Various Internet security analysts predict spyware hitting epidemic levels within the year, going still undetected to a large extent, and bringing only too many personal computers to a dead stop.
And the last of those just might be the good news, according to eTrust Pest Patrol and Anti-Spyware director of content research Roger Thompson. "As we saw with spam," he said about the spyware metastasis, "this will mean users and businesses simply cannot continue to ignore the problem. They will have to deal with it in order to get anything done."
Thompson made his remarks to Silicon.com, to whom another security consultant – Neil Barrett – said actual spyware gridlock may not quite happen, thanks to larger memory on most machines, but the prospect could be a serious issue by 2005's end if spyware continues growing at its present rate.
"The really damaging stuff is having a massive impact," Barrett told Silicon.com. "But as it becomes evident users' systems are running lots of other applications users will have to start taking the problem seriously." He predicted it would become a global networking problem, especially with more covert spyware applications beginning to make themselves felt, if not always known.
Benjamin Edelstein, the Harvard University graduate student who has made a name as an Internet analyst specializing in spyware research and exposure, has often said a major contributor to the apparent spyware epidemic is name companies that allegedly support spyware makers.
He raised more than a few temperatures in June 2004 when he posted on his Website a number of large companies supporting reputed spyware purveyors WhenU, such advertisers as J.P. Morgan Chase, Verizon, and T-Mobile. Verizon has since said they no longer use WhenU, but T-Mobile has said WhenU "is opt in and it can be removed easily."
Last year, WhenU sued successfully to get a judge to block Utah's anti-spyware law. But WhenU and other reputed spyware makers or users have also been reported making moves to shine up their images somewhat.
180solutions, for example, is reportedly bringing out a new version of its software that chief executive Keith Smith says is less likely to end up on a consumer's hard drive without consent. Claria has been shortening its 6,000-word end-user license agreement to barely 2,500 words, trying to become what's considered more transparent. And WhenU itself is said to have made moves like stopping display ads mimicking the Windows "Active X" program message."
But Barrett said the more covert spyware/adware tools will become the nuisance of the near future. Those tools include code lines sitting on Websites waiting to do what you could call a "drive-by downloading," hitting your machine while you make your way around cyberspace; and, a trend slowly becoming a tradition: spyware-removal tool hawkers who actually load up what they claim to kill onto your computer.
That's how one-time spam king Sanford Wallace – nicknamed Spamford Wallace for his longtime spam activity – got into hot water over spyware. But earlier this month, he cut a deal with the Federal Trade Commission in which he agreed to stop slipping spyware into computers until federal litigation against him is complete.
The FTC has accused Wallace and his SmartBot and Seismic Entertainment companies of using a number of techniques to lure surfers to Websites where spyware was slipped into their computers through Internet Explorer flaws – and of spamming a program called SpyWiper to remove the spyware the first two dropped in. Wallace has accused the government of persecuting him because of his spam past.
