From Spyware Info's Weekly Newsletter on Feb. 22
Here we go again....
I find myself once again forced to warn everyone that using Lavasoft's Ad-aware spyware remover might be dangerous. The last time I sent out a warning against using Ad-aware, it was because Lavasoft had abandoned the existing version (5.83) of their product to work on the new version, and was not going to update it to deal with one of its targets that had mutated dangerously.
Well here we are two months later and the new Ad-aware 6 is still having more or less the same problem as the old. This time the problem effects not one, but three different targets, NewDotNet, CommonName Toolbar, and Webhancer. These three programs install themselves as Layered Service Providers and alter winsock settings. To put it simply, removing any of these three programs improperly means you can kiss your connection to the internet goodbye. The original release of Ad-aware 6 does indeed remove all three of these programs improperly and does break internet access in the process. Lavasoft has released a new build which hopefully fixes this.
If you are running Ad-aware 5.x, remove it. It is obsolete. If you are running Ad-aware 6, check that you have build 162 and not build 160. You can see which build you have by clicking the information button along the upper right of the main screen (screenshot). The new build 162 reportedly fixes this problem as far as NewDotNet is concerned, however I don't know if it corrects the problems related to Webhancer or CommonName. If you need to update your version, you can download it from Lavasoft's download page at »www.lavasoft.de/support/download/
At this point, I would urge everyone to not remove these three programs with any version of Ad-aware until this is sorted out. If you have Webhancer or CommonName, Spybot removes them perfectly. »security.kolla.de/.
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by corster  |
