mohito
Premium
join:2003-09-29
New York, NY
| A message I sent to McAfee regarding it's Wireless Security
I sent this message to McAfee regarding it's Wireless Security Product. I've been having problems with the Linksys product and it's memory leaks, and yes, I'm using the latest version, but the Linksys product still suffers from memory leaks. I think there's a relationship between the level of the leak and the signal strength, lower signal strengths have a higher degree of memory leak.
I read somewhere that McAfee had a product that I could use for free that would connect to networks, little did I know that it would attempt connections to some address 216.49.88.241 (www.wirelesssecuritycorp.com) once it made the connection. Hell, I didn't agree to that. I don't know what's worse, some crappy memory leak from one crappy company, or BS connection attempts blocked by a firewall from another crappy bloated company.
Well, here's the text of the message...
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Hi,
While evaluating the free edition of your wireless connection software for my company, thinking perhaps it might be a worthwhile investment I've noticed from systems running your software, specifically WscGuard.exe, from firewall reports, that your software is attempting an outbound SSL connection (port 443) about every two seconds to 216.49.88.241 (www.wirelesssecuritycorp.com).
I was wondering what the point of this is and why any outbound connections from your own software to external sites aren't disclosed in your documentation? Clearly if your software has something to do with security and I'm expected to trust it, there shouldn't be any undocumented connection attempts by your software to another site. Transparency is a good thing in security software.
Would you folks please explain what those connection attempts have to do with the pure wireless connection operation of your software? Since those connection attempts are originated by WscGuard.exe, a program your Wireless Connection software installed, you appear to be the folks to ask. I turned off the option to install the "extra protection" so this software should be performing only the basic connection tasks of either connecting to a clear network, a WEP network, or a WPA network, with nothing else added beyond that. I think you can agree that some software trying to connect to an unknown external site every couple of seconds or so seems suspicious and deserves investigation.
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The point of me posting this, is that people should be aware of McAfee, not too many people in their right mind trust their AV software, and I simply tried the wireless software to attempt to avoid the memory leaks in the Linksys software.
Personally I don't expect a proper response from McAfee but it can't hurt to ask. |
docrice
join:2008-03-31
Fremont, CA
| I'd be curious as to what their response might be (assuming they do respond). Did you capture a trace of this connection? Also, you may wish to determine whether this executable is tied to a service and see what its running privilege level (and on Vista, its integrity level, although it'll most likely be System). You can use something like Process Explorer to determine that. While you're at it, create an MD5 and SHA1 checksum for documentation.
Is this the product you're referring to?
»www.wirelesssecuritycorp.com/wsc···stant.do |
