ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, today called out drive-by exploits as the biggest, most increasing threat of the moment in the Internet landscape, amongst a sea of other all-too-familiar issues like worms, phishing and botnets. Spam, one of the oldest and most annoying aspects of being online, is the only threat that is on the wane, according to ENISA’s Threat… → Read More
Trend Micro released a rather interesting report about Apple’s Mac OS X, and it’s not going to make Mac users happy. The report is calling OS X the most dangerous OS to run, siting Apple’s slow cycle of patches and updates, as well as their obsession with secrecy. → Read More
If you or a friend’s computer has been infected with some nastyware or a real bona-fide virus, the last resort is always to do a complete format and reinstall. It’s the computer repair equivalent of nuking the site from orbit — it’s the only way to be sure. However, in computers as in Aliens, you may find your opponent is more tenacious then you think. In this case, some security… → Read More
According to the FTC, over a million – a million! – people have been tricked “into buying computer security products such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus,” through a tactic commonly known as scareware. Yes, those little boxes that pop up on just about every single non-technical computer user’s computer telling them that their computer might be… → Read More
I’m at home in Columbus right now and I was digging through my old papers and found this little collection of floppy disks containing all of my cracking warez. As I recall, I wrote the viruses on the VIRUSES disk from a book by Cue Publishing (??) and BlueBoy was supposed to be a wardialer and the name was based on BlueBoxing, which I read about in an article on Kevin Mitnick in PC Magazine. → Read More
Head’s up. SecureMac has discovered a new Trojan horse floating around that affects users of Mac OS X, versions 10.4 and 10.5. It’s “currently being distributed from a hacker website, where discussion has taken place on distributing the Trojan horse through iChat and Limewire.” Here’s more… “The Trojan horse runs hidden on the system, and allows a malicious user complete remote… → Read More
Hey, script kiddies, need to make your l33t logic bomb into a l33t3r worm? Try TrojanToWorm. This is basically a worm construction that allows you to deploy a payload that will launch itself at a preset time. It’s a fairly complex little piece of code that is probably easy to catch with a virus scanner, but knowing the average user will be oblivious to its existence and power expect it to… → Read More
Heads up. There’s another Skype-related virus on the loose. This one pretends to be something called "Skype Defender" and takes on the look and feel of your Skype login screen while trying to get your username and password from you. Most major virus definitions have been updated, so removal shouldn’t be too difficult. You can also search your computer for a file called… → Read More
Panda Software, makers of fine computer security and Internet threat protection applications, has released a look-back at computer viruses, spyware and malware that made opening e-mail and surfing porn adult education Web sites so much fun in 2006. So without further ado, here’s my cut-and-paste job from the release. – The most moralistic. This award goes to the spyware Zcodec which, among… → Read More
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