Don't expect too much from Rootkit Remover
Bitdefender Labs has released Bitdefender Rootkit Remover, a free stand-alone tool for dealing with known rootkits.
The company report that Rootkit Remover can remove infections from a wide range of threats, including Mebroot, all TDL families (TDL/SST/Pihar), Mayachok, Mybios, Plite, XPaj, Whistler, Alipop, Cpd, Fengd, Fips, Guntior, MBR Locker, Mebratix, Niwa, Ponreb, Ramnit, Stoned, Yoddos, Yurn, Zegost and Necurs, amongst others.
Employees frequently steal (and use) confidential data when switching jobs
According to Symantec, businesses are increasingly at risk of insider IP theft, with staff moving, sharing and exposing sensitive data on a daily basis and, worse still, taking confidential information with them when they change employers.
A new survey conducted by The Ponemon Institute, and based on responses from 3,317 individuals in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Brazil, China and Korea, shows that half of employees admit to taking corporate data when they leave a job, with 40 percent saying they intend to use the data in their new position.
Microsoft says you don't care about online safety, 'despite multiple risks'
Do you really care about security on the interwebs? According to the latest Microsoft Computing Safety Index (MCSI), most of us don't. Of the 10,000+ PC, smartphone and tablet users surveyed, 55 percent experienced multiple online risks, but only 16 percent took proactive safety measures.
The numbers keep piling up. When it comes to theft of account information or passwords, 47 percent of surveyed users said they find it a reason for concern. However, just 33 percent of respondents are actively fighting online theft by using secure websites, and only 28 percent of surveyed users steer clear of using open Wi-Fi hotspots on mobile devices.
Keep your passwords safe from prying eyes with KeePass 2.21
Open-source password management tool KeePass 2.21 has been released. Version 2.21, also available as a standalone portable build, adds a number of new features, including a hex viewer mode, support for a user-defined group separator in the Generic CSV Importer and various tweaks, improvements and bug fixes.
KeePass is designed to act a single, central repository for a user’s sensitive data, from logons to credit card details. This information is encrypted with a single, master password, allowing the user to securely lock away their personal details when not required.
Lock down almost any PC with Deskman
If there’s an aspect of your PC which you don’t like then it can normally be changed very quickly: a right-click option here, maybe launch a Control Panel applet there, install a new program perhaps, and the system should soon be more suited to your needs.
But while this configurability is great on your own computer, it’s a real problem when you want a PC to be much more restrictive: a system which you’ll install in a school, say, or a business. What you’ll probably want to do then is set up some basic configuration, and make sure your users can’t do anything to change it -- and that’s where Deskman comes in.
avast! 8 beta is available -- get it NOW!
AVAST Software has released the first public beta of avast! 8 (or the first official one, anyway). Downloads are available for avast! Free Antivirus, avast! Pro Antivirus, avast! Premier Antivirus andavast! Internet Security.
The immediately obvious change is avast’s clean new GUI. The home page presents a simple front end to each product, dividing its functionality up into six tiles, but clicking one of the tabs at the top of the screen allows you to quickly drill down into the detail.
Twitter hacked -- approximately 250,000 accounts affected
If you've just received an email from Twitter warning that as a precautionary security measure the micro-blogging site has reset your Twitter account password, and inviting you to create a new one, you should take it seriously. Very seriously.
According to Twitter the service recently "detected an attack on our systems in which the attackers may have had access to limited user information -- specifically, your username, email address and an encrypted/salted version of your password (not the actual letters and numbers in your password)".
Kim Dotcom offers a $13,500 bounty to anyone who can break Mega’s encryption
Mega has come in for some criticism since it launched, with the likes of Ars Technica, among others, questioning exactly how secure Kim Dotcom’s new file storage and sharing service actually is. Cryptography researcher Steve Thomas even created a tool designed to reveal passwords stored in confirmation emails.
But despite all this, Mega has so far proven to be a sturdy ship. Although it has had a few (quickly plugged) leaky holes, which is to be expected considering it’s still very new, nothing’s come along so far to sink it. And Kim Dotcom is so sure Mega’s security is uncrackable, he’s prepared to put his money where his mouth is.
ScanNow for Universal Plug and Play warns if your network is vulnerable to the latest security flaws
Rapid7 -- the security company behind vulnerability scanner Metasploit -- has released details on three security flaws affecting some Universal Plug and Play implementations. And their research indicates that 40 to 50 million IPs are vulnerable to at least one of those vulnerabilities, which the company says is exposing users "to remote attacks that could result in the theft of sensitive information".
Could you be vulnerable? Fortunately Rapid7 has provided a free Windows-based tool, ScanNow for Universal Plug and Play, to help you find out.
RKill terminates malware processes
Blocking malware before it manages to infect your PC is relatively easy. Your antivirus package scans the file, email attachment or whatever it might be, recognises the threat, and deletes it before any damage can be done: simple.
Should the malware bypass your protection, though, and manage to install itself, then it’s a very different story. Now the threat may be able to hide from your security software, prevent you running particular programs, reaching certain sites -- and that can make removing it a very real challenge. Unless you’ve a copy of RKill on hand to help.
Microsoft joins the party, warns users against Java
Oracle has had no shortage of headaches recently, thanks to Java. The exploits have been running wild lately, making attempts to fix the problems resemble a game of whack-a-mole. In fact, the troubles even resulted in the United States Department of Homeland Security being forced to post a warning against using the platform.
In a post to the government website, the DHS warned that "by convincing a user to load a malicious Java applet or Java Network Launching Protocol (JNLP) file, an attacker could execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system with the privileges of the Java plug-in process".
Google invites you to hack Chrome OS
Google is moving forward with Chrome, both the web browser and the operating system, quickly and seems to be gaining traction. Sure, the browser is popular, but the OS struggled early on, but new notebooks, err...Chromebooks, have been getting a lot of attention, including TV ads in the United States.
However, the search giant has learned that security is pretty important to the end-user, and probably more so to those looking at these computers, because buyers probably tend to be more on the "techie" side. That is why Google has annually invited people to "hack" Chrome in an effort to find and fix flaws.
Mirage Anti-Bot 3.0 blocks access to websites infected with dangerous malware
PhrozenSoft has released Mirage Anti-Bot 3.0, a tiny tool which aims to prevent your PC from accessing sites infected by the Zeus, SpyEye and Palevo families of malware.
The core of the program remains very simple. It just downloads the excellent www.abuse.ch blocklist and updates your HOSTS file accordingly, immediately preventing you from accessing any of the included malicious domains.
Quttera URL Scanner bulks up VirusTotal
VirusTotal.com is perhaps best known for its free virus detection service, which allows you to upload almost any suspect file for a speedy verdict from all the main antivirus engines (and several of the lesser ones, too). The service can also vet URLs for presence of malware, though, and VirusTotal has just extended this capability even further with the inclusion of a URL scanner from Quttera.
What’s interesting about Quttera is it’s not just another signature matching tool. Instead it uses a wide range of heuristic techniques to detect JavaScript exploits, suspect HTML code, malicious PDF files and exploits concealed in other content.
Guess which country leads the world in botnets?
Botnets are frequently in the news, most recently with Red October. Many of us think, perhaps smugly, that these things are based in locations like China and Russia, but the truth is, while some of the computers themselves may be there, these massive, distributed networks are being controlled from a location much closer to home for many of us -- the United States.
Benjamin Cruz of McAfee reports that the United States not only leads the world in this category, but has more than double the number of Russia and China combined. In fact, the two nations we frequently blame for attacks fall into fourth and tenth place on the list that Cruz published. British Virgin Islands and the Netherlands trail the United States, respectively.
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