Tag: VIRUSES

Marc Maiffret, despite having a name that sounds uncomfortably French in origin, is one of the founding members of a special and elite club: he's a turncoat hacker. Once an infamous black hat, he's now the chief security architect for leading malware protection system developer FireEye. His list of notable accomplishments is many, but they will all be shadowed by his latest statement: Microsoft ...

Think you're safe online? Think again. We had no idea how vulnerable the average PC really is. Ben Feinstein of SecureWorks breaks it down for us and gives some practical tips for keeping your PC safe from the bad guys. digg_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2007/12/13/video-ben-feinstein-of-secureworks-talks-emerging-threats-with/';When Christina and I taped episode 5, Ben had way ...

digg_url = "http://digg.com/security/The_Squadcast_05_Security_Starts_at_Home";Hiding under your bed in fear of the latest Internet threats? Fear not young digital warrior, we've got you covered. On this week's episode of The Squadcast we talk to SecureWorks security researcher Ben Feinstein about staying safe online, keeping the hackers out, and more. Plus, Grant and Christina count down our ...

Get out your data condoms if you're headed to China. A recent report says China is hit the hardest by computer viruses. Over 35 million computers were infected in the first half of the year according to Chinese anti-virus company Rising. China Tech News reports, "There are a great deal of hidden troubles in domestic Internet software and applications that apparently lack effective protection ...

Anti-virus maker Sophos recently released its 2007 Security Threat Report, a State of The Union for desktop security issues which, given a full read-through makes you shudder to think of the malware and nasties your PC could run afoul of any given time. According to the report, Windows Trojans, which sometimes go undetected for long periods of time, outnumber viruses and worms by a factor of 4 to ...

Great news, everybody! Windows Vista is so secure it makes antivirus programs obsolete! Er.. well, not exactly. According to BetaNews, Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin told reporters on Wednesday that "[Vista's] new lockdown features are so capable and thorough that he was comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed." "My son, seven years old, ...

Former Download Squad co-lead Marc Perton wrote in to tell us about a bit of controversy stirred up by his current employer, Consumer Reports, which recently conducted one of the most comprehensive tests of anti-virus software to date. The controversy is that for the test Consumer Reports hired a firm to create 5,500 new variants of existing viruses to see how antivirus software reacted to new ...

Makers of firewall and anti-virus software are warning that RSS feeds could be the next big thing for spreading viruses. In this article from The Register, Trend Micro's marketing manager says, "RSS feeds point to HTML pages and as such, they can be made to point to HTML-exploits or malicious JavaScript. It certainly can be a possible way of distributing malicious code over the internet to ...