring-separate-defences.html","title":{"rendered":"Spyware and viruses – two separate problems requiring separate defences"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cUnderstanding the properties of Spyware is critical for any business, because in order to institute a practical plan for protection against the dangers Spyware poses, companies need to know what they are dealing with \u2013 and it is not a virus,\u201d says Brett Casey, CEO at Securicom.
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He says that while viruses are mainly focused on causing a nuisance or physically damaging IT infrastructure, Spyware is designed to execute far more malicious objectives and with devastating consequences.
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In the hands of cyber criminals, Spyware can be used to violate personal privacy, access confidential business information and steal financial assets. And, because Spyware is usually financially motivated and backed by increasing investment from a thriving industry, it is advancing at a rapid rate, becoming progressively more complex to identify and combat.
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Casey explains that Spyware is software that covertly monitors activity on a computer and gathers information to be sent back via an Internet connection to whoever planted it.<\/font><\/p>\n

Without the user knowing, Spyware in the form of key-loggers or Trojans is used to track Internet habits and harvest important information, including passwords, credit card details, Internet-banking logon details and e-mail addresses.
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Spyware is often embedded in ‘free\u2019 Internet downloads, music files and P2P networks. It can also be hyper-linked onto a Webpage and distributed as part of spam messages. There have also been reports of Spyware being installed by technicians and disgruntled employees.
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According to Casey, Spyware is curiously difficult to locate and very complicated to remove from a system. This is because, unlike viruses, which are designed to spread themselves openly and obviously across networks, Spyware is generally unwittingly downloaded by a computer user and then hides in the system.
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There are also far more variations of Spyware than there are viruses, because Spyware is programmatically designed to spin-off its own variations which leads to a substantially greater number of Spyware programmes to contend with.
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Spyware also typically impacts multiple registry entries and leaves dozens of application files spread across a computer\u2019s hard drive or deep within the hardware. Newer Spyware variations are even capable of reinstalling components and repopulating registry entries that have been removed and can also randomise various elements of the programme so that they leave a different footprint, which makes them harder to track. Worse still, if left unchecked, many Spyware applications are actually capable of downloading additional programmes.
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One such example is Look2Me, a particularly malicious Spyware application that uses Internet Explorer as the launching point to insert another file into the Windows area that controls system start-up processes. By hooking itself in this way, Look2Me can trick a computer into thinking that it is a critical process that must not be removed; so, when attempts are made to remove it, Look2Me automatically reboots the computer to restore itself.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies need a dedicated solution designed specifically to help to navigate the threats of Spyware. The ideal is to have a layered solution deployed to protect the perimeter, with the entire network infrastructure actively participating in the security strategy,\u201d concludes Casey.<\/font><\/p>\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n

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To the untrained eye, Spyware and computer viruses may appear to be one and the same, but in actual fact there are vast differences between the two, and companies need to understand what the differences are if they are to get to grips with the potentially crippling impact of Spyware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-552233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}