Tag archive: spyware

Late Monday, cybersecurity firm Dasient announced that it has been acquired by Twitter, and will be part of its “revenue engineering” team. Dasient specializes in online malware detection. In 2010, the company released the industry's first “anti-malvertising” services, which scans online advertising networks to find malicious ads. The addition of Dasient comes as Twitter gears up to roll out new types of… Read More

A new variant in the long-standing Sykipot malware family appears to have a new trick up its sleeve. According to AlienVault, instead of just launching spear-phishing email messages, the new Sykipot variant now appears to be targeting credentials of the PC/SC x509 smart cards used by the U.S. Department of Defense and a wide range of corporations and enterprises, including defense contractors. The Sykipot malware family has been around since… Read More

While the official launch of Firefox 8 is scheduled for November 8, Mozilla has made the release build of Firefox 8 available for download at day early on the Mozilla FTP server. For users that would prefer to wait until tomorrow, the final build of Firefox 8 will be available on the front end of the official Mozilla site. The browser also alerts users to any available update as well. The release of Firefox 8 comes approximately six weeks after… Read More

A 20-year-old computer technician working as a Mac repairman was arrested by police in southern California on Wednesday for allegedly installing spyware on laptops that he fixed, thereby enabling him to gain control of the computer's webcam and remotely take photos of women in various states of undress. According to a report in the LA Times, Trevor Harwell worked for a computer company called Rezitech Ltd and helped people in Los Angeles… Read More

Samsung shot down claims Thursday that it installs keylogger software on its laptops, according to an official statement by the company. The denial follows an “internal investigation” launched by Samsung on Wednesday after the publication of a report that some of its laptops came loaded with a keylogger. In an article posted to Network World, security consultant Mohammed Hassan claimed to have found the StarLogger spyware installed… Read More

It’s understandable: You put it off as long as possible, dread it all year, and when it’s finally time to confront it, you just want to get it over with as soon as possible. Taxes are the worst, but that doesn’t mean you can’t file them. Sure, you could pay for a personal accountant that will charge you an arm and a leg for your time, or shell out for this year’s edition of tax software – or, you could do them online. The benefits? You save… Read More

If you’re looking for protection but don’t want to shell out money for peace of mind than you’ve come to the right place. We’ve rounded up all the best free spyware blockers and removers so you can surf the web without worries. Ad-Aware Free Internet Security Lavosoft’s Ad-Aware is one of the most trusted spyware tools and has been a benchmark in the industry for years. The free version provides real-time anti-malware protection, advanced… Read More

Whenever an Apple iOS device, whether it’s an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, connects to a Wi-Fi network, it makes a request to an Apple URL (http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html). The URL looks harmless, and no personal identifying information is sent to this site. It’s not exactly a privacy issue, but it opens the door for potentially scary scenarios. We have a name for software that calls the mothership without our being aware of it:… Read More

Whether you’re looking to protect a brand new PC, or remove any annoying virus that has managed to sneak on to your laptop, anti-virus software is essential. But buying anti-virus software can get expensive, especially after you start racking up the yearly subscription charges you’ll need to stay up to date. Fortunately, a handful of companies offer very effective free anti-virus solutions – many even outstrip competing commercial packages in… Read More

At one time or another, we’ve all experienced the pop-up saying we have a problem with our computer and offering a download as a solution, so-called “scareware.” And many of us have ignored them. But many haven’t, and found they’ve downloaded – at a cost – a Microsoft program, or even found themselves infected by spyware. Microsoft isn’t happy at being associated with all this, and the… Read More

In a very bizarre story, the German government has announced plans to send e-mails containing spyware to suspected terrorists, which will allow agents to search the hard drives of the suspects.   The e-mail (which would evidently purport to come from various official bodies) will contain a Trojan that installs itself on the suspect’s computer. The German Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, has stated that the spyware would be… Read More

Computer software maker Secure Computer of White Plains, New York, which was accused of marketing its Spyware Cleaner product via deceptive spam and pop-up scans, has agreed to settle with the Washington State attorney general for $750,000 in legal fees, $2000 in damages, and $75,000 in reimbursements to Washington State customers who purchased Spyware Cleaner. The company was accused of violating Washington State's 2005 Computer… Read More

A study conducted at the University of Washington, “A Crawler-based Study of Spyware on the Web” (PDF) crawled more than 18 million Web pages across eight broad categories looking for spyware, once in May 2005 and again in October 2005. In May, it found that 13.4 percent of the 21,200 executable files it found bore spyware, and 3.4 percent of the domains it accessed contained “drive-by download” attacks which… Read More

“The House voted Monday to establish new penalties for purveyors of Internet “spyware” that disables users' computers and secretly monitors their activities. By overwhelming majorities, the House passed two bills that stiffen jail sentences and establish multimillion-dollar fines for those who use secret surveillance programs to steal credit-card numbers, sell software or commit other crimes. The bills prohibit a… Read More

“Confusing “geek speak” used by experts and media included “phishing”, “rogue dialler”, “Trojan” and “spyware”. Eighty-four percent did not know that phishing describes faked e-mail scams. The most common phishing scam is one used to con people into handing over bank account details online. A quarter said they knew what “spyware” was, although… Read More