Archive for December, 2005

Despite the fact that SpyAxe and WinHound have already threw thousands of people into a panic, a little was known about the means how these dangerous trojans infect user computers. According to the recent research of Websense, security software company, and 2-Spyware. com own information, both SpyAxe and WinHound get into victim computers by exploiting several Microsoft Internet Explorer vulnerabilities discovered in May and late November, but still unfixed. More...

Illegally distributed rogue spyware removers are becoming more and more like actual spyware parasites that they should, but usually do not fight against. Furthermore, such products not only leave dangerous threats undetected and intact, but also install an excessive amount of malware themselves. The infamous one-month-old SpyAxe trojan is still on a spreading spree promoting the same-named corrupt anti-spyware. More...

Recently, Jason Garms, architect and group program manager in Microsoft’s security unit, gave an interview to Ziff Davis Internet News. In this interview he said that according to usage statistics culled from Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool, more than 20 percent of all infected computers running Windows XP Service Pack 2 were compromised by numerous rootkits and complex parasites, which were using rootkit techniques to conceal their malicious activity and presence in the system. Jason Garms named the most widely spread threats of such kind (FU, WinNT/Ispro, HackDef) and noted that they are often bundled with illegally installed worms, backdoors, remote administration tools, spyware and even adware parasites. More...

Recently discovered Microsoft Internet Explorer security vulnerability allows hackers and phishers running specially constructed web sites to easily steal identity details, confidential data and other sensitive information like credit card numbers, various passwords and online banking account details from all users of Google Desktop. Matan Gillan, an Israeli hacker who has discovered this issue, says that the attacker can covertly search user hard drives for any kind of information he wants, read user e-mails and retrieve all the data he is interested in. As Matan Gillan writes on his blog, the attacker simply needs to lure a victim to visit an insecure web site. More...

180solutions, the notorious adware company (it distributes the infamous ZangoSearch and 180SearchAssistant adware) has filled a lawsuit against Zone Labs, maker of popular ZoneAlarm firewall and powerful ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware. 180solutions claims that Zone Labs products misleadingly detect and target its applications as parasites that “may try to track or log keystrokes (user input), mouse movements/clicks, web sites visited, and other user behaviors�. In simple phrase, 180solutions says that its software is not spyware and resents the way Zone Labs programs identify it as. More...