Denial of Abyss' being "spyware" somewhere on your

[wspollack]

As a followup of my posting last week -- as yet unanswered -- is there a denial of Abyss' being "spyware" somewhere on your site? Upon further examination (i.e., additional options set in Windows Task Manager), I noticed that in addition to read I/O activity when no one's accessing my site, there was also similar write I/O activity all the time. I then went looking for a statement to the effect that Abyss is not spyware of any sort, and was unable to find such a statement. Do you have one posted somewhere?

Regards,

Bill

[Moxxnixx]

Do a search for "spyware" on these boards.

[Axis]

Hi wspollack--

Abyss is not spyware..... This has been stated explicitly in several threads on the subject. Both the Aprelium team and the users of Abyss have "testified" to this in numerous posts.

Off course, test this for yourself. Run any of the current spyware detectors and you will find all is good with abyss.

The two instances of Abyss in the Task Manager are simply part of the Abyss anti-crash protection and are a normal part of the Abyss function.

I believe the "rumor" about Abyss being spyware was/is instigated by people who find Abyss to be a serious threat to other server software.

Not only is Abyss not spyware, it is one of the most secure server softwares around. I know of no instance of a successful hacking of a Abyss installation that is properly configured.

Regards,
Axis

[iNaNimAtE]

And if you are afraid of someone hacking the console, (which won't ever happen, but it never hurts to be safe), remember to change the port from 9999 to some random one... :D
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Bienvenidos!

[wspollack]

Folks,

Thanks for your replies (thus far). Be it known that:

1) I run Ad-Aware and SpyBot Search & Destroy regularly and, right, there's no problem with Abyss reported.

2) A few days ago I noticed constant read and write I/O activity on the part of the two Abyss processes (one started by the other), and asked about it. I wasn't trying to start trouble; I was merely curious. The "Aprelium" moderator hadn't responded to that question, although the moderator had responded to more recent posts.

3) Keeping that in mind, I wandered this site looking for some sort of disclaimer, and found none (thus far). Most (all?) other freeware web-server sites I've been to, along with a lot of other freeware-program sites in general that have Internet-related programs, have such a statement.

So, I'm not asserting anything negative. I'm merely questioning what's going on vis-a-vis the I/O activity -- being a geek myself, of course -- and I'd also feel better if an official disavowal of spyware were issued by the author(s), rather than from other satisfied users.

Make sense?

Regards,

Bill

[Anonymoose]

Visit Sysinternals.com, grab Filemon and Regmon and be curious to your hearts content :D Filemon will show you what files are being accessed, regmon will show you registry access. If you're ultra curious, run a packet sniffer and monitor all the packets transferred by Abyss and their destination/contents. After over a year of using Abyss and using these tools to monitor other apps, I am 100% confident there is nothing lurking in Abyss.

Aprelium will reply when they get chance - I'd rather they spent time improving Abyss than answering posts on subjects they've already covered many times :D

[aprelium]

wspollack,

We answered your post about I/O activity but it may be lost for some reason.
Anyway, here is the explnation from the developers of Abyss:
"APX architecture is based on the use of two processes: the first runs the server and the second monitors the first (and does some other tasks such as managing Abyss window and icon in the system tray). These two processes are constantly exchanging messages. This is why you see the I/O activity even though the server is not accessed. In fact, sending or reading a message to another process is considered as an input/output operation)."
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Support Team
Aprelium - http://www.aprelium.com

[wspollack]

Aprelium, et al.:

1) Thanks for your response here, regarding IO activity. Sorry about my ignorance and naivete in that area. (And, yep, I kept looking for a response to my original post on IO activity, under that thread. Sorry it was lost.)

2) Do you have any thoughts or comments you'd care to share regarding your putting a statement on this web site -- perhaps on the Privacy page -- that explicitly states something such as "Abyss is not spyware, does not send any information whatsoever to Aprelium, responds only as directed to the requestor, " and so forth?

3) As some others had suggested, I did do a search of "spyware" on this site, and found your earlier quote:

"People seem to see evil everywhere.
IMHO, It is 'stupid' to suspect a 145KB package to contain spyware while "trusting" products which come in 100MB installers!
In 100 MB, anyone can insert a 200KB spyware, but in a 110 KB exectuable (Abyss's .exe is 110KB), the task is simply not possible."

I don't take offense -- really -- at that comment, and hope you'll follow my thoughts in a similar frame of mind. I have these comments on that comment:

A) I prefer to think of myself as "cautious," rather than "stupid."

B) I was disappointed in that comment to find a specific denial of anything. That is, I was wondering why you didn't ADD to the comment something along the lines of "...and in fact Abyss is NOT spyware" (i.e., in addition to your general observation).

For instance, Axis wrote that "This [Abyss' not being spyware] has been stated explicitly in several threads on the subject." I don't consider an observation that people see evil everywhere to be an EXPLICIT statement of anything; perhaps this was stated explicitly in some threads that I was unable to locate in my search.

C) This, in turn, is a quote from one of Steve Gibson's pages (http://www.grc.com/dos/grcdos.htm):

"The various IRC Bots I have acquired and examined are just 15,904 bytes in size, so they are easily hidden as trojans within other, typically huge, Windows programs."

I realize that Abyss is certainly not "typically huge," but something such as what Gibson is referring to is pretty small, no?

4) [To Anonymoose]:

A) I'm familiar with SysInternals (and run their pagefile defrag each boot, and have their Process Explorer); thanks for reminding me -- as I'd really forgotten -- that I could look at what files are being read and written to.

B) Do you know of any freeware (or cheap) packet sniffers? I'm only vaguely aware of such software, and haven't ever used any, certainly.

I'm really not trying to be a pain in the ass. The thing is, I really like the way Abyss works (after having used several other freeware web servers for a few days each), and I appreciate your making it freely available. Anonymoose states that "using these tools to monitor other apps" reveals nothing, but it's not clear whether a packet sniffer was employed (or whether it was mentioned only for the "ultra curious"), and in the absence of any testing by anyone else, I'd really appreciate, um, an explicit statement somewhere.

Regards,

Bill

[Anonymoose]

If you want free, I'd recommend either WinPCap and Analyzer or AnalogX PacketMon. There's also Ethereal and Sniff-It

To be honest although Analyzer and Packetmon are pretty damn good for freeware, they can't compare to Commview - a commercial app but well worth the cost. If you try the trial version you'll see why - easy to use, good gui and recreates sessions from packets sniffed so you don't have to sit trawling through packets working out what went where.

My comment was intended to mean that I regularly use packet sniffers for extended amounts of time to monitor either unexpected incoming traffic or strange network behaviour - specifically applications that seem to be sending out traffic when they have no reason to and saturating the network. I have never seen an unexpected outgoing packet from Abyss.

Personally, although the rising trend in freeware is to have to state explicitly that it's really free, no spyware yadda yadda, I think this should be unnecessary. The original meaning of freeware was exactly that - free software, no extra crap bundled in etc. This has been warped by various companies releasing 'free' software with huge bundles of spyware attached. I think you should be able to use your own judgement ( as well as a helping hand from Adware :wink: ) and decide what software is likely to be bundled with ads.

You missed Apreliums post and further comments http://www.aprelium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2724 out of your search somehow I think ?

Also from http://www.aprelium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=398

[wspollack]

Anonymoose:

Thanks very much for your reply, your time, and the software recommendations.

The comments you cite by Aprelium are indeed explicit, and I did indeed miss them (searching for "spyware" when I should have included "trojan").

Thanks for the software reviews and the clarification that you've run the sniffers yourself, and found nothing. Your comments do in fact help allay my fears.

Aprelium:

I'm done pestering everyone. In the interests of your future coding time, dare I suggest that you MAY want to post some disclaimer prominently on your site, to POSSIBLY forestall such questions as mine? Something along the lines of your IO explanation above, and something along the lines about spyware, trojans, and so forth, perhaps similar to those found on the web sites of KeyFocus and BRS WebWeaver (two other servers I've tried); see:

http://www.keyfocus.net/kfws/faq/
http://www.brswebweaver.com/index.php

Regards,

Bill

[aprelium]

wspollack,

The fact that we don't put such a disclaimer doesn't mean that Abyss is a spyware. Anyway, we'll add it for "suspicious" people.
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Aprelium - http://www.aprelium.com