Taking shelter from the swarm: Five tips to protect Internet users against the threat of online `pests`

`Pests` represent the fourth age of Internet threats, and a completely new type of threat to PC users accessing the Internet. A number of companies, like Computer Associates, have introduced software onto the market that will help protect users from `pests`. With that in mind, it is important to understand the threat and a few simple but important ways that it can be countered. The following five points will help any user to better assess their level of exposure in the war against `pests`.

While viruses remain a prominent security concern for consumers and businesses, they are no longer the only threat in town. A new kind of software program is putting us at risk and in many cases users are either not aware that the risk exists or are opening the door to the risk themselves. Collectively, these new threats are called `pests`. The term includes spyware; logging software that will record everything you type; tracking software that will monitor and report every Web site you visit; software that will allow a hacker to take remote control of your machine; software that will constantly annoy you with pop-up advertising; software that will dynamically replace words on a Web page with advertising and unwanted links; and software that will hijack your Web browser session to take control of your machine.

Unlike viruses and worms, pests do not generally directly destroy your files or self-replicate. But additionally, the vast majority of them will not be detected or removed by your anti-virus software or stopped from getting onto your machine by a firewall. Stopping pests requires dedicated software that recognises and safely removes the threat.

Spyware is perhaps the most dangerous type of pest. It is one of the fastest growing threats to security and privacy and it differs from viruses and worms in some important ways. Spyware are programs that are installed, with or without the user`s permission, that can monitor computer activity while broadcasting information back to an outside party primarily for commercial gain. Spyware comes in many shapes and sizes. Some types of spyware are simply an annoyance causing increased spam or unwanted pop-ups, while others can threaten your security, PC stability and performance, or even your identity and privacy. These pests often lurk silently on your computer until someone or something sets them off and because they are not actively attacking the computer system, they are not picked up by anti-virus software or blocked by firewalls. They are a different type of threat that need distinct detection, removal and prevention techniques from viruses.

Pests infect machines in a variety of ways. Many examples of pests, including spyware and adware, are contained within Internet browser plug-ins. For example, KaZaA is a popular file-sharing utility, which allows users to exchange copyrighted music over the Internet.

According to KaZaA, there are over 100 million users of its music-swapping program in the world today; can 100 000 000 people be wrong? Do you know them all? Do you trust them all? Do you allow the other 99 999 999 of them onto your machine? Along with the music comes the risk of dancing to someone else`s beat as you invite a population 14 times that of London onto your machine. In fact, software from KaZaA drops numerous pests onto your machine, including spyware and adware.

Many users find KaZaA very useful, but it carries with it an inherent risk. Users who want the benefits of the software should also be aware of the threat it could represent, in order to make an informed risk versus reward decision. As with KaZaA, users often invite pests onto their machine, as opposed to a virus which may often slip into a system entirely without the user`s consent or action. The adage that `there ain`t no such thing as a free lunch` is very applicable here. If you are offered freeware that claims to do almost everything including wash the dirty dishes, its probably going to steal a few plates from your best crockery set.

Another dangerous type of pest is called a dialler. Diallers hijack your modem and route all your connections to the Internet through a premium-rate telephone number that charges extortionate rates per minute. According to ICSTIS, the watchdog which regulates premium-rate numbers, the problem of rogue diallers calling premium numbers is costing consumers hundreds of thousands of rands a year. Keep a close eye on the dialling rates you`re being charged to connect to the Internet and watch out for highly unusual patterns on your bill. The best advice is to avoid the billing in the first place by searching for and removing these telephone pirates from your machine.

It is said that a vampire cannot enter your house until you first invite it. One of the most alarming aspects of the spyware age is that many users are indeed inviting the vampire in. In effect, they are agreeing via a piece of software`s end-user licence agreement (EULA) to terms that could directly approve the malicious activity.

Many of the programs that are termed `pests` carry with them EULAs in the same way as any legitimate software program. In the rush to get hold of the free program, many users are not reading the EULAs and as a result are agreeing to the very activity that puts them at risk.

Some EULAs may actually specify that the program will conduct spying activities, though they rarely say how or spell out the potential risk this poses to users. Others will specifically state that users cannot use tools that will remove the tracking elements of the program, legally removing the users right to destroy the threat they`ve been exposed to.

Security companies around the world are campaigning to end these unfair practices. Users that want to ensure they know every risk they are exposed to, should make sure they read licensing agreements carefully, and if they are concerned that a program may be about to put them at risk, they are probably right.

As with all threats that have emerged in the Internet age, security companies are working hard to ensure that Internet users are given the best protection possible. But just as many users have learned not to open e-mails from unfamiliar sources and not to open files they don`t recognise, so it is important that they also recognise how to protect themselves from the threat of pests. The five pointers above will not provide any user with foolproof protection, but they will make it harder for pests to infiltrate our machines and make us quicker to remove those that may already be lurking unseen.

The best defence against this new breed of destruction is to have a joined-up defensive strategy. The most urgent action item needs to be to unify the day to day and operations and strategies of your anti-virus management teams, anti-spyware efforts, vulnerability assessment, security information management (SIM) efforts, and security-related change management teams. Your current selection of software that is used by these teams may be adequate to scrape by with, however the trend in the industry is for convergence among the various "anti-ware" products. This will only make the job of the security team easier - a single, integrated approach at a tool level will foster co-operation and co-ordination at an operational level.

We need to take security more seriously. The events of the past years are clues to what we will encounter in the future, as long as we pay heed to the lessons they can teach us. The motivational sentence to write on the whiteboard, in order to stay focused on last years` lessons, is "Unified attacks require a unified defensive approach". In that way, we may yet get ahead of the attackers.