08/23/2009
Protecting Yourself From Stealth Keyloggers
There's ample understanding and concern about viruses, worms, and even botnets to some degree. Most everyone who runs a PC understands that viruses, adware, and the like come with the territory and that it's wise to run antivirus software (or better yet an Internet security suite.) What's still a bit... Read more
08/17/2009
Antivirus Software: What's Real? What's Fake?
One of the growing concerns for many security and antivirus professionals is the dramatic growth of fake antivirus software. The idea behind fake A/V software is to trick unsuspecting consumers into downloading and installing their fake software in an effort to get trojans, viruses, spyware, and other malware installed onto... Read more
08/16/2009
More Warnings about Flash/Acrobat Reader Vulnerabilities
Ever read .PDFs or watch something in Flash? Most people do. In fact, something like 99% of all computers have Flash installed likewise a huge portion of computers have Acrobat Reader, too. As such, if you're in that 99% pool, you're probably vulnerable, as roughly 80% of all computers still... Read more
08/15/2009
Twitter Used to Control Botnets
Jose Nazario, who's well-known in computer security circles and is also a well-regarded botnet researcher, has made some interesting discoveries about botnets and the darling social media site, Twitter.com. What he's discovered is that botnet operators are using Twitter's micro-blogs to send command-and-control messages to botnets. In an article on... Read more
08/04/2009
Critical Security Patches to Mozilla Firefox
On the heels of an announcement a couple of days ago from Adobe about security flaws in Acrobat, Reader, and Flash, Mozilla just released versions 3.5.2 and 3.0.13 of Firefox to patch two security flaws they're calling "critical". From the Mozilla Foundation's security announcement, "We strongly recommend that all Firefox... Read more
08/01/2009
Urgent Adobe Acrobat & Flash Security Advisory
Let's get right to the story here: there's an urgent update that Adobe has just made to Acrobat, Flash Player, and Adobe Reader. If you have Acrobat, Reader, or Flash installed, which most folks do, you'll want to upgrade NOW. Here's the lead in of the Adobe security announcement. "A... Read more
07/30/2009
Keyloggers Used in $400,000+ Theft
"Sholar said the unauthorized transfers appear to have been driven by 'some kind computer virus.'" This is how Walt Scholar, County Attorney of Bullit County, Kentucky, describes what lead to $415,000 being stolen from Bullit County's bank. A malicious trojan keylogger is apparently to blame, but the cyber criminals definitely... Read more
07/29/2009
Research into the Workings of Real Botnets
For starters, let's define what a botnet is: Loosely speaking, a botnet is a network of computers which have been taken control of for the purpose of malicious use. Typically, PC users whose computers have been compromised are complete unaware their computers are infected with malware. Once infected, the botnet... Read more
07/21/2009
Sunbelt Software Joins Fight Against Malware
We came across some great news today on darkREADING.com: Sunbelt Software, makers of VIPRE, our top-rated best antivirus program for 2012, is joining Trend Micro and others in contributing data to StopBadware.org. StopBadware, which has its home at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, is described in the... Read more
07/15/2009
Microsoft ActiveX Bug Targets Internet Explorer & Excel
Sad to say, the bad guys are at it again. Computerworld brings news of a new, as yet unpatched ActiveX bug that's being exploited to compromise PCs. Already because of these attacks, threat conditions have been raised by several antivirus vendors including, Sunbelt, makers of VIPRE; Symantec, makers of Norton... Read more