Peaches

Malware Off to a Good Start in 2009 Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld Monday, January 26, 2009 1:50 PM PST Talk about kicking somebody when they're down. Apple loses its fearless leader (aka The One) for six months, if not permanently. The company's stock is in the toilet, and its largest investor is dumping shares. The products it rolled out at Apple's last-ever Macworld show could put a crystal meth addict to sleep, and the SEC wants to know who's been playing doctor with Steve Jobs' medical reports. Now this: Mac malware is now circulating across the Net via pirated copies of Apple'

January 26, 2009 - 11:42 A.M. Social media search: A stalker's paradise? Don't look now, but you're being watched. And now that I've signed up for Spokeo.com, I could be the one watching you. Spokeo is a search engine that uses email addresses to find people across the social Web. Give the site your log-on info for Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or AOL - or just upload your personal address book; Spokeo will scour 41 social networks and collect all information associated with each email address. Blog entries, Linked In profiles, Flickr photostreams, Twitter tweets, Digg comments, Amaz

Twitter's growing pain: spam Jan 26, 2009 "Twitter is having growing pains that include spam posts and spam accounts. One Twitter account was recently suspended after a blog post which included a video by Graham Cluley, a Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, about a "very suspicious" user by the name of "Sara Cross", aka Sara4877 who Cluley believed to be a spammer. In the video Cluley shows viewers how to spot a potential Twitter spammer that may be following you. If the user who's following you has a new account, normally indicated by no posts, or at least very few and only s

New Variant of Mac Trojan Horse Jan 26, 2009 "A new report from Intego shows that the trojan discovered last week in pirated copies of Apple's iWork 09 has been revamped and repackaged into pirated copies of Adobe Photoshop CS4 for the Mac. The new trojan, dubbed OSX.Trojan.iServices.B, is found bundled with copies of Adobe Photoshop CS4 that are available for download from BitTorrent trackers and direct download warez sites. This time the actual installer for Photoshop is clean, however the trojan is found as a software cracking application that promises to generate activation c

The First Kiss It's your First Kiss and several questions might come to mind: Is it the right time? Is anyone watching? Does your partner even want to? Is your breath fresh? AND,---Should you use some tongue? Then you say . . .. 'What the heck!' and Just Go for it!!! > > scroll down .....

Jan 24 2009 Vulnerability in Ralink Technology wireless driver A vulnerability has been discovered in the driver of a Ralink wireless card that can be exploited to crash the computers involved. Secunia adds that it has the potential to allow arbitrary code to be run in kernel mode. Attackers only have to insert a specially crafted wireless network name (SSID) in a probe request packet, and need not know the SSID or MAC address of targeted machines. Probe requests containing SSID parameters between 128 and 256 bytes in length will cause an integer overflow in a target system, if the ca

Cybercrooks Target Social Networks Melissa Chua, CIO Asia Sunday, January 25, 2009 6:00 AM PST " The distribution of malware on social networking sites first occurred in small amounts towards the end of 2007, but that trend appears to be on the rise. According to a report from MessageLabs Intelligence, which specializes in the analysis of messaging security issues and threats, a popular tactic in 2008 among cyber criminals involved the creation of fictitious accounts on social networking sites. These fake accounts were then used to post malicious links, which usually led to a phis

Russia to Develop Linux-based Alternative to Windows? David Murphy "Details are scarce, unless Russian is your language of choice, but CNews is reporting that Russia plans to develop its own national operating system. The move is designed to reduce Russia's need to rely on foreign software and licensing agreements. And the alleged "open code" solution, likely a Linux/GNU derivative, will give Russia a greater degree of customization, as well as increased control over how the potentially free OS is used and accessed. This isn't the first time Russia has dabbled with the idea of widespr

This is not an alert but a tip for Vista users ... Add Windows 7-Style Icons to Vista Rick Broida timestamp(1232900040000,'longDateTime') As most Windows watchers know by now, Windows 7 brings a handful of interface tweaks to the table, starting with large, eye-pleasing program icons that take up residence in the taskbar. Of course, this is little more than an update to the Quick Launch feature that debuted in Windows XP. And believe it or not, Vista users can easily bring that Windows 7 look to their own taskbars. Here's how: 1. Right-click any open space in the taskbar and clear

Jan25 2009 “Dating Spam†Gone Wrong Dating spam†is becoming more rampant recently, which is somewhat expected due to Valentine’s Day being just a couple of weeks away. But some of this dating spam is quite unique, and has caught our attention, as the spammed message claims to be coming from Trend Micro The “From†field in the emails were tampered with to be able to evade spam filters. Also, a scheme called dictionary attack is used to send the spam mails: A Dictionary Attack is a spammer tactic wherein spam is sent to random addresses from a given domain, hoping that

A Mac OS X attack that leaves no trace "Vincenzo Iozzo, an Italian security researcher, says he's discovered a new way to inject executable code directly into the memory of a Mac OS X machine without leaving any trace behind. That would make detection of an attack considerably more difficult. Attackers normally leave files on the hard disk, such as their own code, and virus scanners can spot these. Iozzo's technique could be used to run a binary file entirely in the memory area of the program under attack, so that no change is made to the hard disk. It could also be used on an iPhon

Yes it is true ... some members of my site got bitten. Photobucket also has a discussion forum and it is being discussed there. Apparently this happens is when you try to get into your albums and it does not matter which browser you use or pop up blocker ... that is when the malware appears to pop up and ask you to scan your computer, blah, blah. If anyone got bitten ... use Malwarebytes to scan your computer.

Jan 23 2009 New version of Tor plugs security leak Although the Tor project developers recently announced that they had eliminated all errors and security vulnerabilities from their anonymisation software, they were refering to those discovered by Coverity. They have now released version 0.2.0.33, which plugs a vulnerability pointed out by Ilja van Sprundel, a security specialist. The vulnerability is reported to be a heap corruption that can be exploited remotely on some systems, but the change log doesn't explain exactly what to make of this. At any rate, they classify this as a

SecureMac offers free trojan removal tool for MacsiWorkServices Trojan Removal Tool is a free utility created to remove the iWorkServices Trojan from infected Macintosh computers running OS X Jan 23, 2009 | 11:10 AM By SecureMac DarkReading January 23, 2009 - Las Vegas, Nevada - SecureMac is pleased to announce it has released iWorkServices Trojan Removal Tool, a free utility created to remove the iWorkServices Trojan from infected Macintosh computers running OS X. This tool is in response to a new trojan horse in the wild that comes bundled with pirated copies of Apple's (AAPL)

SecureMac Offers Free Trojan Removal Tool For Macs iWorkServices Trojan Removal Tool is a free utility created to remove the iWorkServices Trojan from infected Macintosh computers running OS X Jan 23, 2009 | 11:10 AM By SecureMac DarkReading January 23, 2009 - Las Vegas, Nevada - SecureMac is pleased to announce it has released iWorkServices Trojan Removal Tool, a free utility created to remove the iWorkServices Trojan from infected Macintosh computers running OS X. This tool is in response to a new trojan horse in the wild that comes bundled with pirated copies of Apple's (AAPL

Text Message Attack Steals Money From Bank Accounts New mobile phone Trojan discovered by Kaspersky Lab is similar to a banking Trojan targeting PCs, but does its dirty work via text message Jan 23, 2009 | 01:25 PM By Kelly Jackson Higgins DarkReading A new Trojan is spreading via SMS text messages that instruct victims to transfer money from their bank accounts to attackers' phony accounts, according to Kaspersky Lab. The malware, which attacks Symbian mobile phones, is similar to a banking Trojan that targets PCs. So far, the Trojan is going after customers of an Indonesian

Thanks ... noted.

And Then the Fight Started ........ My wife sat down on the couch next to me as I was flipping channels. She asked, 'What's on TV?' I said, ?Dust.' And then the fight started.... ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary. She said, 'I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in about 3 seconds.' I bought her a scale. And then the fight started... ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- When I got home last night,

22 January 2009, 16:47 Copies of iWork 09 from BitTorrent may contain trojan Intego has issued a security alert for pirated copies of Apple's iWork 09, saying that it may contain an OS X trojan known as OSX.Trojan.iServices.A. The pirated copies are appearing on BitTorrent trackers and direct download warez sites. Officially purchased copies and retail copies do not contain this trojan. The trojan exists as a package within the actual iWork 09 installer. It is notable that the iWork 09 files in these downloads are not affected, but are merely a carrier to get the trojan onto users s

Jan 22, 2009 Microsoft's instructions for disabling AutoRun don't work US-CERT has published a Technical Cyber Security Alert warning of problems with disabling the Windows AutoRun/AutoPlay functions. It seems that the method described by Microsoft, of configuring the AutoRun and NoDriveTypeAutorun registry keys, doesn't completely disable the AutoRun and AutoPlay functions. When they are completely disabled, a program on a mobile storage device will not run as soon as the device is connected, nor will the AutoPlay dialogue pop up with suggestions for further steps. Several sources

XP Users, Plan Your Windows Upgrade -- Right Now Shane O'Neill , CIO.com Thursday, January 22, 2009 2:30 PM PST An XP-to-Vista migration may not be in the cards for everybody, but at this point, the jump to Windows 7 is inevitable for XP users. A recent report from IT research firm TAC (The Advisory Council) highlights the most efficient ways to roll out Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrades. One key message: if you are not upgrading in 2009 you should at least be planning to do so. The report, entitled "Cutting Through the Nonsense About Windows Vista, Windows 7", also touches on a sub

22 January 2009, 09:38 QuickTime 7.6 update brings security fixes Apple has released QuickTime 7.6 for Mac OS X and Windows, which includes several enhancements and fixes seven critical security vulnerabilities. According to Apple, all of the vulnerabilities allowed system infiltration and the launch of code on the system using the privileges of the user currently logged in to the system. The problems were caused by errors in the processing of video files in different file formats and codecs. For an attack to be successful, a victim has to play a manipulated file that takes advanta

22 January 2009, 16:47 Copies of iWork 09 from BitTorrent may contain trojan Intego has issued a security alert for pirated copies of Apple's iWork 09, saying that it may contain an OS X trojan known as OSX.Trojan.iServices.A. The pirated copies are appearing on BitTorrent trackers and direct download warez sites. Officially purchased copies and retail copies do not contain this trojan. The trojan exists as a package within the actual iWork 09 installer. It is notable that the iWork 09 files in these downloads are not affected, but are merely a carrier to get the trojan onto users s

Mac malware piggybacks on pirated iWork By Dan Goodin in San Francisco 22nd January 2009 20:58 GMT Malware masquerading as part of Apple's iWork 09 productivity suite is targeting unsuspecting Mac users foolish enough to install pirated software downloaded on warez sites. Once installed, iServices.A has unfettered root access, which it promptly uses to connect to a remote server over the internet, according to Intego, which sells anti-virus software for Macs. A secondary download installs malware that makes victims part of a botnet that's attacking undisclosed websites. More than

W32.Downadup Removal Tool This tool is designed to remove the infections of: W32.Downadup W32.Downadup.B Important: If you are on a network or have a full-time connection to the Internet, such as a DSL or cable modem, disconnect the computer from the network and Internet. Disable or password-protect file sharing, or set the shared files to Read Only, before reconnecting the computers to the network or to the Internet. Because this worm spreads by using shared folders on networked computers, to ensure that the worm does not reinfect the computer after it has been removed, Symantec su