Antivirus update response times

December 21st, 2005

We know that for Windows systems especially antivirus is a must. Up to date antivirus is the MOST important though. So how do the different vendors do in responsiveness and quick antivirus definition updates…? The SecurityFix has an article on just that today. The comparison is courtesy of av-test.org.

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Spyaxe Spytrooper spysherriff et al removal

December 21st, 2005

There are so many “wolves in sheeps clothing” or maybe I should say wolves in sheepdogs clothing… Anyway, so many nasty malware’s that pose as protective utilities. Spyaxe, spytrooper, spy sherriff, etc. There is a tool that is specialized towards removing these. Smitrem which is short for smitfraud removal. (After the viral name of one of the first of this class of rogue.)

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Wow serious VMWare vulnerability HOST system infection

December 21st, 2005

A flaw in vmware could allow malicious code to be run on the host machine according to Sunbeltblog and citing VMWare’s knowledge base. This is pretty big since this is something that’s not considered as a threat. (Many people use vmware and other virtual machines for malware/virus/spyware investigations because they’re supposed to be isolated from the host machine.)

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The Santa Worm

December 21st, 2005

More coverage is being given to the instant messaging worm that poses as a come on for a Santa Claus related site today. The only thing I think that I left out in last nights post was the name of the bug… IM.GiftCom.All On visiting the advertised site a rootkit is installed on the visiting machine.

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Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 9 – Know your network

December 21st, 2005

Once more into the breech… Ok you’ve taken account of the software and services on your pc. The next thing we need to talk about is knowing your network. Do you have any wireless access points? Not sure? Print servers? How many pcs? Are any of them portables? Public access? Are all of them secured?

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Shortwave Listening – Noise

December 21st, 2005

We don’t live in a quiet world, cars, equipment, alarms, fans, tv’s radios, etc. etc. etc. We have a very noisy Radio Frequency world as well. All sorts of electronic devices can add to the cacophony that is natural RF noise. In my shortwave listening I’ve “crusaded” against RF noise in the house where at all possible and had pretty good results. I mentioned in an earlier post about a couple of “random wire” antennas I’d setup and the one wrapped around the house picked up quite a bit of noise.

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Disinfecting a PC… part 8

December 21st, 2005

All right, now it’s time to give ad-aware a spin. I like being able to use several spyware scanners to get full coverage and cleaning. Ad-aware and spybot s&d are usually my first two choices. Realize that I’ve already taken a pass at this machine with AVG, BHODemon (for the browser helper objects) and Spybot S&D. Ad-aware finds a total of 700+ items.

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The 2nd journey begins… Mandriva 2006 upgrade 2 – Part 8

December 21st, 2005

Ok – tv card – no name brand is now working… it was a bttv compatible card but it’s always been “strange” for lack of a better word. NOTHING under linux has seemed to correctly detect it. Sometimes I have seen it given the following settings… bttv card=72 tuner=2, but it’s “close” not working. With those settings I get the channels showing up “in the wrong places” black and white (as if it’s tuning the wrong frequencies – which it likely is.)

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Lawsuit against 180solutions, eXact, Direct Revenue

December 20th, 2005

Things are going to be interesting. A lawsuit has been filed against the three listed above, everyone’s favorites…. 180solutions, Direct Revenue, and eXact Advertising. This is coming from the Sunbelt Blog who received a tip. The suit has been filed in California, the defendants want to move the suit to Federal Court.

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Qemu v. 0.8.0

December 20th, 2005

I just happened across The Qemu site and found that qemu v. 0.8.0 has been released *(yesterday). I haven’t had a chance to download and try myself, but it looks like the open source virtualization software has had quite a few improvements. Among the most interesting I see are initial USB support and virtual networking between qemu sessions.

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