Hide your Bitcoins from Skype!
Another day, another threat to your computer. Kaspersky Labs is reporting that your faithful communication app may in fact be looking to steal your virtual money right out of your virtual pocket. The attack is underway in many locations around the world, and this is not the first malware to target Skype, just the latest and potentially most costly for users.
Kaspersky's Dmitry Bestuzhev reports that the latest curse on Skype "turns the infected machine to a slave of the bitcoin generator". The attack affects users in Russia, Poland, Costa Rica, Spain, Germany, Ukraine, Italy and is spreading to other locations, but the initial dropper is downloaded from a server located in India and the malware connects to its C2 server located in Germany.
Microsoft releases Advance Security Bulletin for April
Patch Tuesday is almost upon us yet again. As is its custom, Microsoft has released a monthly Advance Security Bulletin to let customers know what to expect next week. There are nine bulletins headed our way on April 9, with two of them being considered critical.
Per standard procedures, Microsoft does not release details of the patches until the updates are actually live. This is done in an effort to prevent the bad guys from knowing the vulnerabilities and attempting to take advantage of them between now and the update release. There is, however, nothing to protect those users who fail to install Windows updates in a timely fashion.
There's a thriving malware market, and you're the commodity
If you listen to security companies then you may come to believe that the Internet is one big dark alley. Of course the industry has a vested interest in having you believe that you are in more or less perpetual danger. Now Dr. Web, the antivirus company, has released its monthly threat report, and the danger is almost as bad as the industry wants you to think.
The most "popular" threat during the month of March was Trojan.hosts programs: "Hosts file containing DNS server IP addresses has been compromised 186,496 times, which constitutes over 10 percent of the detected threat total". The threat is commonly spread through malicious or compromised web sites. In early 2013 the files were being detected at a rate of over 9,500 infections per day.
Choose the right password manager to protect your accounts
Here’s the contradiction: you need secure, unique and hard-to-remember passwords to protect your online (and offline) accounts from being hacked. However, remembering those secure, unique and hard-to-remember passwords is another matter entirely. Thankfully there is a solution, and it’s called a password manager.
There are dozens of password managers to choose from, but in this guide we’ll showcase four of the better ones, ensuring that you set safe, secure passwords without having to worry about remembering them.
What should you do when two-step authentication is not available for your Apple ID?
When Apple introduced two-step authentication for Apple ID my first thought was "Finally, the fruit company takes security seriously". But, as I've come to learn, that's not entirely accurate for everyone as the new feature is only available for users living in Australia, Ireland, New Zeeland, United Kingdom and United States. What if you're living in Canada or Germany? Well, tough luck, you can't use it. But what can you do?
Wired's Mat Honan is probably the best known Apple user to have fallen prey to Apple ID account hacks. Honan tells an alarming story, about habit and comfort (dare I say oversight) leading to having one's virtual identity shred into pieces. But two-step authentication cannot be forcefully enabled, so what can you do while waiting for Apple to support your region and mobile operator? You can still take some precautions that will secure your Apple ID account.
Avast! Internet Security 8 review
Avast! 8 is the latest generation of avast!’s security range, and as usual it’s available in several different packages, from the basic avast! Free 8 to the do-everything Premier build.
If you just want solid, standard all-round protection, though, avast! Internet Security 8 could be the best option. It takes all the core security suite basics -- antivirus, browsing protection, firewall, spam filter -- and extends them further with some useful new tools, making for what seems to be an appealing mix.
New Trojan can hack you in a Flash
Are you sitting down? I know this will come as a shock, and I want to prepare you. Adobe Flash is the source of a new attack against PCs. Honestly, in this case it really is not Adobe's fault (unlike some other past cases), but the software is still the vehicle used in this drive-by. Microsoft reports that Trojan:Win32/Preflayer is in the wild and changes the home page for Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Yandex.
"These sites appear to be a type of search engine, but there are pop-up advertisements displayed on the pages, and there was an instance where I was redirected to a different page not of my choosing", Jonathan San Jose, Microsoft antivirus researcher, says.
DDoS attackers aren't knockin' on your door, they're breaking it down
What would the Thursday before Easter be without a good scare to keep network administrators awake at night. Perhaps IDC just mixed up the candy holidays thinking it's Halloween. Whatever, the analyst firm warns of a troubling increase in enterprise distributed denial of service attacks and promises more are coming to you.
Of course, the real motivation here is to scare businesses into exploring DDoS-protective solutions. IDC forecasts 18.2 percent growth rate in DDoS products and services through 2017, reaching $870 million. To be fair, there's little dispute about rising DDoS risks.
The Spamhaus Project just finished a rocky week of "large-scale DDoS attack". Another DDoS disrupted Wells Fargo's website this week.
When your laptop is lost or stolen, try IPFetcher
There are plenty of web services around which can try to help you find a stolen computer. Usually this involves equipping your system with a small agent of some kind, which then uses the system IP address, wifi connections and more to determine its current location, before communicating this to a central server.
If you’d like something more lightweight, though, there are a few simple free tools around which you might like to try. IPFetcher, for instance, won’t grab images from your webcam, and can’t lock down your system remotely. But it can retrieve a system’s IP address, then email or upload it to an FTP server, and that’s more than enough to be useful.
The Wirecutter and other sites may have infected your PC
The Wirecutter, a popular gadget site run by former Gizmodo head Brian Lam, was under attack on March 19 and 20 from a source that should have been trusted. The advertising agency that handles that site and many others like The Awl, The Hairpin, The Splitsider and more, came under attack thanks to an exploited flaw in the code.
The Wirecutter reports that "the cause was an exploit on an OpenX advertising server run by the guys who handle ads for The Wirecutter". The attack reportedly lasted for 10 hours and allowed for the insertion of malicious code onto an advertising server that could be inserted into the ads displayed on The Awl network.
Have you noticed more ads on your Mac?
If you are on a Mac and using either the Apple-supplied Safari browser, or one of the popular alternatives like Firefox or Chrome, then you may have begun noticing some unexpected ads in the browser lately. Hopefully not, because it spells bad news for you, and that news is Trojan.yontoo.1.
Security firm Doctor Web is credited with the discovery of this latest attack on the Apple ecosystem. Like many Trojans though, it requires the user to make mistakes in order to get a foothold on the system. In fact, the cardinal mistake, clicking on a pop-up plugin message, is the culprit.
Metascan Client scans for viruses from the cloud, but doesn't remove them
OPSWAT has announced the availability of Metascan Client, a lightweight on-demand virus scanner.
The program is extremely basic -- there’s no real-time protection or scheduled scanning, and it can’t remove whatever it finds -- but could still be useful as a backup to your regular antivirus tool.
Verizon details new update for Motorola Droid Razr HD and Maxx
US mobile operator Verizon has announced a new software update for the Motorola Droid Razr HD and Droid Razr Maxx HD. Bearing the "9.16.6.XT926.Verizon.en.US" moniker, it introduces a number of bug fixes and enhancements for the two Verizon-branded handsets.
According to the big red, the "9.16.6.XT926.Verizon.en.US" update comes in at 96MB and sports Google Security Patches for increased security, a data roaming fix, improved Wi-Fi connectivity as well as the detection for connection/disconnection with USB. When users select home screen icons, wallpaper options are also displayed.
Your security problem isn't Microsoft, it's everyone else
I suppose we sort of already knew this. Ever since Microsoft turned on the firewall by default back in XP SP1, Windows is safer to use and improves with each new version. Perfect? Far from it, but the imperfections are more about what you add than what Microsoft provides. Secunia reports that the vast majority of problems experienced by Windows users these days are caused by third-party software.
In a new report Secunia tells us: "In 2012, 86 percent of the vulnerabilities affecting the Top-50 programs in the representative portfolio, infected third-party programs. This means that only 14 percent of vulnerabilities present in the Top-50 programs on the computers of the PSI users stem from Operating Systems and Microsoft programs. The 86 percent is a substantial increase from the previous year -- 2011 -- when vulnerabilities in third-party software represented 78 percent". The number of third-party vulnerabilities is up from 57 percent six years ago.
'NotCompatible' Android malware now being spread through spam
Security firm Lookout reports that it has a seen a staggering increase in the number of NotCompatible detections this week. While not a new threat (it first appeared last May), the remote proxy malware has moved on from infecting Android devices through hacked websites and is now spreading via email spam.
Once installed, NotCompatible turns the infected phone into a proxy which is used to commit online fraud, such as through the purchase of concert tickets.
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