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Last time we talked about the infamous Trojan Horse virus, which is considered to be the top threat on the Internet today. Today we're taking a step back to the early 2000's when the idea of Adware and Spyware came about. I'm bundling the two together since most software utilized aspects of both to deliver targeted ads to your desktop.

Around the year 2000 an amazing service called Napster came about, and college students around the globe rejoiced. I remember being in my dorm at Clemson University and being able to download a song from a neighbor in just about 3 seconds, or roughly the time that it took to click on it and then click back to their list of available music. In this very early version of a peer-to-peer network, you would grab a file from another individual directly. Within a couple of years, Napster would be shut down, and a plethora of services came about to fill the void.

One of the more memorable ones was called Kazaa. When it was first launched, it would install not only itself, but a piece of software that would deliver ads to your desktop through your web browser. This is the definition of Adware. The first one I can recall was called Gator, and you could expect to see around 20 to 30 extra pop-up ads in your web browser every day. Gator also would record what you were searching for on the web, and tailor its ads to what it found. That's what we call Spyware. So Gator was both Adware and Spyware.

An important thing to note about Kazaa is that it did tell you during the install process that it would install Gator. This means that Kazaa was not actually a Trojan Horse like most people believed. The developers simply knew that many people did not read each word of their End User License Agreement (or EULA) before they installed the software, so they knew they could get away with it. Needless to say, it was a social experiment, and it worked like a charm.

Around this time, I was working at Armstrong Computer Zone, and one of our chief complaints was that a user's computer began showing lots of pop-up ads while surfing the web. Sometimes, these were pornographic in nature, sometimes they were not, probably based on the user's browsing habits. However, we could almost always uninstall Gator and get the machine back to normal, leaving Kazaa to operate normally without the ads. This wouldn't last long, as Gator's developers realized what was happening.

Kazaa began to get some really bad press, so we saw Gator morph into GAIN, and then later, Claria. As the software morphed, it became harder and harder to remove. The uninstall program would not run properly for whatever reasons, and often times Claria would break existing virus protection that should have been able to remove it. Most of the time, I had to resort to manually removing this software using rudimentary techniques like directly editing the registry or removing files in Safe Mode. Luckily more and more tools came about to help us find these things and subsequently remove them.

Today the threat of Adware is low with most browsers now offering protection from pop-ups. Spyware has seemingly taken off though, and is seen installed by Trojan Horse viruses often. This software no longer simply keeps track of your browsing habits to display more targeted ads though. It has moved towards more profitable, yet less legitimate functions like stealing credit card numbers, usernames and passwords and the like. Since this is quite illegal, the software no longer carries a corporate brand, but instead is crafted by individuals or small groups of hackers, and as such, is much less polished. Often times, there is a simple mistake in programming that can either cause Windows crashes, Internet connectivity issues, and even file system damage.

Hopefully we all recognize the dangers in peer-to-peer file sharing after my last newsletter about Trojan Horses, and as Spyware is mostly distributed through those same channels, the protection recommendations stay the same. As far as Adware is concerned, be sure to know what you are installing on your computer. Since these ads are paid for by legitimate companies, their distributors will likely hide a piece of text like "Ad-supported" into their descriptions. Sometimes, this software is useful, and the ads are not intrusive, but I prefer to stay away from anything that is "Ad-supported" just in case.

I hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, and that it helps you to stay safe on the Internet. July's topic will be rootkits, which are amazingly terrifying masterpieces of malware.