Items tagged with Viruses
You know malware is a steadily growing problem, but if you aren’t tuned into the cyber security industry, you might not know just how fast the threat is exploding. Hackers are taking computers hostage, stealing credit card data at ever-increasing rates, and spammers are winning the email war. McAfee released a new report that documents trending malware problems and shines a light on Deep Web, the underbelly of the Internet. The browser remains a top entry point for cyber attackers. Image credit: McAfee It’s been a banner year for malware. Rootkits are a major problem, as are the autorun viruses that sit on USB drives, waiting for someone to plug the drive into a new PC. As McAfee...
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A new report by network security provider Kindsight suggests that 13 percent of all home networks in North America are infected with malware, which is slightly less than the infection rate of the previous quarter (14 percent). That works out to one in seven home networks. In addition, some 6.5 percent of broadband customers were found to have been infected with high-level threats such as bots, rootkits, and banking Trojans. Botnets are particularly bothersome, with ZeroAccess being recognized as the most active botnet in the third quarter of 2012. According to Kindsight, around 2.2 million users worldwide are infected with the ZeroAccess botnet, with 685,000 of them in the U.S. alone. Two different...
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TinyURL is a popular URL shortening service which is frequently used to reduce the length of a URL to something more manageable. Security firm Trend Micro has warned that TinyURL phishing, first reported in February, is becoming more popular and spreading across different languages. An example of tinyURL use would be perhaps a Mapquest link to the San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park, which can be shortened to https://tinyurl.com/aaqgln instead of https://www.mapquest.com/maps?address=1199+9th+Avenue+San+Francisco%2C+Ca+94122. In a phishing scenario, this makes it difficult to mouse over a link to see exactly where it's going. It's also being used in instant messages from your "friends"...
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What's new is old again, it seems. Security researchers are warning consumers to be cautious about using items like freebie flash drives that are given out as souvenirs at trade shows and similar events. There are recent reports of malware being loaded onto removable storage devices like USB flash drives, and even digital picture frames.In mid-December, Kaspersky Lab senior virus analyst Aleks Gostev penned a blog post describing his experience with an infectious Compact Flash card for his digital camera. "We've already written more than once about viruses and worms which spread via removable storage media by launching automatically from autorun.inf," he said. "A number of users have also...
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Rich Skrenta now has the dubious distinction of being recognized as the first person to write a self-replicating boot-sector virus.It'd be easy to criticise Mr Skrenta for his choice, but keep in mind that he was a high school student at the time, and will never really be able to complain when somebody infects his PC and swipes his eBay account information.So how does he feel about his place in computer history? We'll let the man answer that for himself: "It was some dumb little practical joke," Skrenta, now 40, said in an interview. "I guess if you had to pick between being known for this and not being known for anything, I'd rather be known for this. But it's an odd placeholder for (all...
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According to an article from CNN, new strains of the RINBOT and DELBOT virus have been uncovered by technology experts. These nasty viruses make it possible to hijack entire networks and are generally targeted towards businesses. The most insidious discovery about the new strains of RINBOT and DELBOT is that both can now target vulnerabilities in commonly used anti-virus programs as well as Microsoft's basic anti-viral software. Technology experts are warning about new strains of the insidious RINBOT computer virus that could potentially hijack network systems of businesses worldwide. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant with Boston-based IT security firm Sophos, said...
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This one definitely borders on the freaky side for sure. Viruses used to build electronic structures? Hello? Maybe we can all just skip the flu shots this year and head on over to MIT for a crash course in electrophysics? In some sort of sick and twisted way, that runny nose you're fending off could possibly power your iPod... "By manipulating a few genes inside these viruses, the team was able to coax the organisms to grow and self-assemble into a functional electronic device. The goal of the work, led by MIT Professors Angela Belcher, Paula Hammond and Yet-Ming Chiang, is to create batteries that cram as much electrical energy into as small or lightweight a package as possible....
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