More times than not, those of us in the security community who volunteer our time to help people clean their infected computers would be unsuccessful without the use of noncommercial software. A few such examples include Merijn's HijackThis, Option^Explicit's DLLCompare, KillBox and Host File Viewer and RubbeRDuckY's AboutBuster. In addition, we could not easily help with the latest infections without speciality tools such as smitRem, Elite Toolbar Remover, Vundofix and too many more to mention here.
That software and the specialty tools are painstakingly created and repeatedly tested, resulting in hours upon hours of work. The develpers unselfishly and freely provide the tools and fixes for use. Their reward is not monetary, but rather the satisfaction that they have helped others. Since *you* are reading this right now, it is more than likely that you have also been helped by those tools at one time or another.
Members of the security community recently became aware of an individual who unlawfully copied another developer's tool. He edited the code to replace the author's name with his own. As a direct result of that copyright infringement, people obtaining help at the various security forums, this site included, will start seeing the copyright symbol (©) and author's name following the name of the noncommercial software the helper is requesting be used.
In the event we forget to include the copyright notation, anyone receiving instructions here at LandzDown Forum is assured that we are providing links to valid, carefully tested software created by the developers in the security community.
