I was thinking today about what was the worst spyware/hijacker of this year. (Aside from the worms, like the slammer, and trojans.)

Would it be coolwebsearch? Or spy wiper? Xupiter used to be one of the worst, but it has partially gone away. The Xupiter site says it's dead, but it actually has been just renamed to Xjupiter. Same thing with Gator - it's now called Claria.

What do you folks think has been the worst offender? KTTD, you should have a good idea from what you see on a daily basis.

seatokeyboard.exe

A perenial champion

shep

Happy New Year Suzi

First,

Happy New Year Suzi. I know we have had or bouts in the past but I have always loved ya and you have a kick ass web site :)

Lets see the worst. Well CoolWebSearch is up there with the best. As with NewDot and Rapid Blaster. Gator was a walk in the park as where a lot of others. I gotta hate AdGoblin as well as some others.

The past 4 months Spyware/Ad-ware/Malware has exploded onto the scene in such a huge way that I run at least 3 calls if not more a week that deal with this BS. Good for us, bad for folks.

Thanks to the advent though of Spybot, Ad-Aware, Spyware Blaster, CWShred and Hijackthis which I still hate at times because people drop with no regards it is a great tool.

The worst though??? God I am not sure. There are so many to list.

I say, bring it on though and we will kick ass into 2004.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

KTTD

HJT logs...gotta be the worst.

• TheKid •

hey SUZI,

i can remember (not that long ago) when the worst thing on earth was Weatherbug. (i long for those days).

now, like KTTD, spyware/adware clean-outs are weekly regulars for me. Of course, those of us in the biz went through this same thing during the first upsurge in virus activity, when people considered virus protection "optional". we will weather this storm, and i say...BRING IT. I have no fear of whatever comes out of twisted little malware minds in 2004.

now, on the original question: If it generated pop-ups, and lots of them, I call it the "worst". There's nothing like people's productivity and work time being interrupted by steady streams of "buy viagra now!" and "teenage hotties ready to...."

well, we won't got there. I think everybody knows what i'm talking about

kill em all! let the geeks sort em out.

Happy New Year All. Lets see what 2004 brings in the way of security/adware threats...and drag it's sorry a** into the street and beat it like it b****.

we'll be here. they will suffer.

AOSCLAY

shep - what is seatokeyboard.exe? Curious...

KTTD - Peace, dude ;) Thanks for the compliment on my site. Feel free to visit and comment anytime. Agreed about the past few months spyware explosion. My website is getting over 700 visits a day, mostly people looking for help with spyware etc., especially since I started the spyware blog.

TheKid - HJT logs are not spyware... you must be celebrating already - lol.

Happy New Year AOSCLAY & everyone!

I posted this question also at spywareinfo and so far Coolwebsearch has gotten all the votes!