Best Defenders

Preventing Unidentified Spyware from Installing Isn't Easy (chart)

Some programs not only clean up known forms of spyware but also prevent as yet unidentified threats from reaching your system. They do this by monitoring certain areas of your system for suspicious activities. We created an application to perform several actions typical of spyware and adware installations, including adding Registry run keys, dropping a file in the Windows startup folder, changing the browser start and search pages, and overwriting the Hosts file. Here's how well the anti-spyware programs we tested detected these behaviors.

How We Test: We performed testing on a 2.93-GHz Pentium 4 Acer Power FV computer running Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 1. (We used this version of Windows instead of Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2, because the latter impacted the speed of our tests without making any changes to the protection offered by the anti-spyware products tested.) We collected dozens of spyware programs for our tests. These programs created 73 key components in our tests. The spyware components break down into processes that run actively in memory, modify Internet Explorer search and home pages, add toolbars and browser helper objects (BHOs), and alter Registry run keys and Windows services. We challenged the anti-spyware applications' ability to detect the components and processes and clean them up.

To get an idea of how well the anti-spyware programs deal with new and unknown spyware attacks, we also checked to see how they would deal with spyware-like behavior. We created an application to perform several actions typical of spyware and adware installations, including adding Registry run keys, dropping a file in the Windows startup folder, changing the browser start and search pages, and overwriting the Hosts file. We checked each anti-spyware application's ability to detect and block these activities.

See the Complete Special Report
The New Security War: In this Special Package
Best Defenders and Spy Sweeper Leads the Field (chart)
The Hidden Money Trail
Privacy in Peril
Is the Net Doomed?
Threat Alert: Spear Phishing
Threat Alert: Antivirus Killers
Threat Alert: Instant Messaging Attacks
10-Step Security
Security by the Numbers
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Mary Landesman researches spyware and viruses. She is About.com's antivirus guide.