News has broke in the last few days of an alarming bug within the Windows XP support system. Apparently 10000 machines have so far been attacked leaving a variety of trojans, spam tools and viruses on compromised machines.
Read more at the BBC News website or visit Microsoft for an automatic tool to disable the vulnerable part of the XP help and support center.
Read more →Google has recently warned about the dangers of some of the anti-virus software out there that may actually load malicious codes onto your personal computer. This is a growing threat and it is estimated that around 15% of the anti-virus software out there could possibly malicious. This is a study that was conducted by Google over a 13 month period.
Many of the scams that are out there convince people that there is a danger on their computer and then they automatically download the prescribed remedy which may actually contain spyware. You may want to be suspicious of any of the anti-virus programs out there that want you to download a free trial. A popup is often used to entice the reader to perform a free computer search and then the malicious spyware is already there whether you purchase anything or not.
People should become more familiar with the anti-virus software that they are currently using. Your current anti-virus should not allow any of virus to infiltrate your computer and if you are prompted by another company, it could simply be a hoax. You may also be prompted to clean up your computer and this is another ploy that is used to get spyware onto your computer.
You should always know what you are downloading and if you are not aware, you should stay completely away from these ploys. You may be thinking that you are doing something to help your computer that may actually hurt your computer and this is why you have to be overly diligent about the security of your computer.
More: BBC News
Read more →The Storm Worm is back and while many people think that this worm was nearly wiped out about two years ago, it is in fact back and researchers are looking for the code to combat this troublesome spamming botnet.
The Strom Worm is a new botnet using the original Storm Worm code. Researchers are not sure if the same botnet gang is responsible for the new worm, but it is suspected they may have a part in this. The last storm worm was a P2P infection, but this new worm seems to be HTTP based and this is one of the differences. There are other similarities in this worm and more research needs to be done to confirm more of a link.
The new Storm Worm appears to be a bundle that also includes a Trojan downloader and even fake anti virus software. Fake anti-virus software is something that has become very troubling recently and this is something that people need to be aware of in order to protect their computer.
A spam email campaign is also being launched and it if often disguised with products aimed at male potency, pharmacies, dating, and other forms that many people may use in a moments notice and can have consequences. The user needs to be aware of this in order to combat this worm and prevent their computer from becoming infected. This botnet is sending out pretty normal spam and this is different from last time when the holiday times were targeted.
More: BBC News
Read more →Engate Technology Corporation, leaders in advanced reputation network profiling technology and proactive botnet, phish, virus and email security solutions, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has approved the issuance of two new patents which cover methods for monitoring the SMTP/TCP/IP conversation between a sending message transfer agent and a receiving message transfer agent to determine the legitimacy of a message.
The two additional patents strengthen Engate’s intellectual property portfolio and provide the company with ownership of key innovations that address critical email security needs of enterprises, service providers and technology OEMs.
The two issued U.S. patents build on Engate’s unique network profiling connection management technology that preemptively identifies and stops email-borne botnets, phish, viruses, spam and malicious payloads at the protocol level before the message is transmitted, saving IT resources and worker productivity.
The technology was developed and patented by the following Engate co-founders: Rich White, Dr. Alan Huang and Dr. Haw-Minn Lu. Altogether, these three inventors are responsible for over 30 patents.
“Engate is leading the way in technology innovation by providing enterprises, service providers and OEM partners with a powerful reputation network profiling technology that preemptively stops email-borne botnets, phish, spam and viruses with 99% accuracy – completely at the edge.” said Rich White, chief technology officer at Engate Technology.
“Engate delivers incremental value to OEM partners by delivering an additional layer of security with its patented reputation network profiling, source verification, and anti-forgery techniques. Our patented approach identifies and blocks email-borne botnet attacks at the connection level, before they have a chance to compromise IT resources, invade privacy, degrade network performance, and waste user productivity.”
Next Generation Reputation Network Profiling Technology for OEM Partners
With more than seven years of operational experience collecting and analyzing data on global networks, Engate‘s reputation network profiling technology empowers strategic OEM partners to take advantage of the reputation of over 400 million ’good and bad‘ IP‘s in Engate‘s 18,000 rule database – known as GlobalRules™.
By profiling entire networks beyond just infected hosts, Engate has built a repository of intelligence on known as well as unknown hosts that may become infected in the future. This unique intelligence on unknown threats is a critical component to enhance an OEM partner‘s security portfolio today — as well as in the future – particularly as unknown threats continue to rise due to the growth of botnets.
Engate delivers incremental value to secure email and web gateway, unified threat management, intrusion prevention, firewall, and router partners in the following ways:
(1) Enhance 3rd party threat scoring systems with an extra layer of threat intelligence proven to achieve an additional 10-15% unique catches on top of existing content scanning, Real-time Blacklists (RBL) and reputation technologies.
(2) Improve connection-level security and the efficiency of 3rd party email security filters by radically reducing the large volume of unwanted traffic from reaching the gateway.
(3) Augment multi-layer security strategy with proactive protection from known and unknown threats. Engate’s unique network profiling functionality gives OEM partners preemptive defense against botnet-based attacks, phish, spam, viruses and blended web/email threats.
For more information, contact Engate at info@engate.com,
or visit the company’s website at www.engate.com.
India has pushed Korea into second place and taken over the mantle of the world’s largest producer of internet viruses, according to analysis of internet threats in April by managed security company Network Box. India now accounts for just under 10 (9.9) per cent of the world’s viruses, ahead of Korea at 8.24 per cent and the US at 6.7 per cent.
India is also becoming a more dominant force in spam production and intrusions: 7.40 per cent of the world’s spam now originates from India; and the country is responsible for 8.6 per cent of intrusions. This is behind the US, which still produces more spam than any other country (11.91 per cent).
It was revealed earlier in the month that computer networks in India were compromised by Chinese hackers using social networking sites to compromise computers in India, and also attack the India High Commission in the UK.
Simon Heron, Internet Security Analyst for Network Box says: “It’s important to remember that malware production is not a static industry. All that is needed is a computer with a connection to the internet and in no time vulnerable computers are compromised, recruited to a botnet and become part of a malware factory. These problems are not confined by borders. Cyber crime is a global problem which nations need to work together to tackle, or continue to fall victim to attacks.”
For more information on security issues, visit Network Box, see Simon Heron’s blog; or follow him on Twitter.
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