Spyware to contact Microsoft??

Discussion in 'other security issues & news' started by Hyperion, Nov 4, 2003.

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  1. Hyperion

    Hyperion Registered Member

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    :eek:

    Hi,can you help me on this??

    I bought 2 months ago a video card and in the bundled software there was also "Virtual Aquarium".I discovered that if i launch it while connected to internet,asks permission to connect to 207.46.242.247,that correct me if i am wrong,belonges to Microsoft!!!

    I even changed firewall to be sure!Of course i denied all times.It asks only once,as soon as the .exe file starts.

    Any ideaso_O o_O
     
    Hyperion, Nov 4, 2003
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  2. LowWaterMark

    LowWaterMark Administrator

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    Doing a web search I find lots of virtual aquarium products. Can you tell us the full name, version, vendor and anything else that is unique to it?

    As for whether it is spyware, that remains to be seen. It could simply be contacting a Microsoft download site to pull some needed component or some such thing. Is there any documentation with the software? Also, if there are any readme.txt files or similar, you may want to see if it has any special prerequisites that could account for this activity.

    Certainly, serious spyware is out there, and many people think the activities in some Microsoft products (ie. the way they phone home) is bad, but most people generally don't say that Microsoft is truly using these mechanism to pull personal and confidential information off systems and uploading it to their websites.

    So, the fact that this is contacting a Microsoft site makes me think it's not really spyware but some software function such as a component download.
     
    LowWaterMark, Nov 4, 2003
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  3. Hyperion

    Hyperion Registered Member

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    The game was just in a CD with ASUS VGA card.The only documentation is a .pdf guide.I read it again,the only thing that says is that requires Windows and directX7 (i have 9b).

    It is product of Formosoft www.formosoft.com ( I went there and it's in chinese).

    I find it strange too a spyware to contact Microsoft!The fact is that it runs with no problem without downloading anything.

    This is the firewall notice,as soon as the game tries to launch itself:


    - Trimmed image to fixed thread width - LWM
     

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    Hyperion, Nov 4, 2003
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  4. Hyperion

    Hyperion Registered Member

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    BTW,i have both Adaware and Spy Bot and both say i m "clean"...
     
    Hyperion, Nov 4, 2003
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  5. LowWaterMark

    LowWaterMark Administrator

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    Ah, no problem at all then! "crl.microsoft.com" is a certificate authority that is used to validate if a program is legitimate or not. Many programs are validate just that way. You could easily allow that without concern, or continue blocking. Either way you are okay.
     
    LowWaterMark, Nov 4, 2003
    #5
  6. Hyperion

    Hyperion Registered Member

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    Ah ,thank you very much!I feel better now :D
     
    Hyperion, Nov 5, 2003
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