Is someone hacking into my PC?

[Albert]

Over the past few days, my external modem is showing lots of activity, along with the online icon in the system tray. In fact, it is occurring right now, and I have not requested anything from my browser or e-mail. I don't see any hard drive activity so I suppose that is a good sign. I've been logging off just to stop whatever transfer is going on, but this is getting annoying.

I have no idea what kind of data is going back and forth nor do I know how this is occurring. Is there any system tools or software that will allow me to see what exactly is going on?

I am using Windows ME. Is Windows doing something sneaky or stupid? Or has someone hacked into my PC and is probing?

Any help would be appreciated. I am in no mood to format my hard drive.

[Mntsnow]

If you are running ME in the default configuration I would possiably bet that Windows is "phoning home". ME is by default configured to autocheck for updates and will download those updates for you. If you really want to start to see what is happening "behind your back" I would suggest installing ZoneAlarm as it will inform you of what is trying to access the net from your machine and what it trying to access your machine from the net.

[Albert]

I downloaded Zone Alarm. Seems the culprit is Brodcast background agent (which resides as C:\windows\bbstore\dss\dssagent.exe) The lights stopped flashing once I disabled Internet access to this program.

Is this the mechanism in which Windows ME looks for updates?

What is throwing me off is I have never noticed so much activity, and I have had ME installed since it was released.

[Buji]

It's SPYWARE! Chech these out: http://cexx.org/dssagent.htm http://www.accs-net.com/smallfish/mattel.htm
Plenty more info if you go to: http://www.google.com/ and type in dssagent.

[NDC]

Boy, I seem to be reading more and more about spyware these days. Anyhow, here is a site you can download OptOut which is spyware detection program:

http://grc.com/optout.htm

[Buji]

Steve Gibson advises: http://www.lavasoft.de/ instead of Optout. In fact he's given up on improving it in favor of lavasoft. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[NDC]

Wow! Thanks, Buji! Ad-Aware V.4.0 found 5 spywares that OptOut wasn't able to detect.

[randy48]

Ad Aware is a great tool, the only thing it can't clean out is Aureate, it says it's a process. When I check NT Task Manager, it doesn't show it running http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/frown.gif Any ideas?
Thanks,
Randy

[Dave_H]

Here is a site that keeps a list of known spyware. It currently has 738 programs listed.
The Spyware Infested Software List (http://www.infoforce.qc.ca/spyware/)
Dave

[brandon184]

Its most likely just things running in the background... Or just your connection pinging itself.

- Brandon

[socalgal]

Thanks for that list, Dave. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Beemer]

Checked out the list and no spyware here! I don't even get the ICQ graphics at the bottom of a "Web Page Address (URL)". I must be doing something right for a change.

Cheers!