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A third of SA's PCs have spyware


Cape Town, 28 Feb 2007

US anti-spyware company Webroot estimates almost one out of every three PCs in SA have some form of spyware on their systems - a claim Standard Bank agrees with.

Daniel Mothersdale, Webroot's marketing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa, says according to his company's research, 27% of PCs in SA have some kind of malicious spyware on them. This is just below the estimated 35% of PCs in the UK.

"Not all of that spyware is necessarily active. For instance, some spyware only becomes active once a person visits a financial services site or any other targeted site," he says.

Herman Singh, Standard Bank's director of architecture and technology engineering, says he is not surprised at the claim, considering all the unlicensed software being used in the country and the generally poor housekeeping habits of local PC users.

"There is a lot of unlicensed software being used, which means people are unable to receive the latest security patches. Furthermore, people very often do not ensure their security software has the latest signatures and definitions," he says.

Singh says that is why Standard Bank insists a one-time password is used whenever a customer logs-in to its site to complete a transaction.

"Since October, we have made it mandatory for all our customers and our employees to use one-time passwords, irrespective of where in the world they are located," he says.

Be paranoid

Mothersdale says spyware, such as key-logging software, seems to be a phenomenon that is bound to stay.

"The best we can hope for is to keep it under control and be virtually paranoid about security," he says.

Both warn spyware is becoming increasingly sophisticated, with adaptations being made literally every day. Some spyware includes trail-making files that are loaded onto a PC via an e-mail program, and then search out the spyware program on the Internet. Once they find it, the spyware is loaded.

"The problem is that such programs are not considered spyware, only the files that they attract, which are then killed by the antidote software. However, initial files are left alone and then they re-attract the spyware programs again," Mothersdale says.

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