Re: Linksys WPC54G card utility contains spyware?

From: Lars M. Hansen (badnews_at_hansenonline.net)
Date: 11/29/03 

Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 14:13:14 GMT

On Sat, 29 Nov 2003 04:26:33 GMT, Doc Miller spoketh

>Has anyone else seen this? I just installed a WPC54G wireless .11g
>card in my laptop and the configuration utility, wpc54cfg.exe, is
>sending packets to Akamai via the daylight port.
>
>I set up a rule on my firewall to bounce the packets and the utility
>went crazy spraying every machine on that subnet with traffic on port
>13 (daylight). Once I changed the rule to drop the packets the packet
>storm died down.
>
>Besides the traffic to Akamia the same program performs a DNS lookup
>of microsoft.com every 15 seconds. Does this classify as spyware? It
>sure sounds like it.
>
>Doc

Did you actually examine the packets, or are you just guessing? Because
my first "guess" when I saw the daytime traffic was that it was actually
attempting to ensure that the time on the computer was correct. As for
the DNS lookups, it seems to me that it's merely testing the network
connection to get an estimate on the quality.

If you minimize the utility software, the DNS lookups and the daytime
traffic will go away. If that doesn't work for you, right-click on the
utility software icon in the system tray and select "exit". You don't
actually need it running all the time, it only needs to be there to
establish the network connection...

Lars M. Hansen
http://www.hansenonline.net
(replace 'badnews' with 'news' in e-mail address)

Relevant Pages

  • Re: dial-on-demand discarded packets
    ... The thing is that i am not concerned about DNS lookups. ... >> the packets, sent till the connection is etablished, to be discarded. ... you can use the pppd ktune option (or ... > /etc/resolv.conf to extend the time that DNS lookups are generated ...
    (comp.protocols.ppp)
  • Re: dial-on-demand discarded packets
    ... > The thing is that i am not concerned about DNS lookups. ... > way not to lose any packets at all. ... In the Solaris implementation (also using pppd; ... demand interface so we can deliver them when the interface comes up, ...
    (comp.protocols.ppp)