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Group 2. "Sacred cows".
No signature base will ever have their signatures. Here belong mostly monitoring programs, which can be used for spying as well. First, the ones created by (or for) government agencies – such as the famous Magic Lantern (the brainchild of the Cyber Knight project). No product which uses a signature base will protect against it; an ordinary anti-spy will never detect such a program. The same situation with other monitoring software, which certain agencies utilize. These monitoring products simply "don't exist" for signature-base-using anti-spyware (though they can well exist on any PC--yours included)
If you think I'm painting it too black let's recall what happened when code of D.I.R.T. (a covert spying tool developed by Codex Data Systems) leaked out couple of years ago and was found in the Web (merely by accident, by the way). Once a top-secret project, it did become an open secret -- but the signature of this powerful monitoring software hasn't been included in any signature bases. That's what worries me the most; after this information leak nobody knows for sure WHO can be using it --and WHAT FOR. What if some other government monitoring program trickles into the Internet, too?
Monitoring programs for parental control or workplace surveillance are very common and easily available from the Web. However, they can be used not only for those absolutely legitimate purposes. Any monitoring program is actually a double-edged sword because it almost always contains a keylogging module. It is up to an end user to utilize them--perhaps for spying. Legitimate monitoring programs are sometimes not included into signature bases, so one can use an anti-spy program and be spied on anyway.
Now the last (but not the least) threat -- spy modules incorporated into viruses and Trojan horse programs. Unfortunately, all malware, including viruses, Trojan horses, worms and other fauna, "evolves" (due to their maliciouscreators). There already are so many hybrids between one another that it's hard to find, say, a "pure" virus like ones used only several years ago. Lots of this fauna can contain a keylogger -- like MyDoom (sure you remember this virus). They multiply and evolve, becoming more and more malicious.
