Zone Labs: Anatomy of a Coverup

How angels stay clean and scandals stay silent.

Part Seven - Aureation

Almost on cue, 'adware' came upon us. And McAfee and Gibson were ready with their next bout of hysteria, Gibson laying the groundwork on or before mid-December 2000, when McAfee was now officially on board at Zone Labs.

Adware was more, as it turned out, than billboard advertising on the desktop. Unknown to users, it was corrupting system files and masquerading under a number of pretenses to gain exit to the Internet and send vital information back to its 'mothership'. Both Silencer, Spychecker, and the Spychecker web site were born about this time, all in a reaction to this insidious idea.

But while several software companies reacted - and justifiably - Gibson of course over-reacted, and in the hysteria that naturally followed, Leak Test was born. This was a second generation firewall tester - instead of seeing if outside traffic could get in, it checked whether inside traffic could get out. And again Internet surfers were encouraged to stop on by and test their personal firewalls, again they were led after the test into a sound pulping of the message of Zone Alarm, again McAfee cleaned up.

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