I was just wondering if anyone else has PC Anywhere at their company, and if there's a way to detect if it's been installed on your computer.
Our MIS dept likes to "lurk" and spy on users to see what they're working on (or not working on), so I was just wondering if there's a way to tell if it's on a certain computer or not.
Garrett Sever
10-18-2001, 07:01 AM
Ah, Mill...
Finally a person as paranoid as I am about the idiots he works around. pcAnywhere, being a commercial product, is pretty easy to detect. If you run NT, check the services to see if the pcAnywhere Host service is running. There should also be an icon in the Systray.
More than likely, if they are spying on you, they are using a trojan (gasp) or some other means. I suggest you do what I did which is
(1) go to the DOS prompt periodically and type "netstat -a" to see all listening ports.
(2) Install ZoneAlarm or some other firewall app (I have it on mine... behind the "company" firewall) to see what packets are going in and out of your pc and marshall them. FirewallGuide (http://www.firewallguide.com) has some good reviews of free apps.
(3) Talk to Cheif and PrOpHeT about other ways of detecting lurkers (packet sniffers are popular for this I believe)
Most of the IS guys in my company are too stupid to get past ZoneAlarm. The ones that can... well, you're not going to stop them anyways.
Alas, I'm using Windows 98, so the first method won't work and I can't install software on my machine without their permission... LOL
I can use the netstat command at the DOS prompt, but I'm not exactly sure what it is that I'm looking at. Would I have to use several times and try to compare what it spits out at me?
btw, I've heard that I make them sometimes feel paranoid or insecure but I really don't know why... LOL