spyware on my machine ??

[null]

On windoze machines, I use Ad-Aware, Spy Bot, et al.

 

But on a linux machine (currently a Red Hat 9 box) how can you tell if you have any spyware or not ?

[Pzatch]

Yeah, lately I've been running across allot of web sites that say I have spyware on my system. What can I do about this?

 

Even though my prior statement was sort of tongue in check I would like to know too.

[paul]

ps -U <user>

spyware needs to be running ...

[Pzatch]

You know its the simple things I forget. Or just never look into.

 

Thanks.

[bvc]

B)

[johnnyv]

Hmmm i don't see a kspy program anywhere :P

Also no kworm, i will have to email the kde people about the lack of these vital programs. Afterall how do we expect to get windows converts if there aren't any of the most common windows programs :D

 

Btw bvc you seem to really like firefox! or maybe just firefox related icons.

[aRTee]

I second that, and imho the first email virus (trojan) for linux will be a big sign that linux has made it mainstream, ... even though it will have to be accompanied by:

"save the attached script somewhere, use su to become root, and do 'sh script' to execute it - really, trust me, it's big fun,

signed: father Xmas"

 

:D

[null]

I meant the sites that put tracking stuff on your computer - at least with IE. Guess it doesn't happen under linux browsing. Actually that's the answer I was hoping for.

 

Should have worded the first post differently, to avoid all the snide comments... :D

[scoopy]

I am not really sure, but I believe it's windows ActiveX that allows these browser hijackings that are popular these days... AND those popups that state "you have spyware" are the culprits that are doing the infecting (not sure, but there seems to be a patter here).

 

So I believe, those browser hi-jackings ain't gonna happen... but as for tracking, we still have cookies, which can report where we have been.

[chef_kunal]

there are a few linux worms available. you can download and install them if you want. I dont think you get MDK RPMs though. :P

 

Of course all the major distros have automatic updaters, some of them send some data to the distro server also. But you have the source available for most of them , and i suppose it wont be long before we get our fair share of worms and trojans.

[Darkelve]

Ok, I love browsers... but I just hate Internet Exploiter...

 

ActiveX is just *one* of the many reasons things like viruses and worms can infect your computer. But it is correct that it is probably the major reason.

 

Extract from a security newsgroup:

 

"Why ActiveX is insecure

 

ActiveX controls are just Windows programs downloaded from Web sites

and run from inside your PC.

The browser verifies the "digital signature" of the program to ensure

that it has not been modified since it was written,

but can not verify that the control has good intentions -it,

and you, have to trust the developers."

 

Next, Internet Explorer is buggy as hell. Their products in general are, but why is this bad? Well obviously because you have an internet connection, an INTERFACE WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD! And because of their wonderful 'integration' with other parts of the system, those parts can enjoy these 'benefits' (crashes, security holes) as well! (irony intended).

 

There are also more subtle means, consider this:

Vulnerability

There is a flaw in the way that Internet Explorer displays URLs in the address bar.

By opening a specially crafted URL an attacker can open a page that appears to be from a different domain from the current location.

 

Exploit

By opening a window using the http://user@domain nomenclature an attacker can hide the real location of the page by including a non printing character (%01) before the "@".

Internet Explorer doesn't display the rest of the URL making the page appear to be at a different domain.

 

So you can 'fool' the user into thinking the URL he is visiting is the REAL ONE. Very convenient for, oh say, online banking.

 

Just go to your favorite search engine and search for 'internet explorer exploit'. Or easier still, follow thes links:

http://www.tbtf.com/resource/ms-sec-exploits.html

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9288

 

Now if this wasn't bad enough, Microsoft often takes MONTHS before providing patched needed to fix the hole.

 

See e.g.: http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-5158625.ht...html?tag=st_pop

 

Take another commercial/closed source browser: Opera. They have 'only' had a number of four(?) Exploits/security holes, but it was fixed in mere DAYS (I think average from 1 to 3 days if I am not mistaken).

 

For the sake of 'easy of use' (a long-favorite Microsoft excuse, because it always sounds good) M$ makes a lot of assumptions for you. And most of you probably know assumption is the mother of all f*ckups.

 

Now while you might not enjoy confirming to accept cookies each time you visit a webpage, you can put it off if you want to. But the most important part: you REALIZE this. Explorer just assumes you want that. Like said above, tracking surfing habits is made a lot easier with Internet Explorer. It automatically accepts all cookies and there is no option to erase your cookies, cache etc. when you prefer to. I noticed 2 cookies were offered to me when I visited news.com. Would you realize with IE?

 

Further, Explorer puts a lot of unneccesary data on your hard disk. Probably one of the reasons my dads Win2000 laptop in crunching away slowly lately.

 

Microsoft is very curious about your habits and profile. See:

http://www.****microsoft.com/content/ms-hi...den-files.shtml

 

http://www.davemathews.com/MicrosoftGUID.html (yes, they did this at one time, not even that long ago!)

 

M$ makes things difficult for web developers as well. Instead of adhering to web standards, they refuse to let go of the notion that 'their' browser should be the only one important enough to develop for!

 

http://archive.infoworld.com/articles/en/x...ebstandards.xml

 

See e.g. this petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/msiepng/petition.html

 

I'm not going to explain this in full (you can read an explanation on said page). But developers would have SO MUCH more possibilities if M$ could just learn to adhere to standards. But they're afraid of competition when they do so.

 

Now after reading everything said, take a look at following statement:

 

There will be no new Internet Explorer version until Microsoft's next operating system. It won't be available for several years and you'll need to pay for Windows to get it.

From: http://giantfightingrobots.com/betterbrowser.html

 

Null, I apologize of taking advantage of your thread to get rid of my anger towards Microsoft

 

But as you can see, the reasons are all perfectly valid.

 

(By the way, how's your computer?)

 

 

Darkelve

 

Post scriptum: I still think it is better to focus on the strengths of the FLOSS program instead of cracking down on the 'competitor', but I just had to get this rant of my chest. Opera and Mozilla (Firebird) have excellent standards support, are very stable and small, have tabbed browsing, reasonably good pop-up controls and excellent privacy features. To name only a few things.

Edited April 19, 2004 by Darkelve

[bvc]

Btw bvc you seem to really like firefox! or maybe just firefox related icons.

yep, it's the first browser in 2.5 years I've really been impressed with, since galeon. Epiphany would have been if its bookmarks made any sense.

Edited April 19, 2004 by bvc

[Darkelve]

Btw bvc you seem to really like firefox! or maybe just firefox related icons.

yep, it's the first browser in 2.5 years I've really been impressed with, since galeon. Epiphany would have been if its bookmarks made any sense.

FireFox is my fav too! And that's kind of surprising, especially after a long period of 'Opera' addiction.

[Pzatch]

You mean that that pop up is wrong!!!!??? I don't have any spyware on my system?? Dang, and here I've been trying like heck to get wine to install their helpfull spyware tracker software. Funny how they always insist I'm on M$. Do you think they might be lying just to get me to install something bad?

 

Guess I can turn on that pop up blocker now.

[bvc]

Btw bvc you seem to really like firefox! or maybe just firefox related icons.

yep, it's the first browser in 2.5 years I've really been impressed with, since galeon. Epiphany would have been if its bookmarks made any sense.

FireFox is my fav too! And that's kind of surprising, especially after a long period of 'Opera' addiction.

me to. but I got tired of having to hassle with the opera setup as a gnomer (kde, qt, export evn variables, etc...just install firefox and you're done!....and no ads!)