By now most savvy Internet users have seen popups and other advertising warning that their computer is infected with a worm or a virus, but for a small fee and a quick download, that problem can be cleared right up! Unsurprisingly, these “scareware” offers are scams, hoping to dupe unwitting users into turning over money for what’s (at best) useless software. At worst, users may be literally paying to install software that compromises the security of their computer or even lets remote attackers take over the machine.
Tag Archive: malware
More Mac Malware Spotted
So you thought that Mac was safe from malware? It’s definitely time to think again. There might be nothing like the amount of malware there is for PCs, but the numbers are growing.
The latest is known as Puper, a Trojan that disguises itself as a video program for the fictional MacCinema system on OS X.
Researchers at McAfee Avert Labs have determined that the malware attack appears as a disk image, which then launches an installer application for the non-existent software. Once installed, the user’s computer is infected with a malicious script file called AdobeFlash.
Report: Smartphones Need Malware Protection
A new report from Unstrung’s paid research service Unstrung Insider finds that smartphones need stronger malware protection as companies and consumers increasingly rely on the devices to manage their businesses and everyday lives. And the report expects mobile carriers will begin offering mobile malware protection services during the next year as a way to differentiate themselves from the competition.
“Mobile malware security vendors are preparing for wide-scale attacks by hackers—attacks that eventually will be as headline grabbing as those that hit email systems,” said Unstring analyst and the report’s author Denise Culver, in a statement. “Their hope is that smartphone manufacturers, carriers, and enterprises—not to mention smartphone users—will not wait until the threats have reached that level before securing their mobile systems.”
U.S. Still Biggest Source of Malware
Computer security firm Sophos has released its Security Threat Report 2009 (PDF), summarizing the battle against malware and ticking off the top threats against computers, operating systems, Web sites, and consumers out there in the wild. And, despite massive increases in spam and malware that originate internationally, the United States still claims the top spot for hosting malware and sending spam. According to Sophos, some 37 percent of malware is hosted in the United States,. China (including Hong Kong) came in second at 27.7 percent and Russia ran a distant third at 9.1 percent.
Major Internet Explorer Security Alert
It was first publicized last week, but now Microsoft believes that an unpatched security hole that affects all versions of Internet Explorer represents a greater danger than was originally believed.
The company is reportedly working on an emergency patch, but is recommending setting the internet zone security setting to ‘high’ and disabling Ole32db.dll in access control lists (ACL) to offer the best defense against attack.
In the Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog, the company wrote:
Microsoft Adds Malware Detector To Web Tool
Malware on websites has become a massively growing concern in the last couple of years. Hackers can place it there without site owners knowing and visitors can become infected in so-called ‘drive-bys.’
Now Microsoft is doing something to help in a new feature on its Crawl Tool, which spiders sites for search engine rankings. It now flags all pages containing malware or linking to other pages containing malware, puts a malware warning on the ranking, and disables links to the page from the search engine.
New Mac OS X Malware Found
The myth that the Mac computer isn’t subject to malware is slowly being broken down, and the emergence of two new pieces of malware last week is simply pointing more and more to the fact that we’re all vulnerable.
Mac security company Intego discovered the ‘OSX.RSPlug.D’ Tojan, which offers a variant on the old RSPlug Trojan that emerged in October last year, but with a new installer.
The Trojan is often found on porn sites, where it claims to be a codec needed to download files. Instead it installs a DNS Changer, after which the user’s Internet traffic is redirected through a malicious DNS server that presents phishing pages or ads, according to ZDNet.
Obama Malware Follows Election
Malware attackers will latch onto anything to push their evil, but the election of Democrat Barack Obama on Tuesday has been a godsend to them.
There has been a wave of Obama spam, with links to videos of his victory speech. Of course, those links lead to sites where the supposed Adobe Flash plug-in is actually is malware executable file. In other instances those reading the spam are asked to download a .exe file – which is a Trojan. The headlines used by the spammers include ‘Obama’s Win Reshapes the Race’ and ‘Obama Wouldn’t Be First Black President,’ according to Vnunet.
Possible Mac Malware
Malware for Macs is rare, if not completely unknown. But security company Sunbelt Software claims to have discovered what might be a rogue security application for the Mac that could prove to be malware, according to Vnunet.
The company has found a site selling a product called MacGuard that says it offers antivirus and spyware protection as well as blocking phishing attempts and removing adware for the OS X.
According to Sunbelt Security, the company he believes to be behind the MacGuard site has also distributed XP Antivirus and Antivirus XP 2008, both of which were rogue applications that installed themselves without consent via exploits then used fake alerts in order to scare users into paying for non-existent security protection.
40 Pct. Fake Profiles On Facebook?
Security firm Cloudmark has said that between 20-40% of new profiles on Facebook could be fake, created by spammers to push malware.
Neil Cook, European head of technology services at Cloudmark, told Vnunet:
“Social networks are very collaborative so it’s great for spammers and virus writers to attack. As soon as social networking took off, so did the attacks.”
Spammers would post infected links on the walls of real users, hoping they’ll click on them, or ask to be added as friends. A query message would redirect users to a malware site.
