Spyware or virus? Sometimes this distinction is difficult to make.

More and more Spyware programs tend to have the same characteristics as viruses. In order to find out exactly what any Spyware program does, we need to infect a clean windows machine with the malicious program.

Recently I collected some files which were downloaded with a bundle of Spyware and adware programs I had on my test machine. I ran one of these files on my machine and noted the usual result of a hijacked home page, popup advertisements and lots of unsolicited connections to different servers. I recorded the information and saved the new files and restored the computer to a clean state in order to do further tests. As soon as the computer started up, popup windows began to appear. The computer was obviously not free of adware/Spyware.

We have several machines on our test network. It took a little while and some inspection of the other computer on the test network to understand what had happened. The same file that had installed several Spyware and adware programs on my test PC had spread itself to another computer on the network. This program, remained resident in the memory of the other PC and promptly re-infected my test PC when it cam back online. Exploiting network vulnerabilities is a method commonly used by viruses to spread across a local area network. This program had done this in order to install adware and Spyware programs on other computers. This makes the distinction between virus and Spyware more difficult to make.

Fortunately, it is very clear that whatever the classification, it is obvious that the malicious program is not welcome on any computer.

A few more tests with the malicious files and an update can be made to ensure that Spyware Nuker can remove this nefarious infection from any user’s PC.