Ethan Zuckerman writes on a oddity from a StopBadware.org press release: based on almost 50,000 website submitted to Stop Badware, almost 20% were hosted by iPowerWeb. Both Zuckerman and StopBadware.org suggest that iPowerWeb might be suffering from security issues allowing hackers to inject malicious code into their customers' websites. StopBadware's co-director John Palfrey stated:
This list [...]
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Microsoft released a security advisory today for all modern versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Works. According to the document, a vulnerability in the popular word processing software programs is being actively exploited, and can be triggered simply by opening a carefully modified Word document.
Both the Slashdot post on the issue and the eWeek article [...]
I know that Symantec does not sell a spell checker in addition to their security products, but this advertisement I found on the Cult of Mac blog is still unprofessional. Then again, perhaps it is not surprising, since Norton Antivirus 2006 is not even available for Mac OS X. For protection against Mac viruses, you [...]
Sunday, September 18, 2005
I must admit that I have never liked ZoneAlarm, despite its position as one of the most popular Windows firewalls. Whenever I used it a couple of years ago, I would find myself quickly uninstalling it, turned off the benefits of firewall protection by ZoneAlarm's blinding traffic light lookalike interface (entirely too much bright yellow). [...]
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
A security problem found in the strings are handled in the Windows Registry could mean big problems for those looking to clean up after viruses and spyware.
Kaspersky Lab's virus analysts report that they found a piece of malicious adware that was infected with Parite, another virus. They came to the conclusion that the computer used to make the adware was probably infected with Parite. Unlike most other modern viruses, Parite attaches itself to applications on your computers by appending its code [...]
OSNews points at Daniel Iversen's page, "Windows 2000 on old computers with 32MB RAM." Since Windows 2000's minimum memory requirement is 64 MB, this is impressive, but not anything amazing (like getting Windows 2000 to run on your refrigerator). I assumed that Iversen's page would contain a number of technical tweaks to make Windows run [...]
Also tagged 32 MB, Blaster, bloat, Daniel Iversen, DCOM RPC, Microsoft, patch, performance, tweaks, virus, Windows 2000, worm
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The news that a trojan horse attempted to trick users by telling them that Osama bin Laden had been captured is not surprising; malware have created false news events for several years now. However, an event like the capture of Osama would be important enough that it would be relatively easy to verify. A more [...]
From Boing Boing comes Loic Le Meur's post on the official French word for blog: bloc-notes, or bloc for short. I am not sure how useful creating different words for already-established terms is for the preservation of the French language, though. For example, I doubt that Le Monde will change the name of its Blogs [...]
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
While Rachel Dodes' article focuses on defeating spyware by starting over, I found it that the best part of the article is Ms. Dodes' explanation of the tools she used to try to get rid of the spyware without reinstalling (although it would have been nice if they had provided hyperlinks for more than just [...]
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Slashdot reports on an attempt to convince users of Redhat Linux and Fedora Core to download and execute malicious code disguised as a security update. Like phishing scams, it seems several spam email messages were sent claiming to be from the "Redhat Security Team," and directing users to www.fedora-redhat.com (the real Fedora website is www.fedora.redhat.com) [...]
What You Should Know About Download.Ject
Wesner Moise, a former Microsoft employee, writes about how his computer contracted a Trojan Horse, as a result of using Internet Explorer. Frankly, I was not surprised until I read the last paragraph:
I can't believe that it was this easy to become infected; I also couldn't believe that Internet Explorer could be so flawed as [...]
From Slashdot comes an article from MacWorld UK about a malicious Macintosh program disguised as the not-yet-released Mac Word 2004. From the article:
A Macworld reader alerted the magazine to the malware after he downloaded the file from Limewire. The reader told Macworld: "I downloaded the file in the hope that perhaps Microsoft had released some [...]
If you are even mildy interested in computer security, then you have surely heard of the arrests of two young men in Germany suspected of releasing the Netsky/Sasser (I think F-Secure's analysis of similar coding structure in the two programs is enough to suggest that Sasser is a more advanced version of Netsky, rather than [...]
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As I noted in a previous entry, I was concerned about a file name "Soundman.exe" that I had found on my computer.
AVERT Labs - BeavertonCurrent Scan Engine Version:4.3.20
Current DAT Version:4336
Thank you for your submission.
Analysis ID: 467056
Name
Findings
Detection
Type
Extra
soundman.exe
new detection
w32/polybot.gen!irc
Virus
yes
On one hand, that's a relief. On the other, how the hell did it get there?
UPDATE: Ah, just [...]
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From the good people at F-Secure: News from the Lab comes a post with some interesting ideas about the spammers behind the recent rash of viruses:
The fact that both Bagle and Mydoom families are utilizing the Mitglieder trojan might indicate that in fact it's a single group behind both of them. It might be different [...]
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Thursday, February 5, 2004
Instapundit attempts to support his allegations against the BBC by using this Slashdot article, about the BBC's fallacious implication that the MyDoom virus was written by a Linux advocate.