Google scans web traffic for nasties

Monday, May 12th, 2008

Google's new Web Security for Enterprise service enables companies in the US and Europe to safeguard their internet traffic with protection against viruses and spyware and malicious URLs. According to Google the system "powered by Postini, stops web-borne spyware and viruses before they infiltrate your network and compromise or disable ...

New type of rootkit hidden in hardware

Monday, May 12th, 2008

Security researchers have developed a new type of malicious rootkit software that hides itself in an obscure part of a computer's chip, undetected by today's anti-virus products. Called a System Management Mode (SMM) rootkit, the software runs in a protected part of a computer's memory that can be locked and rendered ...

Windows Vista More Vulnerable To Malware Than Windows 2000

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

Microsoft's Vista operating system is more susceptible to malware than Windows 2000, and though it's 37% more secure than Windows XP, it's still too vulnerable.That's the contention of security vendor PC Tools, which has a financial interest in the vulnerability of Microsoft's software. "Ironically, the new operating system has been hailed ...

Firefox Plugin Shipped With Malicious Code

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

Mozilla warned Wednesday that a malicious program inserted adware code into a Firefox plugin that has been downloaded thousands of times over the past three months. Because of a virus infection, the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 was polluted with adware, Mozilla security chief Window Snyder said in a blog ...

Who Killed My Hard Drive?

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

You've heard the threat before: A virus or Trojan could infect your PCs and wreck their hard drives. But how often does it really happen -- and how bad is the damage? A new university study suggests that hard-drive-killing attacks launched by hackers are actually pretty rare -- but when they ...

New Spam Attack Exploits Edunet Servers

Monday, May 5th, 2008

Researchers have discovered a new, complex spam attack that uses a sophisticated ruse to fool users into downloading malware. The exploit, which researchers at BitDefender call "a spam-sending scheme of Byzantine complexity," features spam messages that claim to contain links to videos. When users try to click and see the video, ...

Safest Way to Bank Online? Your Cell Phone

Monday, May 5th, 2008

So you want to bank safely online? Then ditch your computer and make the transaction via your cell phone instead. Using a mobile handset for this most sensitive online act might sound counterintuitive, given that phones are prone to being lost or stolen, but your cell phone might actually be safer ...

Malicious hardware may be next hacker tool

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

As if computer viruses and worms aren't enough of a nuisance, malicious hardware, which will be much more difficult to detect, could soon become a threat too. Today, computer viruses, which are programs downloaded either as an email attachment or when someone visits a website, are responsible for most computer attacks. ...

Two Factor Authentication is Dead

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

The fundamental problem with two factor (2FA) session authentication is that the approach is vulnerable to Man in the Middle and Man in the Browser attacks. 2FA requires that customers present not only a password (something they know) when they log into online banking, but also demonstrate that they possess ...

New versions of fgdump and pwdump released

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

The latest versions of fgdump and pwdump have been released by the foofus.net team. Looks like the most important change is that both tools support 64-bit targets. Here is the official announcement: "The foofus.net team is pleased to announce updates to both fgdump (2.0.0) and pwdump (1.7.1), which incorporate a number ...