Tag: VIRUS

Over the last few days, a mass SQL injection attack has been quickly gathering speed. Just three days ago only 28,000 URLs were affected, but at the time of writing, there could be up to 3.8 million infected URLs. Websense has a complete write up the attack, dubbed 'LizaMoon,' but here's the basic gist: it looks like someone is exploiting a vulnerabilty (or vulnerabilities) in hundreds of ...

Symantec is reporting that they have detected a malicious Android app doing the rounds on file-sharing sites in the US and Asia. The fake application impersonates a pirated version of an app called Walk and Text, which lets you overlay a keyboard on a live feed from your phone's camera to avoid crashing into things while walking and texting, and is currently available in the Android Market ...

Tragedies like the massive earthquake which recently hit Japan are bad enough, and they're compounded online by nefarious types who want to profit from the inevitable increase in search engine queries. It's a common way to trick users into installing malicious programs like fake antivirus or fake system maintenance tools. By getting in quickly on new search terms as the become popular, ...

It's been widely reported that the world's millions of smartphones are the next juicy target for malware creators, and we're beginning to see the shift. Trojanized apps recently infiltrated the Android Market and now Trend Micro is reporting that a Zeus trojan variant has begun infecting BlackBerry devices. The trojan installs silently and then notifies its administrators that the compromised ...

Thanks to a tip-off by a redditor, and some investigation by Android Police, Google has pulled 21 Android Market apps that were infected with a backdoor Trojan rootkit. If you downloaded any of the infected apps, they will be automatically deleted from your phone. The attack vector was ingenious, and plays on the Android Market's biggest weakness: the almost complete absence of app moderation. ...

In August of 2010, Intel announced it was purchasing McAfee for a cool $7.7 billion in cash. The deal had been held up by U.S. and EU regulators ever since, but the transaction has finally been given the all-clear. The two companies plan to develop security solutions which more tightly integrate hardware and software, a move both claim is imperative in today's rapidly evolving threat ...

A new backdoor Trojan virus that targets Mac OS X has emerged, Sophos reports. Interestingly, the new virus, which is called BlackHole RAT (or OSX/MusMinim-A in virus definition speak), is a variant of the 'legitimate' Windows Trojan DarkComet-RAT. Fortunately, the virus doesn't seem to be very malicious. It allows a remote controller to reboot or shutdown an infected computer, or pop up a ...

Microsoft recently delivered a patch for its malware and antivirus tools, including Security Essentials, Windows Defender, MSRT, and Forefront -- its enterprise antivirus solution. The patch addresses a flaw in Microsoft's scanning engine which could allow an attacker who had a valid username and password to gain elevated rights on a system. As is often the case with these flaws, the fact that ...

After only a few weeks in beta testing, Avast 6 is now ready for download. If you're looking for a good, free antivirus program for your Windows computer, Avast is still one of the best options -- and version 6 adds one very powerful defense mechanism. Sandboxing -- which allows your computer to run unknown and untrusted programs in an isolated spece where they can't harm your operating ...

Stuxnet is one of the more infamous worms we've read about in recent times, and it now appears that the rapscallions who are Anonymous have gotten hold of a copy of the Stuxnet code. Stuxnet, for those who aren't aware, drove attacks which crippled Iran's nuclear program. The code was pilfered from HBGary Federal after CEO Aaron Barr poked the beehive one time too many -- along with more than ...

One shortcoming of previous versions of Immunet Protect -- the upstart cloud antivirus recently added to the Google Pack -- was that it needed to be plugged into the cloud in order to provide meaningful protection. That's not a big minus since most of us are online 24-7, but with Immunet's acquisition by Sourcefire it became important to address the needs of network administrators. And ...

You may have noticed Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool in your list of available Windows Updates. Heck, you may even have seen it in your Add/Remove Programs and wondered where it came from. The MSRT can actually be quite useful, and it's a fast, simple way to remove a number of common malware infections. In an update pushed yesterday, Microsoft added Cycobot to the list of malware ...

Last night, on Patch Tuesday, Microsoft distributed a security fix that disables Autorun with USB drives and other forms of removable storage on Windows Vista, XP and 2000, and Server 2008 and 2003. Windows 7 by default has Autorun disabled for removable storage, so this is just bringing the older OSes into line. This marks the end of an era, at least as far as worms like Conficker are ...

It may have taken a long time for Avast to move from version 4 to 5, but that's not going to be the case with Avast 6. A beta version has been made available for download, and there are plenty of new features that will make Avast 6 a worthy antivirus program for Windows. Two technologies which were introduced in paid editions of Avast 5 -- the Web Script Shield and site blocking -- have been ...

Now, we don't need fancy graphs to tell us that malware is all over the place -- but it's certainly eye-opening to see just how bad the problem has gotten. Unique samples gathered by AV-Test Labs this year nearly doubled in 2010 -- to almost 20 million, up from 12 million in 2009. That's no doubt due to the ever-morphing horde of rogue applications, which now include bogus system tune-up software ...