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Spyware is everywhere. Some of it is merely a nuisance. Some of it isn't. For example, in March 2005, a high-tech crime ring attempted to steal ?220 million from the London offices of Japanese banking group Sumitomo using keylogging software. If they had succeeded, the theft would have dwarfed Britain's previous record, the armed robbery that netted ?26 million from Belfast's Northern Bank in December 2004.
Keylogging spyware, designed to track every keystroke, is a very serious threat. It can pick up identities, passwords, credit card and PIN numbers. More than that, it has brought organised and intelligent criminals into the game.
Realise that spyware is very different from viruses. It is very difficult to identify what you need to stop and what you need to let in. While the malicious nature of a virus is fairly obvious and easily detected by software, spyware is stealthier, similar in that respect to trojans.
David Emms, senior technology consultant at Kespersky Labs UK, says: "How do you distinguish, for example, between legitimate remote administration tools and a back-door trojan? We can use our intelligence and intuition to assess whether a tool may be used in our environment with malicious intent, but it's not so easy for software to draw this distinction."
Mike Small, director of eTrust strategy at Computer Associates says: "Since the target of spyware is often to capture user IDs, using stronger authentication methods is also important. For example, one-time password systems, certificates, smart cards and biometrics are all good."
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