The Adware Families That Changed the Antivirus Industry

guest · Jan 30, 2020

The Adware Families That Changed the Antivirus Industry
This is a guest post by Malwarebytes security researcher Pieter Arntz
January 30, 2020
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...families-that-changed-the-antivirus-industry/

This story takes us back to 2003 and for a better understanding, you would need to be aware of the fact that the cybersecurity industry back then was shaped very differently from today.

Antivirus (AV) software dealt with malware such as viruses and worms, dedicated Anti-Trojan software focused entirely on Trojans, and computer infections such as adware, browser hijackers, dialers, spyware, and ad injectors were for the most part not detected by mainstream security software.

Instead, you needed to use dedicated anti-adware programs like Ad-Aware or Spybot to tackle these infections. [...]
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The industry changes
AV software could no longer look a blind eye at adware that had become malware and started to add more kinds of infections to their definitions. Many of the market leaders of today were among the first to make that transition.

The specialized anti-trojan vendors were bought out or disappeared and a few new companies started to come up. In the same year, we also saw many Anti-Spyware vendors emerge.
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Rearview perspective
The adware families that I described were the most troublesome ones to remove in my experience and could take up to 50 replies with detailed instructions, asking for follow-up logs, and more removal instructions, to help a victim restore his computer to a usable state.

It would almost certainly have been faster to reformat and start from scratch.
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stapp · Jan 31, 2020

Thanks mood, quite an interesting read.

Pieter_Arntz · Feb 1, 2020

Glad you liked it.

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The Adware Families That Changed the Antivirus Industry

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stapp Global Moderator

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