Peaches

Researchers turn Conficker's own P2P protocol against itself Symantec, Ron Bowes join forces to detect infected PCs by chatting with worm over P2P April 22, 2009 Security researchers have updated a free tool that sniffs out the notorious Conficker worm on infected PCs by using the same peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol the malware relies on to communicate with its hacker masters. Symantec Corp.'s security intelligence analysis team has worked with Ron Bowes, a contributor to the Nmap scanner, to come up with a way to detect machines infected with Conficker.c and later variants. Conficker, which exp

Microsoft gears up for Windows 8 Mass file focus By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco Windows 7 might still not be officially complete. And Microsoft is laying people off. But the company's already gearing up to launch its next operating system: Windows 8. Early job postings indicate at least one focus for Windows 8 will be systems and data management. The company has advertised for developers and testers to deliver "major improvements" in Windows' File Server. Indications are Microsoft's looking to make management of files easier across wide area networks and the internet and to make WinFS capab

April 22, 2009 12:05 AM PDT Firefox 3.0.9 targets 12 security vulnerabilities by Steven Musil Mozilla released an update to Firefox 3 on Tuesday that patches 12 security vulnerabilities, four of which it rated as critical. Firefox 3.0.9, the Web browser's third update this year, fixes two critical vulnerabilities in the Firefox browser engine and two in its JavaScript engine, according to a security advisory posted Tuesday: Mozilla developers identified and fixed several stability bugs in the browser engine used in Firefox and other Mozilla-based products. Some of these crashes showed evid

April 21, 2009 2:42 PM PDT F-Secure says stop using Adobe Acrobat Reader by Elinor Mills With all the Internet attacks that exploit Adobe Acrobat Reader people should switch to using an alternative PDF reader, a security expert said at the RSA security conference on Tuesday. Of the targeted attacks so far this year, more than 47 percent of them exploit holes in Acrobat Reader while six vulnerabilities have been discovered that target the program, Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of security firm F-Secure, said in a briefing with journalists. Just last month, Adobe issued a fix for an

April 21, 2009 9:00 PM PDT Finjan finds botnet of 1.9 million infected computers by Elinor Mills SAN FRANCISCO--Security firm Finjan has uncovered what it says is one of the largest bot networks controlled by a single cybergang, with 1.9 million infected zombie computers. The botnet has been in use since February, is hosted in the Ukraine, and is controlled by a gang of six people who are instructing the Windows XP-based machines to copy files, record keystrokes, send spam, and take screenshots, Ophir Shalitin, Finjan marketing director, said in an interview on the eve of the RSA security co

Norman Releases Antimalware Gateway Norman Network Protection (NNP) Appliance version 3.6 provides real-time, front-end protection solution for LANs Apr 21, 2009 | 01:19 PM "Oslo, Norway 21 April, 2009 - Norman ASA announced today the release of Norman Network Protection (NNP) " Appliance version 3.6 — an antimalware gateway. NNP delivers proactive, real-time protection for today's corporate networks and eliminates threats without affecting workforce productivity. Norman Network Protection utilizes leading malware detection and analysis technology to provide a real-time, front-end protectio

A city boy, Kenny, moved to the country and bought a donkey from an old farmer for $100.00. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. The next day the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry son, but I have some bad news, the donkey died." Kenny replied, "Well then, just give me my money back." The farmer said, "Can't do that. I went and spent it already." Kenny said, "OK then, at least give me the donkey." The farmer asked, "What ya gonna do with him?" Kenny replied, "I'm going to raffle him off." The farmer said, "You can't raffle off a dead donkey!" Kenny said, "Sure I can. Wa

It all boils down to a matter of personal choice. The only safe computer is one that is not hooked up to the internet. In over 10 years of using Windows I have had 2 viruses and those were when I was totally new to computers and had no idea what a virus was let alone know I had to update, patch or whatever. I work on a corporate board and have an email list in excess of 200 emails - most on this list have no idea about computer security so it behooves me to be as secure as I possibly can ... I have yet to have infected any computer [touch wood!!] but on more than 2 occasions I have been s

20 April 2009, 16:53 Another BlackBerry PDF vulnerability Research In Motion have published an advisory saying they have identified another vulnerability in the PDF distiller of the BlackBerry Attachment service. This new vulnerability is in addition to previous issues with the PDF distiller service. According to US-CERT, the issue is related to VU196617, which involves the Xpdf and poppler applications and their handling of JBIG2 data. In the BlackBerry case, the vulnerability exposes the system that hosts the BlackBerry Attachment Service and can allow arbitrary code to be executed on that

AVG Launches Free Protection Against Online Threats Standalone AVG LinkScanner delivers real-time protection for Windows users, no matter what other security products they use Apr 20, 2009 | 08:49 PM Amsterdam, April 20, 2009 -- AVG Technologies, developers of the world's leading free anti-virus software, is today launching AVG LinkScanner as a free standalone product to protect users against random, invisible online threats. On any given day, some two million web pages are poisoned by hidden threats. And every day, 60 percent of those threats shut down or move to a different destination on

April 20, 2009 4:26 PM PDT LinkScanner stands alone once more by Seth Rosenblatt "LinkScanner is once again available as an independent plug-in for Windows-based Firefox and Internet Explorer, following more than a year spent as a feature of AVG Technologies' AVG security suite. Still available as part of AVG, users can now once again download LinkScanner independently of AVG's antivirus software, and for free. The new LinkScanner works much the same as the original one did. Once you've installed the EXE, AVG's "Search Shield" returns search results from both Google and Yahoo with flags nex

So for those in the Mac community who believe the Mac is invulnerable, there's this simple message: You're living in the past. Researchers: Macs are less secure than Windows PCs[/b] "For years, Apple fans have claimed that Macs are invulnerable to attack, while belittling Windows as being full of security holes. Now the tables are turned --- not only has a Trojan infected Macs and created a botnet, but several well-known researchers warn that Mac OS X is less secure than either Windows or Linux. In the last few days, there's been a great deal of publicity about the discovery of the world's fi

April 19, 2009 9:01 PM PDT Forget your password? Use your phone by Elinor Mills FireID was set to announce at RSA 2009 on Monday technology that allows people to access multiple Web sites on their mobile phone without having to remember all the passwords. The FireID universal personal authenticator app turns any phone that runs Java into a one-time password generator and generates the password directly on the phone instantly so there is no risk of it being intercepted and no waiting for an SMS like with other password-generator systems, said Jenny Dugmore, chief executive of FireID. The syst

20 April 2009, 11:05 Weaknesses in several virus scanners "The security specialist Thierry Zoller has made several reports on errors in virus scanners from BitDefender, avast, ESET and Fortinet. According to Zoller, all have problems in dealing with corrupt archive files, making it possible for infected files to be smuggled past the scanners. Zoller says this is a particular problem for gateways. BitDefender confirmed the error existed in many of its products and released a patch for it last week, which has been distributed over its automatic update system. ESET also acknowledged the error an

Are Hackers Working for the Mob? Siobhan Chapman, Computerworld UK Hackers stole more data last year than in the previous four years, according to new research. In its 2009 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), Verizon investigated 90 data breach cases that exposed a 285 million records, which is equivalent to nine records per second. This figure is far greater than the 230 million records recorded as breached in the five years combined from 2004 to 2008. The study looked only at breaches involving attacks that resulted in compromised records being used in a crime. Verizon Business found t

Enhanced CTorrent / dtorrent "btFiles::BuildFromMI()" Buffer Overflow Highly critical A vulnerability has been discovered in Enhanced CTorrent, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error within the function "btFiles::BuildFromMI()" in btfiles.cpp and can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow by e.g. tricking a user into opening a specially crafted torrent file. The vulnerability is confirmed in version 3.3.2. Other versions may also be affected. Secunia advisories - http://secunia.com/advisories/34

April 19, 2009 3:42 PM PDT SMS messages could be used to hijack a phone by Elinor Mills Be careful who you give your mobile phone number out to. An attacker with the right toolkits and skill could hijack your phone remotely just by sending SMS messages to it, according to mobile security firm Trust Digital. In what it calls a "Midnight Raid Attack" because it would be most effective when a victim is asleep, an attacker could send a text message to a phone that would automatically start up a Web browser and direct the phone to a malicious Web site, said Dan Dearing, vice president of marketin

Tech Pros Plan to Leapfrog Vista for Windows 7 Gregg Keizer, Computerworld Cautious business IT administrators are more willing to stay with the devil they know, Windows XP, than risk the devil they don't, even if the latter is the highly-touted Windows 7, a research company said Monday. According to Dimensional Research, which surveyed more than 1,100 IT professionals in March, 72% of those polled said that they are more concerned about the cost and overhead of migrating to Windows 7 than they are about continuing to supporting the eight-year-old Windows XP. Only 28% felt the opposite, that

Spyware Jumps in 2009 Carrie-Ann Skinner, PC Advisor Sunday, April 19, 2009 6:00 AM PDT Spyware increased by 10 percent in the first quarter of 2009, compared to the same period last year, says Panda Security. According to PandaLabs, the security vendor's malware detection and analysis centre, the number of Trojans released onto the web increased by 31.5 percent compared to Q1 2008, while there was 21 percent more adware than in the same period last year. PandaLabs also said that Trojans accounted for 73 percent of all new malware indentified during the first quarter. "We have seen a dramatic

Microsoft leaks Windows 7 RC delivery date It's coming May 5 for partners, before that for MSDN, TechNet subscribers By Gregg Keizer April 18, 2009 (Computerworld) " Microsoft will deliver a release candidate of Windows 7 in little more than two weeks, the company's Web site revealed Saturday. According to a page posted on Microsoft's partner program site, Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) may be available to paying subscribers to Microsoft's developer and IT services before May 5. Partners will be allowed to download the release candidate on that date, the first Tuesday of the month. "Partners

BlackBerry Products PDF Distiller Unspecified Vulnerabilities Highly critical "Some vulnerabilities have been reported in BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Professional Software, which can be exploited to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) and potentially compromise a vulnerable system. The vulnerabilities are caused due to unspecified errors within the PDF distiller component of the BlackBerry Attachment Service. These can be exploited to cause a memory corruption when a specially crafted PDF file is opened for viewing on a BlackBerry smartphone. Successful exploitation may allow exec

Five Steps to Ditching Malware Security scams abound, but here are some practical ways to clean up the mess. Michael Horowitz, Computerworld "Malware (malicious software) seems to be getting worse. No surprise, since there's big money in it as a recent article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out. Typical scams aim to scare unsophisticated users with phony warnings that their computer is infected with a virus. Conveniently, the warning is followed by prompts to install software to remove the virus. Victims pay for the phony antivirus software and end up infected to boot. The term for this

Hunt For Craigslist Killer Continues Police across the United States have investigated and cracked down on countless crimes that resulted from in-person meetings among those who begin communicating through the site. By K.C. Jones InformationWeek April 17, 2009 06:36 PM "Another Craigslist user has died during an encounter arranged through the site, and police believe the perpetrator may still be using the site to search for more victims. Boston police are investigating the slaying of Julissa Brisman, a 26-year-old from New York City, who had advertised massage services on Craigslist. Bri

iWork '09 Trojan horse turning Macs into zombies? The botnet stems from a Trojan horse embedded in a trial version of iWork '09 By Dan Moren "April 17, 2009 (Macworld) "Over the years, Mac users have been lucky enough that the word "zombie" only conjures up the shambling brain-craving hordes of the undead in movies like Shaun of the Dead. But Windows users have long been dealing with the menace of zombie botnets--networks of PCs corrupted by malware into vectors for malicious attacks. Now, two researchers who claim to have discovered the first Mac zombie botnet in existence have published a

Oh, oh, you Mac lovers are gonna hate me for this post ... that's okay I have my bullet proof vest on. So for those in the Mac community who believe the Mac is invulnerable, there's this simple message: You're living in the past. Researchers: Macs are less secure than Windows PCs "For years, Apple fans have claimed that Macs are invulnerable to attack, while belittling Windows as being full of security holes. Now the tables are turned --- not only has a Trojan infected Macs and created a botnet, but several well-known researchers warn that Mac OS X is less secure than either Windows or Linux.