What Spies Beneath.

1. What Spies Beneath. • Have you checked your PC for spyware lately? • National security could be at stake. By: López Cárdenas Luis Alejandro. Group: 507

2. Chances are you haven’t read the Bush Administration`s “National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace” Since it weighs in at a hefty 65 pages, who can blame you?. Still, a surprising amount of the draft reports aimed at home-computer owners. Here`s the gist. The more damage can be done by taking down large portions of it. And it doesn`t take a criminal genius to realize that PC users, with their increasingly high-speed connections and low-grade security setups, are the easiest on-ramp for any kind of attack. Though the report doesn`t tap terror groups by name, the implication is clear_: if you don`t practice good PC hygiene now, al-Qaeda or some organization like it could one day hijack your hard drive. That`s not just homeland-security hype. In 2001, viruses and other malicious code caused $12 billion worth of damage to the U.S, economy with the aid of unsuspecting users. How to stop that from happening?

3. Most of the suggestions in the cyber security report are pretty familiar: don`t open strange e-mail attachments; do install a firewall; choose passwords that aren`t easy to crack. But here`s one important security measure the report failed to mention: check your hard drive for spyware. Spyware is any kind of program installed in your computer without your consent to gather information. A typical piece of spyware will watch over you shoulder while you browse the web, record your mouse clicks and broadcast all that information back to another computer. It`s part of a class of increasingly surreptitious software that includes software that includes adware, stealware and scumware. How does this stuff get onto your machine? Most often, it hides behind other software as you download it. If you`re a heavy user of Napster file-sharing programs like Morpheus, both known distributors of spyware, you`re probably already infected.

4. Sometimes spyware masquerades as cookies, those little websites leave on your computer so you don`t have to type your name and password every time you visit. Once on your PC, spyware can sequester itself deep inside your operating system in what are called registry files. Antivirus software won`t spot it, because it looks like something you chose to install. Luckily, it`s easy to check your computer for spyware. I consider my PC to be pretty well protected-virus free and firewalled. Yet the first time I ran AD- Aware, it spend 15 minutes turning up and removing a dozen nasty little programs with names like Xupiter Toolbar. And when I ran it again a few weeks later, five more places of spyware showed up. But this kind of malicious code is proliferating faster than it can be catalogued, so there`s often no telling how a particular program is being used, what kind of sensitive information it is broadcasting or what other programs it might have secretly installed on your machine.

5. If dotcoms can slip this stuff past our defenses, just imagine what a terrorist could do. None of this stuff is good for you or your privacy. Clean it out, and you`ll instantly feel more secure. You might even feel a little patriotic.