yosponge@yahoo.com (sponge) wrote in
news:8d76ec03.0306282258.35c13cec@posting.google.c om:

> A gif can be symptomatic of spyware or a spyware infection attempt.
> Consider two scenarios. One is that a gif with a certain name is known
> ot be packaged with brand X spyware. So, logically, the anti-spyware
> program *SHOULD* flag it as a possible sign of the presence of the
> spyware.

Thank you for your reasoned response, but I couldn't disagree more. A
competent spyware detection program should be able to differentiate
between actual spyware and a simple image. False positives are no virtue
for any security software. Indeed, prior to the updated signature in
referencefile 0R148 Ad-aware did not exhibit this bug. I'd be *very*
surprised if a Lavasoft developer were to state this behavior was by
design.



> The other thing is what happens in operation. When you visit a site,
> you usually are, in fact, "visiting" several sites. You may be
> visitng Yaoho.com, but you are also getting redirected to
> ad.doubleclick. com, images.atdmt.com, and whatever else. Since you
> are "visiting" those sites they can load in whatever the heck they
> please.

Not on my machine they can't. ;-)


> Usually, they just drop cookies, but sometimes they may drop malicious
> JavaScript, VBScript, Java Applets, and, the worst of all, inject
> ActiveX Controls. Usually, these links come as an image link, where
> the image is an ad or web bug.

Well, I've yet to see a browser or OS run a GIF, JPEG, BMP, etc. as
executable code. Not even Windows/Internet Explorer is that insecure,
although given enough time Microsoft will probably decide to include
that *feature* in a future release.