FTC cracks down on spyware and PC hijacking, but not true lies

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently sued an Internet marketing organization to make it stop infecting consumers’ PCs with spyware. According to the FTC, Seismic Entertainment Productions developed a scheme that seized control of PCs nationwide, infected them with spyware and other malicious software, bombarded them with a barrage of pop-up advertising for Seismic’s clients, exposed the PCs to security risks, and caused them to malfunction, slow down, and, at times, crash. Seismic then offered to sell the victims an “antispyware” program to fix the computers, and stop the popups and other problems that Seismic had caused. Unauthorized downloads The FTC explained that Seismic bought banner advertising on other companies’ Web sites. The banners, on click or mouse over, redirected users’ browsers to one of Seismic’s own Web sites. At that point, Seismic used a security vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) to download spyware onto the users’ computers. IE’s default security setting configures browsers to generate a notification message whenever Web sites attempt to download software, giving the users the option to accept or reject the download. However, it is possible to circumvent this feature of IE. Seismic’s system permitted it to instruct IE to download the spyware directly, without notifying the user.That way, Seismic’s Web site automatically downloaded its spyware to users’ PCs without their consent or even knowledge.