UDP Packets from S&D

[SnoWolf]

After a routine XP SP3 clean rebuild yesterday, including Spybot S&D's v2.0.12.0, I too noticed odd outbound beacon-like network traffic on the connected NIC icon. I ran a Wireshark capture to see what it was and discovered that my system was also sending a continuous flood of high-port UDP packets (at least 1-2 packets every second) to one of the reserved Multicast addresses, 226.178.217.5. If left alone, the flood continues indefinitely. I too tracked this packet storm source down to Spybot S&D's scanner service; however, trying to stop the activity permanently has proved more difficult.

Stopping and disabling the service in Services AND in SB's Settings tab only works temporarily because as soon as you open the SB Start Center - Settings tab again, it automatically sets bits to reactivate the scanner service at Startup. Now I'd hate to have to create a hosts file loopback against a an actual SB service; the comedy practically writes itself, but that's what it may come to.

A quick Internet search on the issue found many other users complaining of this same exact traffic and it appears it has been going on for some time now. Some users say they have even received warning notices from their ISPs because of broadcast storm this condition is creating. But that's not a bug? Interesting.