strange spybot stuff in hosts file (XP SP3)

[bazz]

Hi,

I use my hosts file quite often for viewing nes istes of mine, bwfore the DNS is re-pointed. Today, I have noticed hundreds of entries and at the top of them is this line


# Start of entries inserted by Spybot - Search & Destroy


Are they genuine? I have found this happen several times over the past year or so and when I delete them there seems to be no negative difference made to the pc infact it seems to run quicker.

why would spybot put stuff in there?

the format of each line is

127.0.0.1 w w w.007guard.com
127.0.0.1 007guard.c o m
127.0.0.1 008i.c o m
127.0.0.1 w w w. 008k.com

(without spacing in the url)


any ideas please?

bazz

[_Aerospace_Eng_]

Yeah its fine. The immunization process from Spybot adds these entries to the host file just in case you get infected with the spyware that uses these urls. What would happen is if these files got on your system and when they would try to contact the url they connect to, nothing would happen as the traffic for that url would go to localhost/127.0.0.1 which is back to your own system and no where else.

[bazz]

Great, thanks Aero.

I had wondered if it would do the opposite and contact those urls as if it was my machine doing it. Sort of like a hi-jack of my machine. Re-assurance is good :)

bazz