Aureate and Radiate

Sounds like some kind of holistic exercise. If only.

Aureate (renamed Radiate) is a sneaky piece of software that rotates adverts in free software. You've probably come across free software that contains banner ads. When you download it, there's a chance that Radiate will come along too and install itself on your computer. You can check right now by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del (be careful to press just once) and looking at the task manager. If there's a program by the name of Radiate or Aureate on the list, it's installed on your machine.

So what? You've got some kind of banner ad software that keeps free software companies in business?

Problem is, it's a lousy piece of software. It's highly likely to cause your computer to crash. I have first hand experience of this. Radiate infected my computer and crashed it two sessions later.

Worse still, it has terrible security. It's parasitically connected to your browser, so gets around any firewall. And get this - it's designed to pick up software from any Web server that it's instructed to contact and install it on your machine. That's right. This program is capable of contacting an Internet server, downloading software to your machine and executing it, without telling you. And it will bypass your security measures as it does so.

Do you still want it on your computer? Thought not.

If you've got a recent version of Radiate, you can find it in the programs section of the Start menu. There's an uninstall option. Early versions of Aureate don't show up in the program menu. You should be able to find them in Settings > Control Panels > Add/Remove programs. If you still have a problem, try running Ad-aware from www.lavasoft.de. This program will remove Aureate for you, plus similar software such as CometCursor and DSSAgent.

For the full story visit Steve Gibson's page at http://grc.com/oo/aureate.htm.

Here's a list of free software that carries Aureate or similar Spyware.

Nine simple security tips

Security holes

What hackers do