Items tagged with virus
Ever the crafty (and malicious) bunch, malware writers added a new trick to an old scam, and it appears to be working. According to the Internet Crime Complain Center (IC3), a recent FBI analysis reveals that cyber crooks are targeting employers with fake job applications capable of wreaking havoc. "Recently, more than $150,000 was stolen...
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One of the most active spam bots, Asprox, has a new gimmick for a Trojan it's been e-mailing around for the past six months: Facebook. Its botmasters are trying to cash in on last week's blocked accounts and unfriending frenzy. Wednesday, November 17, was National Facebook Unfriend day, the brainchild of late night talk show comedian Jimmy...
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It's always hilarious when a security firm has its site hacked or has some other security-related SNAFU occur that you would think their own products could prevent. Such is the case with Kaspersky Labs, which recently saw its site not just hacked, but serving up malware. Reports first came from users on Kaspersky's own support forums. The...
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A sophisticated computer virus that targets solely Siemens SCADA, or "supervisory control and data acquisition," systems, has infiltrated systems across the globe, and has hit Iran "very hard." The Stuxnet virus has reportedly struck industrial sites throughout Iran, including its nuclear facilities. SCADA systems are commonly used to...
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Malware has been implicated as a contributing factor in a Spanair plane crash that killed 154 people two years ago Friday. The crash of Spanair flight JK 5022 occurred just after takeoff, two years ago, on August 20, 2008. The crash was Spain's deadliest in 25 years. Only 18 of the 172 passengers and crew survived. The plane, a McDonnell Douglas...
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No one enjoys spam. In fact, it's probably one of the most universally hated things on the Internet. Spam senders probably don't even enjoy the spam that they're distributing, and it's safe to think that Microsoft loathes spam more than anyone else. Or at least that's the impression we get from the amount of fighting...
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Microsoft's new Security Essentials anti-malware product has just gone live. The site has been updated in the past hour or so, since we last checked it, and users can now download Microsoft Security Essentials for 32-bit Windows XP, and 32- and 64-bit Windows Vista/7. That's correct, in case you're wondering. There is no support for 64-bit...
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More than half of computer viruses last a mere 24 hours.Panda Security's malware detection laboratory, PandaLabs, has been analyzing the nearly 37,000 samples of new viruses, worms, Trojans and other security threats that it receives each day and found that 52 percent of them work for just 24 hours. "After that timeframe, they become inactive...
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Mac users who've been smug for years over how secure their OS is, could be in for a rude awakening if news out of the Black Hat Security Conference is true.As Macs have slowly gained market share on PCs — 9 percent of the market in the second quarter of 2009 and growing — the interest in hacking them has increased. The advances in security...
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There's hardly anything that gets us at HotHardware more steamed than spyware, and we can only imagine how infuriated over 100,000 BlackBerry users in the UAE are after being fooled with a spyware-infused update. In a story that's sounds too bizarre to be true (but is, in fact, true), Etisalat--a major cellular operator in the United Arab...
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It probably comes as no surprise, but it seems most people ignore routine computer maintenance and only think about it when disaster strikes. You know, like falling victim to more than 3,000 viruses. At once. A survey done of Staples "EasyTechs," indicated that more than 80 percent of the chain's customers don't bother with routine maintenance...
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Symantec, McAfee and Norton. What do all three of those have in common? A little something with Microsoft, now. For years upon years, the first three companies have been ruling the PC security roost, all while Microsoft scrambles to patch its own operating systems when new exploits are discovered and reported. At long last, the OS maker has...
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No wonder the Pentagon is bracing for all manners of cyber warfare. Late last week, officials reported that the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service saw some of their computers "shut down" after a virus attack overwhelmed them. Reportedly, the virus stemmed from an invasion at the Marshals Service, with an FBI spokesperson noting that it was...
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Weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm, the Conficker virus is slowly being activated. Conficker, also known as Downadup or Kido, is quietly turning thousands of personal computers into email spam servers and installing spyware. It does this by installing a second virus known as Waledac that can send out email spam without the PC owner’s...
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For years, many people have believed that Macs are immune to malware, viruses, and worms that have wrought havoc on PCs. In reality, however, OS X is potentially just as vulnerable to harmful programs. The difference lies in the fact that hackers generally go after what will give them the biggest bang for their buck. Traditionally, that has...
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The Conficker worm has generated a fair amount of buzz in the media recently. Today, April 1, was suppose to be the worm’s day of attack. As of this evening eastern standard time, the doomsday some were predicting as a result of the Conficker worm did not materialize. That doesn’t mean Conficker is a bust, however. The worm still did what...
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60 Minutes is a great show, for the most part (and let's not forget it has Andy Rooney!), but a report Sunday night on the Conficker worm titled "The Internet is Infected" is probably the definition of hyperbole. The report, a full transcript of which is here, and a video below, was designed to alarm, and I'm sure it did. The title alone is...
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Digital photo frames are a hot gift item these days, but anyone buying a Samsung SPF-85H 8-inch digital photo frame through Amazon.com this year may have given their loved ones a little something extra: A computer virus.Amazon reached out to its purchasers with a note just before the holiday.Here's a snippet of their warning to customers:...
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Many techs will agree: antivirus programs can be a hassle. Mostly, the issues tend to stem from slower performance and similar issues that result from using an antivirus program. Still, it’s a bit of a lesser of two evils deal: you can risk getting a virus, or you can deal with lags in performance. Usually, you can count on well-known antivirus...
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Surprisingly, this apparently isn't the first time this has happened to NASA. They haven't, to this point, been using antivirus software on the laptops astronauts take into space with them. A lesson for us all? Yep. However, the virus wasn't something that would bring the ISS crashing to Earth. The W32.Gammima.AG worm is pretty old: discovered...
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Besides ironic, what other words might come to mind over this, eh?The download section of AvSoft's S-cop Web site hosts the malicious code, according to Roger Thompson, chief research officer with security vendor AVG. "They let one of their pages get hit by an iFrame injection," he said. "It shows that anyone can be a victim.... It's hard...
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What's new is old again, it seems. Security researchers are warning consumers to be cautious about using items like freebie flash drives that are given out as souvenirs at trade shows and similar events. There are recent reports of malware being loaded onto removable storage devices like USB flash drives, and even digital picture frames.In...
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