The Effects of Spyware

One article on Slashdot (Analysis of Spyware) yields two entries here. First, the title article:

I've mentioned the program Ad-Aware, which locates and helps you remove spyware from your system. OK, what happens if you don't use a program like this, and accidentally/on purpose download a program that results in spyware being loaded onto your computer?

The folks at SANS decided to find out, so they intentionally infected a virtual PC with spyware (look for the heading Follow the Bouncing Malware - Part I and then tracked the results. You can read all about it at the link above, but, basically, it rewrote the Windows registry, changed IE's home page, changed the default search engine, and dropped various programs onto the computer. To see what happens, we'll have to wait for Part II.