Does Mischel TrojanHunter contain spyware?

[Wanna B Ageek]

Hi, Everyone . . .

I have been using TrojanHunter (TH) for about a year on my Dell Dimension 8250 [Pentium 4/ 2.5 GHz/ 1.5 GB RAM/ Windows XP Home/ SP2] with no problems. It is a 2-station license, so I recently decided to install it on my wife's Dell Dimesnion 2400 [Celeron/ 2.5 GHz/ 256 MB RAM/ Windows XP Home/ SP2].

I use Pest Patrol on both machines, and during a routine PP scan after the TH install on the Dell 2400, PP says TrojanHunter has deposited a KeyLogger from Pro-EXESoftware with the filename slke1amr.exe in her Temp folder. The file description per Pest Patrol is 'TrojanHunter Setup' from Mischel Internet Security.

TH seems to have reasonably good press in reviews. Is this just a false positive -- or a real concern? Thanks in advance for any help or comments.

-- Wayne

[jholland1964]

Nothing I can find gives it bad press OR say there could be problems with it and it IS highly recommended by one of our own, PP, in his thread here. I also can find no information whatsoever about the supposed file. Have you looked in the temp file to see if it is there? If it is a temp file it CAN be deleted.
If I were you I would do some other scans and see if other programs pick up the same thing. Use the steps here
and see what, if anything, turns up. Use at least a couple of the online scans, one being Kaspersky. You cannot remove with Kaspersky but it will give you a list of problems if found. Post it all back here.
Judy

[Wanna B Ageek]

Hi, Judy . . .

Thanks for your suggestions and insight.

I, too, did many searches over the Internet for slke1amr.exe but also found nothing. I found that Pro-EXESoftware has a website at www.pro-exe.com and I realized when visiting their site that my screenshot of the Pest Patrol alert was missing the name: aSpy 2.0 (or possibly aSpy 2.1), so I failed to report that in my original post. Sorry. That would've shed more light on the problem.

In response to your suggestions and the links you provided (very informative!), I ran a CCleaner scan and cleanup, and I reran full scans with Spybot S&D, Windows Defender, Pest Patrol -- and found nothing. I looked in the Temp folder as you suggested, and slke1amr.exe was no longer there, so I did a system search and it was not found (looking in hidden folders too). I intend to do full scans with Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite's anti-virus and anti-spyware, as well as with aSquared FREE and AdAware. I will do the Kapersky thing too, just to learn about it.

But I now doubt if any of these scans are going to show aSpy or slke1amr.exe on my system. I'll bet it was just part of the TrojanHunter install, so that TH would be able to recognize aSpy if it tries to infect me.

I guess it COULD have renamed itself and/or moved itself to another location and might still be recording keystrokes for all I know. So I emailed directly to Mischel just a few minutes ago asking them to shed some light on this. I really don't think I have a problem, but I want to put it to rest.

Again, thanks for your help and expertise. I will post back here with how Mischel answers my email.

-- Wayne

[jholland1964]

Sounds like you have it all covered! Good job. I will be interested to hear Mischel's comments. I would bet your assumption is correct however,

I'll bet it was just part of the TrojanHunter install, so that TH would be able to recognize aSpy if it tries to infect me.

Keep us posted!
Judy

[Wanna B Ageek]

Judy . . .

Here is the significant part of my email to Mischel Support:

===============================================
"I am worried that this file simply renamed itself, and/or moved itself to another location, and is a true Key Logger secretly logging her keystrokes."

"Can you shed some light on this?"
===============================================

Mischel's reply was rather terse:

"This is a false positive (incorrect detection) by Pest Patrol. You should contact them to get it fixed."

Thx again for your help.

-- Wayne

[jholland1964]

Thanks for coming back with that info. You should contact Pest Patrol with that information also.
Judy