History and development

History and development Spyware : The first recorded use of the term spyware occurred on October 16, 1995 in a Usenet post that poked fun at Microsoft's business model.[1] Spyware at first denoted hardware meant for espionage purposes. However, in early 2000 the founder of Zone Labs, Gregor Freund, used the term in a press release for the ZoneAlarm Personal Firewall.[2] Since then, "spyware" has taken on its present sense. [2] According to a 2005 study by AOL and the National Cyber-Security Alliance, 61% of surveyed users' computers had some form of spyware. 92% of surveyed users with spyware reported that they did not know of its presence, and 91% reported that they had not given permission for the installation of the spyware.[3] As of 2006, spyware has become one of the preeminent security threats to computer systems running Microsoft Windows operating systems. In an estimate based on customer-sent scan logs, Webroot Software, makers of Spy Sweeper, said that 9 out of 10 computers connected to the Internet are infected.[4] Computers where Internet Explorer (IE) is the primary browser are particularly vulnerable to such attacks not only because IE is the most widely-used,[5] but because its tight integration with Windows allows spyware access to crucial parts of the operating system.[6][5] Internet Explorer also enables, by default, the silent (read surreptitious) installation and execution of ActiveX controls under the naive assumption that such powerful executables are benign. The fragile, poorly documented, and arguably undesirable registry offers spyware numerous additional hiding places from which to start automatically and, along with sharing behavior, helps