Archive for February, 2006

The following list is made by the 2-Spyware.com research team. The overall infection rate, spreading speed, payload, relations with other parasites, stability and stealth – these are only a few factors from the large list that we took into consideration rating last year’s parasites. However, we do not pretend to be absolutely correct – rating […]

The last year really was the year of spyware, adware and malware threats. It began as usually, but the end of 2005 left a sharp and intimidating impression. We saw an outbreak of corrupt anti-spyware products, sophisticated, hard to get rid of browser hijackers and trojans. The early beginning of 2005 was quite calm – […]

Table of contents
Introduction
Installing smitRem
Starting smitRem
Using smitRem to remove Smitfraud and its variants
Conclusion
Introduction
smitRem is a stand-alone tool designed to remove some widely spread parasites from the compromised computer. smitRem detects and removes numerous variants of the Smitfraud trojan and its infamous derivatives including SpySheriff, SpyAxe, SpywareStrike, PSGuard, WinHound and a number of others. The tool also […]

Trojans are everywhere. You receive them by e-mail, download from popular file sharing networks, install by clicking on malicious links in instant messages or by surfing to fake security-related web sites. Modern trojans are the most widely spread parasites. They are used to drop other malware, log user keystrokes, provide unauthorized remote access to the […]

Brian Kerebs of The Washington Post has published a very informative and breathtaking story on botnets, botmasters, adware companies and spyware victims. Brian spent months on this reporting interviewing hackers controlling thousands of infected computers around the globe, well-known adware distributors, security experts and spyware victims. All interviews are in the article. The story also […]

First-time Olympian Australian skier Dale Begg-Smith has won the gold medal at this year’s Olympics in Torino. This is a great success for the Australian team. However, not all that glitters is gold. According to StopScum.com, the 21-year-old is also a first-rate spyware distributor, who ran AdsCPM, quite an infamous advertising company.
Dale Begg-Smith started his […]

SpywareStrike, one of the most infamous corrupt anti-spyware programs ever, has just got a brand new clone – SpyFalcon. This new application looks and works in the same manner as SpywareStrike. Furthermore, it is very similarly distributed. SpyFalcon, the same named trojan, which seems to be a variant of SpyAxe and SpywareStrike parasites, is silently […]

hpHOSTS is a web site of the community managed hosts file, which is used for blocking access to thousands of malicious web sites. This file can be merged with the user’s current hosts file, but can also replace the original. Once installed, hpHOSTS blocks access to more than 46,000 host names. All of these host […]

On past Friday, February 3rd, Blackworm, a dangerous and rapidly spreading parasite, could cause catastrophic data losses by deleting millions of various documents, databases, images and archives stored on hundred of thousands of computers around the world. However, the worm failed. It was a quiet Friday night, and we still had no reports from Blackworm […]

A critical vulnerability was recently discovered in Winamp, a popular media player for Windows. This flaw can be exploited with a malicious playlist file (.pls) that contains an overly long file name. Spyware vendors already begun using the publicly available exploit to push spyware on victim computers. A malicious web site secretly drops a playlist […]