Almost two months after saying they were planning to do it, Microsoft made it official: they will give away a program to fight spyware and other comparable cyberpests for free, the company announced at the RSA technological security conference February 15.
"It's a challenging area and new threats seem to be emerging all the time," said Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates at the conference. "But I'm optimistic ... we'll be able to mitigate the security problems and therefore let the advances of this digital infrastructure allow for fantastic things to happen. Spyware…is something we need to nip now."
This move—plus plans to issue antivirus tools and make a big security upgrade to its still-dominant but beleaguered Internet Explorer browser—are considered big parts of a broad effort by Microsoft to improve security and reliability of programs that have become frequent and favorite targets for malware writers and attackers.
Gates told the conference spyware and adware are threats that outpace viruses and worms for quick growth.
Microsoft had been making moves several months earlier that suggested it was about to take a leap into fighting spyware and malware. They bought anti-spyware maker Giant Software in December and turned that company's offering into Microsoft AntiSpyware, with over six million downloads since of a free test version of the new program.
For businesses, Microsoft plans to sell new tools it says are suited better for businesses which need administrators to have more control over company computers.
And just because they're going full tilt with a free antispyware program doesn't mean Microsoft is going to avoid being targeted by more hackers and crackers. Not when the Gates announcement came a week after a new Trojan horse program was found that tries to shut down the antispyware program and steal online banking passwords. Security company Sophos said that might be the first of numerous attacks on Microsoft's antispyware efforts.
