Spyware Hunter

At the recently held Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft was reported to have said that it has selected F-Secure as the 1st data security purveyor for Windows Home Server. Redmond-based giant said that F-Secure software would interoperate with Windows Home Server to shield consumers against PC viruses and other threats from the Internet and mobile networks.

Windows Home Server is an approaching Microsoft solution to help families without difficulty unify, share and defend their digital assets, like photos, music and videos. F-Secure offers security against virus and spyware attacks, guards against riskware and also is included with scanning of unseen nasty software (rootkit protection).

Steven VanRoekel, director of Windows Server Solutions at Microsoft said,

F-Secure has a strong track record of providing easy-to-use security technology that reliably protects consumers against rapidly evolving threats. We are pleased to work with F-Secure to help customers secure their digital memories and experiences.

Kimmo Alkio, CEO at F-Secure Corporation was quoted as saying,

This collaboration fits well in our product portfolio and we are proud to work with Microsoft to offer customers a solution to support Windows Home Server. We look forward to a continued strong cooperation with Microsoft.

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Recently, members of the hacking community, willing to help Microsoft, descended at Redmond, Washington, to depict the software giant where it has wronged. This time the company’s newest Blue Hat conference, which is generally held twice a year, aimed at mobile security, hardware hacking, Microsoft’s security tools, as well as the secretive vulnerability economy.

Microsoft started hosting these events two years back as a way to promote talk between the company’s security team and external security researchers, lots of of whom have been criticizing the company’s move to security. The name Blue Hat emanates from the Black Hat security conferences - the “Blue” part originates from the color of badges that are worn by Microsoft staffers its campus.

This is the 5th series of Blue Hat briefings and usually Microsoft is tight-lipped about the list of attendees and presenters. IDG’s Robert McMillan could get the names of some hackers on the speaker list - Robert Hansen (RSnake), David Maynor, John Hering and Rob Thomas - however information are very inadequate.

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At EMC World in Orlando, Cisco and RSA recently announced to work together to make the deliverance of encryption products for data at rest on tape, disk and other media. The technology, known as Storage Media Encryption, operates on a Cisco MDS 9500 or 9200 storage blade in the company’s MDS 9000 director-level switch and makes use of RSA’s Key Manager technology to have power over access and use of encrypted systems.

Storage Media Encryption is touted to act as an option to appliance-based approaches from Decru, NeoScale, Vormetric and CipherMax. Users’ that are likely to make use of the Cisco/RSA approach in the medical and financial-services industries, where the safe-keeping of records and financial info is given top priority. At the outset, Storage Media Encryption can be availed just for magnetic tapes. Cisco looks forward to make it available till the end of the year. A later release is said to expand it for deployment with additional storage media.

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Security vendor Secunia has reported that users of Mozilla Firefox are more likely to have deployed the latest security updates than the Web surfers who are operating Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Opera. This could be made clear with the truth that users have got to opt to utilize Firefox, maybe for the reason that they think the browser more secure, and the integrated updater within the open-source browser.

The analysis of Secunia is founded on over 350,000 software checks, carried out over the last five months by its free Secunia Software Inspector service. Secunia said 5.19 per cent of all Firefox 2 users had winked at security updates. Whereas for IE6, which is utilized by almost half of all Web surfers, that number was 9.61 per cent. Microsoft’s newest IE7 browser had a number a lot closer to Firefox’s findings: 5.40 per cent.

Opera had been the least feasible to be patched: 11.96 per cent of all Opera 9.x browsers were missing updates. Secunia also claimed to have detected that 28 per cent of all softwares on PCs that were scanned by Opera were not completely updated, which means browsers are much more possible to be patched than other types of software.

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Be careful PC users while you are coming across PDF files appearing to be your credit card report, personal financial statement or balance report. The security firm, F-Secure has found out the PDF files containing virus that poses security threat to your computer.

The security firm claimed that an anonymous has already sent tens of thousands of the contaminated files via email. These emails have no texts, only PDF attachments. Once you open them, the attachment uploads a malicious programme from a Malaysian server.

The security firm have received some of the attachments like report.pdf, debt.207.pdf and overdraft.2007.10.26 etc.

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure said,

We are worried about this case, as PDF attachments are typically not filtered at e-mail gateways.

Via: Zdnet

Image: Abobe Reader

Last week, Symantec pre-launched its Norton Mobile Security suite for Windows Mobile Smartphones, now csoonline.com reports that the security specialist is delaying it until as late as December of this year. Perhaps Symantec was somewhat annoyed of the reactions in the blogsphere without having made out a single encouraging posting.

Symantec spokesperson stated Tuesday in an E-Mail:

After some review, we’ve decided to integrate this product into the cycle of our 2008 Norton product line launching in the fall timeframe.

Symantec further maintained that nonetheless, the corresponding enterprise product, known as Symantec Mobile Security Suite 5.0, is even now planned to be rolled in June.

Symantec reveals that the Windows Mobile software will be integrated with anti-virus, anti-spam, firewall and data encryption capabilities, to carry on data secure, even if the smartphone is mislaid. Symantec is also said to put up for sale an optional VPN module for users who desire to securely hook up with their corporate servers.

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New Dell machines that consist of the Google toolbar as part of a marketing deal also is included with surreptitious software that redirects non-url info typed into a browser window to a Dell-branded page full of ads. For instance if you key in dogfood.cim, rather than obtaining a browser error message, the surreptitious Google Address Redirector redirects the question to an ad-filled page of search results.

David Ulevitch, the founder of OpenDNS, reported in company’s blog that Google and Dell have put in ’spyware’ on Dell machines. The claim was made on the base Ulevitch study of the activities of the Google Toolbar and homepage that gets in preinstalled on IE in new-fangled Dell machines. David Ulevitch also claims that a browser redirector relays users who go into fictional URLs to a Dell-branded page laden with Google ads.

David Ulevitch also reported in the blog that since the software meddle with his company’s ingenious, free DNS service, an opt-in DNS service which makes a small number of intelligent typo corrections, keeps tabs on identified phishing sites, and makes available search result pages for browser bar questions as hot sauce.

If you were to put a heatmap on the Dell-branded page... well, users can only look at ads. Dell and Google’s behavior here isn’t okay. Users never asked for this experience and they can’t get rid of it!

Moreover, this new ‘functionality’ breaks things. Instead of making DNS requests, the address bar now sends single word queries to Google. This application breaks a lot of OpenDNS functionality our users love. Typo correction? Broken. Shortcuts? Broken. Google’s application breaks just about every user-benefiting feature we provide with client software that no user ever asked for.

We enjoy challenging problems at OpenDNS. But we’d rather spend our time making the Internet better rather than solving problems that shouldn’t have been created in the first place. We know that Google is capable of launching great products and services, but this isn’t one of them.

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Crawler, LLC recently announced the release of their Spyware Terminator version 1.9, which is claimed to have widely been assessed by partaking users at Spyware Terminator Forums. The major updates of Spyware Terminator 1.9 are: (1) Setup assistant redesign (2) User interface improvements (3) Improved scanner speed (4) Firefox cookies scan

Spyware Terminator system has considerably been made simple. Numerous alternatives to pre-fix the program have been abridged, making Spyware Terminator easy to use. In contradiction of parallel softwares, this latest upgrading lets users fast setup Spyware Terminator in just a few minutes.

Robert Oesterlund, CEO, was quoted as saying,

Releasing version 1.9 was driven by our efforts to enhance Spyware Terminator’s functionality and ease of use for all our users. We value the input of our users who greatly contributed to these enhancements. delivering a reliable, highly protective security product designed with the user in mind is our number one priority and version 1.9 exemplifies our efforts in achieving this goal.

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House and Senate Democratic leaders must have got alarmed about the security of e-voting machines, as computer Scientists from California University were able to hack into three electronic voting systems used in California and elsewhere in nation.

Team of computer experts, acting on the request of state had hacked into systems from three most famous companies in the business: Diebold Election Systems, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia Voting Systems.

After the investigation, they found every system hack able in one or another way to affect the correct recording, reporting and tallying of votes. Hackers were able to gain physical access to the system, manipulate several; components networked to sever, loading wireless drivers onto the server used to access a wireless device plugged surreptitiously into the back of server and many more other ways.

Although in many cases it might be difficult to alter the results, however possibility of that cannot be denied.

Matthew A. Bishop, a professor of University of California, who led the team, said in the report, that it was surprising that how easily hackers broke not only the physical locks, but also the software defenses meant to block intruders. The addition of security measures after the basic system had been designed appeared to be the biggest problem with computerized touch screen machines, optical scanning systems and broader election-management software.

However, Industry executive criticized the report calling it unrealistic as it was not conducted in the realistic environment and no machine was known to be hacked in any election. He further added that report contains several inconsistencies, alternate conclusions and errors.

Whatever be the level of insecurities detected, what is the point in using these voting machines as pivotal and main source in voting, said Senate and Democratic leaders and proposed a shift to paper ballots and other backup records to increase confidence.

However, election supervisors are waiting for Secretary Bowen’s decision by Friday. Her decision will decide whether to ban these e-voting machines, which can pose problems for the upcoming Presidential elections in February.

Image Credit: MAIL

Via: TECHDIRT

Now, mobile phone and smartphone users will receive same security features, as they are receiving on their PCs and laptops. Soon, Symantec Corp. will offer Symantec Mobile Security Suite 5.0, the designed is designed to provide the same security and data protection capabilities on their Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs, which has become standard for laptop and other computing devices.

Symantec Mobile Security Suite 5.0 will include antivirus, firewall, anti-SMS spam, and data encryption technologies, which are easy to deploy, manage and maintain. It will provide several integrated security technologies for mobile devices, which are given below:

Antivirus: It immediately detects mobile threats and prevents users from accessing an infected file. Administrators can schedule regular virus scans and updates via Symantec LiveUpdate

Firewall: Symantec Mobile Security Suite 5.0 controls both inbound and outbound network traffic on the mobile device

Anti-SMS Spam: It automatically filters and deletes spam messages, or places them in a separate spam folder

Loss mitigation technologies: It encrypts data on the device and memory cards in case it is lost or stolen. A file activity log helps administrators determine if confidential files have been accessed, and a data wipe tool erases all data after a maximum number of consecutive failed login attempts

Phone Feature Control: It allows administrators to enable and disable certain device features, like Bluetooth, WiFi, and device synching. This limits security vulnerabilities and potential attack vectors by only providing access to those features required for business.

Symantec Mobile VPN: This optional add-on enables enterprise customers to connect to corporate networks through secure IPSec VPN tunnels in order to protect sensitive data and interactions

Network Access Control: When used with the Symantec Mobile VPN, this technology enables IT administrators to ensure only secure, policy-compliant devices can access the corporate network

Tamper Protection: Verifies that the device’s image and security applications have not been tampered with or altered prior to allowing network access

Enterprise Management: Provides a management console for IT administrators with customizable security policies and reporting

Paul Miller, managing director of Symantec’s mobile security group, said,

Many Symantec customers - IT departments and consumers alike - understand that mobile phones represent the new computing platform. Now that the dual-mode Windows Mobile devices permit users to communicate over both cellular and wireless local networks, more and more users are relying on their phones for their personal and business transactions. These ‘pro-sumers’ are looking to security leaders like Symantec to help them protect their information and interactions no matter where they reside - whether that’s on phones, laptops, or PCs.

Image Credit: Ameinfo & SCR

Via: SDA