reallytangy
2006-01-21, 23:24
Hi all thanks in advance for all the help...
Here is the situation, my girlfriend was seeing some strange behavior, i.e. Yahoo messenger logging in "by its self" (no, this was not happening due to a setting). I asked her to send me a screenshot of the task manager processes tab and discovered that alsys.exe was installed (http://www.norton.com/avcenter/venc/data/spyware.activitylog.html)
I did some research and discovered that the company who "offers" this software, packages it as the perfect privacy tool, in other words "know who is using your computer when you walk away" type of a deal. Now that I’m aware of it I'm trying to get to the bottom of how it got installed, was the software installed by a “curious” family member (several people use the system, and her brother is the “Admin”) or was it a honest to goodness over the wire compromise, etc.? Clearly, if it was a family member the problem is much bigger then just "spyware" (not to down play the seriousness of the key logger which can/is very bad).
BTW, in the screenshot she sent me I noticed that Spybot was installed, which got me thinking, does Spybot detect this? And/or if Spybot does detect it perhaps “someone” set it up to ignore it on purpose.
Any other advice aside from the topic question would be welcomed
Here is the situation, my girlfriend was seeing some strange behavior, i.e. Yahoo messenger logging in "by its self" (no, this was not happening due to a setting). I asked her to send me a screenshot of the task manager processes tab and discovered that alsys.exe was installed (http://www.norton.com/avcenter/venc/data/spyware.activitylog.html)
I did some research and discovered that the company who "offers" this software, packages it as the perfect privacy tool, in other words "know who is using your computer when you walk away" type of a deal. Now that I’m aware of it I'm trying to get to the bottom of how it got installed, was the software installed by a “curious” family member (several people use the system, and her brother is the “Admin”) or was it a honest to goodness over the wire compromise, etc.? Clearly, if it was a family member the problem is much bigger then just "spyware" (not to down play the seriousness of the key logger which can/is very bad).
BTW, in the screenshot she sent me I noticed that Spybot was installed, which got me thinking, does Spybot detect this? And/or if Spybot does detect it perhaps “someone” set it up to ignore it on purpose.
Any other advice aside from the topic question would be welcomed