world spyware record

appartenly the world record for the msot amount of syware/adware on one computer is 800 odd but ad-aware said i has 1200 and my friend had almost 1600 so where are they getting these fugured from? im sure me and my friend are not the top two in the world,

discuss this topic and also post the max amount of spyware youve ever had on your system at once

My PC is as clean as a whistle.... but I have seen adaware detect over 3000 threats on another computer... it took five scans before Ad aware detected no threats

I suspect that there are different ways to meassure the amount of slyware.
The Ad-aware counts each and everyone of the traces it finds on a computer including cookies. The maimum that I have seen when counting this way was I believe around 7000 . My guess is that the record is for different slyware programs which could well bring the number that Ad-Aware would report into the fivedigit range.

youve never seena nything less than 700 on ad aware? my advcie is to run it more than once a century

It was the maximum I have seen. It was not on my own computer but at a customers machine. It could not be used and took quite some tweeking before it was possible to do any normal cleanup. It was a thouroly infected computer.

i had to deal with a P2 that ended up with 1200+ lines from adaware.. It was a nightmare.. (I was working on it myself because my computer teacher got a computer from another teacher that was all messed up)

Adaware kept freezing.. I eventually just did most of the stuff manually. Not fun.

I just cleaned out a system that contained:

3682 individual spyware programs (I turned off cookie and MRU detection in the scanners I used).

164 individual viruses.

64 trojans.

I purchased and installed Sygate Pro and Kaspersky AV Personal onto their computer out of my own pocket after I cleaned out that mess.

They were running with no firewall, an outdated McAffee Suite (Dell Dimension 2400 comes with that junk program), no anti-spyware apps, etc. On a Verizon DSL connection. I am quite sure they were being used as a spam relay and a DDoS bot.

I installed Firefox, IESpyAds, Ad-Aware, SpyBot, HJT, CWS Shredder, a custom HOSTS file, etc. I left them links to purchase Ewidos and Spysweeper on their own.

This was the worst infected computer I have personally come across.

I have seen SpySweeper finds over 2000 traces after Ad-Aware..

The worst example ever of objects found in Ad-Aware I've seen posted on the Internet is 152.636.
No dear security friends, there's no typo with the numbers.
I saved an image of the madmans screen-dump.



Jason

it should be noted that sheer mass of infection does not always equate with the seriousness of the problem.

i once had a PC with over 200,000 items identified by ad aware, and lots of other stuff flagged by numerous other tools added into the mix.

thing is - there was so much stuff on the PC it wouldnt even boot properly unless you used a knoppix disk to get it and start hacking crud out. so the "evil spyware menace" had its legs hacked off before the race had even begun. yet i would consider a PC with just one instance of the bank-stealing keylogger a much more severe threat than a machine with zillions of bits of spyware on it. its all relative.

I agree with you regarding quality versus quantity.
Numbers depend on a lot of things. When you see the very high numbers it is often made up of huge numbers of cookies that are no more than a nuisance while a lower number can be made up of more or less only infections. However in cases with very high numbers it is common to have to use knopix or Bart to get rid of stuff before you can even start getting a grip on the cleanup. If there are root kits or key loggers in such a mix reformatting is often the best option if the victim can salvage the personal data. It is close to impossible to get such a computer really clean and to be sure that this is so.

"paperghost" wrote:it should be noted that sheer mass of infection does not always equate with the seriousness of the problem.//

//i would consider a PC with just one instance of the bank-stealing keylogger a much more severe threat than a machine with zillions of bits of spyware on it. its all relative.

I couldn't agree with you more paperghost!
Type of objects is absolutely more important than number of objects, and the reason for posting that image was just the name of this topic pointing at spyware world records.

Malware objects like key logggers, trojans etc. is another deal and they definitely represents much more severe threats that will create great problems if not attended to.
An as satisfactory security solution/configuration as possible combined with thoughtful use of the Internet helps a great deal in preventing these objects to get into computers.
Of course it's better trying to prevent certain problems from happening, than to deal with them when they've already occured.

A higher level of general knowledge around security issues would be a great thing, and hopefully the large numbers of Zombie computers somewhere along the line of time will decrease.

Jason
Stay protected!

"Jason" wrote:The worst example ever of objects found in Ad-Aware I've seen posted on the Internet is 152.636. :P
No dear security friends, there's no typo with the numbers.
I saved an image of the madmans screen-dump. :)



Jason ;)

I wouldn't have bothered trying to clean that mess. It would have been format c:\ and a restage at that point.

I agree, with that much mess on there..Be quiker to reformat

Why people get so many infected objects I dont know. Long as you keep up with your ad-ware and other programs. Its much better in the long run.

"thejynxed" wrote:I wouldn't have bothered trying to clean that mess. It would have been format c:\ and a restage at that point.

I'm convinced that neither you or me would get into such a tremendously exaggerated situation if it wasn't done deliberately.
Formatting is definitely an option to consider if there's any doubt that actions taken against a severe malware infection hasn't resulted in a completely clean system.

"AndyAtHull" wrote:Why people get so many infected objects I dont know. Long as you keep up with your ad-ware and other programs. Its much better in the long run.

Personally I believe that getting such an enormous numerous amount of objects must be the outcome of deliberate actions taken.
If it was done only in an attempt to get into some kind of "Hall of Fame", it's more suited to fit into the "Hall of Shame", in my humble opinion.


Jason