Microsoft to bundle anti-spyware with vista

Monday, November 7th, 2005

Well it shouldn’t come as a big surprise, but Microsoft is expected to bundle their anti-spyware product (which will be renamed windows defender) with Vista when the next version of the OS ships. It’s probably not a big surprise given the headaches that people have with spyware and the potential for a subscription update service. […]

The end of antivirus definition updates?

Thursday, August 25th, 2005

Well, frankly, there has been talk of the end of definition based antivirus scanning for years. You see the achilles heel of any AV scanner is that it has to have signatures of what known viruses look like, so there will always be a reflex window, where there’s a new unknown virus that people are […]

Like flypaper for malware..

Wednesday, August 24th, 2005

The diary over at the SANS Institute mentioned an interesting program today. Nepenthes is a program that can simulate a vulnerability so that it can collect samples of malware trying to exploit that vulnerability.    Send article as PDF   

US-CERT talks spyware

Monday, August 22nd, 2005

US-CERT is addressing the issue of spyware. According to Spyware Confidential, they’ve released a document (pdf) on the matter, including techniques to guard against spyware. Education and awareness are two elements that are highly emphasized.    Send article as PDF   

Another Massive ID theft ring

Saturday, August 20th, 2005

It looks like Sunbelt has found ANOTHER massive Identity theft ring. They suspect it’s a trojan from the Dumaru family that is contentedly logging the infromation and promise more details.    Send article as PDF   

Esbot and Zotob updates….

Wednesday, August 17th, 2005

Wednesday afternoon and Esbot is up to revision .B, Zotob is up to G according to Sarc (Symantec antivirus research). They have appropriate removal tools and details on affected systems there. Meanwhile the Sans institute (incidents.org) has a rundown of the latest in todays handlers diary.    Send article as PDF   

Microsoft’s quick response to network worms….

Wednesday, August 17th, 2005

This is an ironic title because frankly, Microsoft has seemed to be slow in solutions for the recent zotob worm. Of course, they announced the vulnerability and accompanying update to solve the issue to begin with, but after the virus started propagating what do we see from Microsoft? They have a page titled What you […]

Computer security software nets $2.6 Billion over last two years.

Monday, August 15th, 2005

SecurityFix is talking about the computer security industry. Further, computer users spend $9 billion a year on computers repairs from spyware and antivirus. This reminds me of a recent story of a man that threw out a perfectly good machine because it was infested with spyware. For starters, I do computer repair. I charge $40/ […]

Zotob details

Monday, August 15th, 2005

Here are some details on the zotob worm (s) culled from several sources…. It copies itself to the Windows system folder as BOTZOR.EXE, it modifies the hosts file to frustrate attempts to access antivirus sites. The .b variant copies itself as csm.exe in the Windows System folder. Both variants create a Mutex so that only […]

Web smarts is the main defence against spyware

Tuesday, August 9th, 2005

Over at the Security Fix, Brian Krebs is talking about spyware and the fact that keeping up-to-date on patches, and running current antivirus with current definitions is not enough to protect your machine from spyware. He sums it up by saying common sense is the best defence.    Send article as PDF   

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