The History and Development of Spyware
August 28, 2008 by Antivirus Ware.com - Download Norton Antivirus software instantly!
The first known recorded usage of the term “spyware” goes back to October of 1995 in a posted thread at Usenet. The post made fun of the Microsoft Business Model and the term being used to denote hardware that was used for espionage purposes. Gregor Freund, the founder of Zone Labs used the term in a 2000 press release about Zone Alarm Personal Firewall. Since that time, the terminology has had its present meaning.
A survey conducted by AOL in conjunction with the National Cyber-Security Alliance (in 2005), stated the following results:
- 61% of the users surveyed said their computers were infected with spyware
- 92% of them stated that they were not aware that their computers were infected
- 91% had not given permission for it to be installed
As of 2006, spyware in all forms is considered the single greatest threat to computers that run Windows operating systems. Those computers that use Internet Explorer as their chief browser are considered to be at the greatest risk of security breaches. The reason behind this fact is not because IE is the most commonly used browser. It’s because of how tightly integrated IE is with Windows which leaves crucial parts of the operating system wide open to attacks.
The massive spread of spyware has been blamed on the ease with which IE (all versions prior to IE7) would automatically display installation windows for any ActiveX component that websites wanted to install. When you combined IE’s assumption that all ActiveX components were benign with the user’s naiveté regarding the matter, it spelled disaster.
