Archive for the 'Viruses and parasites' Category

PandaLabs had reported recent increase of fake antivirus applications. Frequently appearing as free downloads on the internet, these applications pass through antivirus and firewall as utilities; also they can be embedded in other type of files like music or video files downloaded by user.
When installed on the machine they invite user (who often do not […]

Kaspersky Security Network technology has been active for more than two months now; it gathered interesting information at the time.
The statistics of August and July are very different, although the most widespread parasite (Trojan.Win32.DNSChanger.ech) remained the same. August was a good period for trojan-downloaders as bunch of totally new parasites of this type occupied 6 […]

We could hope for more secure days of the internet to come, if only security researches forecasted anything positive. Unfortunately, when it comes to safety of the World Wide Web, each computer user is as vulnerable as a fly on spiders net.
ScanSafe Global Threat research reported malware rates were 278 percent higher first half of […]

AusCERT security conference may have gone well, but it still failed at certain point. Infected USB sticks were unintentionally given out at single presentation raising a question if the lecturers are really capable of discussing computer security. The malware was noticed pretty quickly and organizers recalled all the infected pieces as soon as the infection […]

The results of new research revealed the fact that infected email messages are more widespread in countries where internet is still gaining popularity. The worst results were seen in India where the use of internet is increasing. Security levels were much better in countries where people use internet for years. These facts have simple explanation: […]

Possible vulnerabilities of iPhone were widely discussed; however considerable period of time has passed till a malware dedicated for iPhone actually emerged.
Although several iPhone vulnerabilities were demonstrated and discussed, there was no actual software to trick users and firmware and do some harm. Ironically the creator of the first iPhone trojan chosen tactics similar to […]

We already got used to excessive advertising and false reports of rogue-antispyware and trojans, requiring the payment for the full version of the software in order to get rid of so-called threats. But there’s a new scheme around and, surprisingly, it does not involve credit card or any other personal information.
Instead, the trojan completely […]

F-secure counted 250,000 new malware samples over the year 2007, which is the same amount that was counted over the last 20 years (including 2006). These statistics are very different from vendor to vendor, since most of them are based on the particular vendor's clients' experiences.
Having said that, many other security vendors have reported a […]

Computer worms used to be the worst malware that could infect a computer some time ago. Worms are pretty dangerous: they can replicate themselves, spread to remote computers and corrupt files. Worms are similar to viruses, but they can perform additional actions besides the destructive function both viruses and worms have. However, malware creators seem […]

Due to the recent outbreak of skype-using malware (none of which was extremely succesful), a new niche in the security field arose, and that is Skype security. The niche has been plugged by the first program, which is Skype Defender. The only problem is, Skype Defender is malware itself.
The setup of Skype Defender looks absolutely […]