Credits: Robert S. Donovan/Flickr (Creative Commons)
Microsoft’s Security Essentials has officially become the most-used anti-virus program for this quarter and appears to be growing at an exponential rate than its competitors, according to a new report by security analysts OPSWAT.
Fathers and sons usually go fishing or watch a football game, but deceiving unsuspecting people with rouge security applications? Well, one father-and-son duo will now pay over $8 million to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission – with that money to be used to reimburse victims of their scam.
This article is part of Security Month, a month-long TECHGEEK.com.au initiative to have a look at the security industry and the entire subject as a whole.
This guest post was written by Catalin Cosoi, BitDefender senior antispam researcher.
Remember when Apple confirmed the much-hyped malware protection in Snow Leopard; well, it turns out that its nothing more than a XProtect.plist file that contains five file signatures for only two, and the most popular, trojans out there infecting Macs – OSX.RSPlug and OSX.Iservice.
Apple has now confirmed the rumours of the existence of some malware protection software in the new operating system. According to The Loop, it scans and checks all files downloaded via Safari, iChat and Mail. As seen in the above image, it will indicate which file contains what type of malware and will note the time and date when you downloaded the file, which application downloaded it, and where from.
The most popular anti-virus program AVG has been causing confusion throughout the day by listing all of the iTunes files, including necessary DLL files, as being infected with a trojan horse known as “Trojan horse Small.BOG”.
Researchers from both Trend Micro and Kaspersky Lab have found another feature in the Conficker worm that could, finally, give us another clue on what the hell are they’re planning – the worm installs malware that is disguised to look like antivirus software.
Vietnamese security firm BKIS, which makes the BKAV anti-virus software, has said that they have found clues that tell them that the Conficker worm may have originated from China, as opposed to countries like Russia and in Europe, according to a report by CNET News.com.
Paris-based security firm Intego has released the very first antivirus software for the iPhone. However, it does not run on the phone itself, but on a user’s Mac.
The software, Virus Barrier X5 10.5.3, would be able to scan the iPhone for viruses by copying the files to the Mac for a security check, once the user has plugged in the cable and is connected to the Mac itself. The company claims that since Apple has opened it its SDK, users would be at risk of installing apps that would harm the devices, or even take control of them.
Software vendor CA plans to move their Melbourne-based antivirus labs to a new location. This is because their current building had no more space to use, and consuming power at an average of a metal-welding factory.