Spyware Hunter

With the advent of Internet, world has become small. You can access anybody, anytime! It is like world is lying in your feet. But, as in every good thing there is something bad, so do Internet has its own disadvantages. E-mail has become the best source to send and receive messages from any corner of the world. But, nowadays our e-mail boxes are usually filled with spam messages.

Approximately 37% of e-mail users in US have stated that they are receiving more junk as compare to personal mails. On the other 29% found an enhancement in their work accounts. Whereas 28% simply do not consider spam as any problem. Associate Director of Pew, Susannah Fox states that, “It’s maybe starting to become part of life online”, he further added that, “Once something’s part of life online, people feel that they should just stop complaining about it and move on, even though people are still annoyed by it.”

But, the most common complaint among the internet users is spam with pornography. According to Pew, this is one of the most common complaints and it seems that it is dropping as compare to drugs and spam related to finances. Arrival of spam blockers along with software filters have made thing easier for internet users. Thus, spammers have to fight a tough battle to get e-mail ids.
Image: Nlb-Online
Via:usatoday

Privacware, Corp. has launched an integrated desktop firewall and multilayer intrusion prevention software, Privatefirewall 5.0, which delivers signature less, zero hour protection from know or new spyware, viruses, hacking techniques and other intrusions on Windows desktops and servers.

Privatefirewall 5.0 solves the Windows vulnerabilities, which hackers exploit to gain unauthorized access and damages private systems and data. Privatefirewall 5.0 models and monitors system identifies block activity characteristic, known as malware, hacking and phishing, so that users and IT managers of small and medium enterprise can protect the environment and private data more effectively. The new software includes following protection layers, which are given below:

1) Desktop firewall
2) Port manager
3) URL filtering
4) Process monitor and application/system behavior modeling
5) Anomaly detection components

Privatefirewall 5.0 is integrated with eTrust Antivirus and eTrust PestPatrol Anti-Spyware solutions and also supports Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows 2000/2003 server. Privatefirewall 5.0 evaluates WinAPI calls and analyzes a variety of system variables, security-sensitive registry keys and alerts administrators. Currently, Privatefirewall 5.0 is available as a stand alone solution to use in home and small business.

Image Credit: PWI Corp.

Via: Managing & Automation

Blaming Russia for initiating hacking attacks, Estonia was recently reported to have said that its websites have been hit by a series of cyber attacks. Leaders in the capital, Tallinn, claim that many of the attacks have emanated from Russia and are being disseminated by state computer servers in the nation. Nevertheless, Moscow says no to any connection in the attacks.

Nato spokesman James Appathurai was quoted by BBC News as saying,

In the 21st century it’s not just about tanks and artillery. We have sent one of our experts at the request of the Estonian authorities to help them in their defense.

The Baltic nation says the assaults started after the removal of a Soviet war memorial in the capital. Ever since the removal, the two countries have been confined into a clash and Estonia has been flooded with denial-of-service (DoS) attacks for the last three weeks, with websites for the government, banks and political parties noted.

A talking head for NATO, stated the organization had dispatched technical specialists to Estonia to help fight the difficulty. Estonian officers have obstructed access to a few of the servers from outside of the nation to put off additional assaults. The Prime Minister of Estonia, Andrus Ansip, has straightforwardly laid blame on the Russian govt of being behind the attacks.

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Be aware of the latest Skype worm, Stration worm. It is not only targeting Skype contacts, but also making its way to other popular IM clients such as AIM, Trillian, Yahoo! Messenger, Miranda and ICQ through Skype.

Chirs Boyd of FaceTime confirms,

The infection checks the registry for evidence of programs like AIM, Trillian, Yahoo Messenger, Miranda and ICQ - however, so far we’ve only seen it fire a message to an ICQ and an MSN Messenger Client.

The worm sends a link and downloadable executable file. If the user clicks the link and downloads the file, then the PC is infected with worm. The worm starts sending messages to Skype contacts.

The Spyware Guide explains the worm uses the tried and tested methods employed by similar infections over the past few months, with the ultimate payload being the Stration Worm.

Although Stration is regarded as low-risk infection and not so prevalent, but it is giving tough times to security venders creating hundreds of variants.

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Agnitum recently released Outpost Security Suite Pro (OSS), which is claimed to be all-inclusive, proactive security, with built-in a single product the company’s much-admired personal firewall, a ground-breaking all-in-one anti-malware engine, intelligent spam filter, tools to put a stop to illegal program interactivity, and self-defense protocols that wedge attempts by malware to bypass or shut down the program.

Mikhail Penkovsky, worldwide vice-president for Marketing and Sales for Agnitum was reported to have said about the product that OSS delivers the strong security expected by users from Agnitum. He further maintains that their broad-based proactive security, brought about round one of the globe’s state-of-the-art personal firewalls, provides efficient, low-impact safety for every users, without regarding their level of experience.

The suite has been brought about on Agnitum’s Outpost Firewall Pro, an award-winning personal firewall that shields over a million users all through the world. For the past many years, Outpost Firewall Pro has included anti-spyware, identity theft security and leak avoidance, plus the groundbreaking community-capable ImproveNet service, which makes users available with hardened and ready-to-use configuration rules that echo real-world application deployments.

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Well, imagine that your favorite media files are running on your computer and suddenly an ad page opens and says, ‘What old fashion music you are sticking to, we have something new for you.’ Then you switch to find some books and again an ad hits your computer screen and giving you a list related to whatever you were typing. Furthermore, you will surely feel bewildered that ads will follow you in whatever context you use a window.

Isn’t it amazing that how an advertiser knows what is going on your computer screen?

Microsoft submitted an adware patent back in 2006 that will use your ‘context data’ from your hard drive to select focus advertising for you to view while you are reading your e-mail, working on word and excel documents.

Yes, that’s true-now, no stone will be left unturned to get access to your data on your hard drive in order to flash an advertisement that matches your interest.

The present advertising relies on individual’s web browsing habits, the type of sites they visit, or kind of search engine used.

This adware framework would utilize almost all the data to assure they it targets the right individual for right product. It can collect data by inspecting your computer settings, user e-mail files, media files, status messages, and files that you download.

Ads would be limited to something around 4 per hour and will only support text or graphical ads, a little insurance that you won’t get tons of irrelevant ads popping up all over your computer screen.

Unfortunately, this patent application filed in February last year, was uncovered recently by InformationWeek, which mentions nothing in context of data security or how it will protect your personal data.

Of, course anybody would like to get rid of unwanted and irrelevant ads which this new patent promises. In reality, it seems nothing more than another method to get better hold on the users and score more points in order to sell their products.

It’s more or less like,‘organized disturbance’ and will follow you with every word you type or every file you open.

Image Credit: EECS

Via: Arstechnica

An up-and-coming leader in network gateways for SMB, Untangle recently said to have integrated web safety to its Identity Theft Blocker application. The app, besides filtering out phishing emails, now claims to stop pharming websites. This alteration was brought in return to the on the increase threat that identity theft represents on the web and the on the rise complexity of pharming assaults.

Pharming websites impersonate legal sites such as banking or ecommerce and make use of social engineering to swindle users into parting with their user names, passwords and other confidential info while they by mistake log into the fake sites. The web properties frequently make use of URLs that give the impression of being similar to the target site.

For instance, replacing the “w” in wells fargo with two “v”s (vvellsfargo.com), adding an extra “i” to wachoviia.net, or by prefixing the target domain to the pharmer’s url, such as paypal.phishingsite.com.

Besides, pharming sites have turned out to be so well developed that visually making out the actual from the bogus has been almost without a solution.

Dirk Morris, founder and chief technology officer of Untangle, was quoted as saying,

Pharming is big business and the sites and techniques continue to become more and more sophisticated. Even Google Adwords has been used by cyber-criminals to bait victims. Our customers count on us to keep them up-to-date with the latest in security, and Untangle is pleased to provide this additional layer of protection for their users and networks.

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Recently I went through an interesting and informative article wherein researcher Ben Edelman was reported to have cited that a half-dozen cases of affiliate merchants being swindled by spyware, mainly by purporting commissions on organic traffic getting to the merchants. Edelman also mentioned that on the one hand where a few spyware purveyors are making attempt to wash out their image, the core designs of some cases even now acts as they all the time have like they even now keep track of user behavior activities, even now relay surfing to their central servers, plus even now display pop-up ads — behaviors users exactly disservice because of critical impacts on confidentiality and efficiency.

His prolonged objective of disdain, Zango, displayed in one exemplar of purporting a commission on organic traffic. To make it sounder, let’s take a look how a browsing session ensued for him while navigating to Blockbuster:

On May 13, my automated testing system browsed Blockbuster. Observing the requested traffic to Blockbuster, Zango opened a popup sending traffic to Roundads.com. Roundads redirected to Performics and then back to Blockbuster.

To a typical user, this pop-up is easy to ignore — just a second copy of the Blockbuster site, which users had requested in the first place. But the pop-up has serious cost implications for Blockbuster: If the user signs up with Blockbuster, through either window, then Blockbuster concludes it should pay a $18 commission to Roundads via Performics.

That’s a sham: Were it not for Zango’s intervention, Blockbuster could have kept the entirety of the user’s subscription fee, without paying any commission at all.

An other example of Edelman displayed that how Blockbuster rival Netflix also faced up such illegal claims for commissions. Edelman was quoted as saying of the deal Netflix has in place for this otherwise organic traffic,

Aside from reducing wasteful advertising spending, Netflix might also want to sever these relationships because the underlying spyware imposes serious costs on consumers.

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IBM, an inventor of magnetic tape storage over 50 years ago and a leading supplier of data encryption, was recently reported to have lost an unrevealed number of backup tapes that were contained with personal info of employees.

Company spokesperson Fred McNeese was quoted by SCMagazine.com that the tapes were unintentionally lost Feb. 23 whilst they were being transported by an intermediary purveyor from an IBM location in Westchester County, N.Y. to an everlasting storage capability.

Fred McNeese also mentioned that a few of the tapes, hinging on what info was being carried by them, were encrypted, whereas others were not. IBM would not make public to what number of tapes were lost or to what number of employees – lots of them retirees – were impinged on, however McNeese stated that the tapes are not easy to be accessed on a computer and none of the data has been misrepresented.

McNeese was quoted as saying,.

It’s a plural number (of affected people). We don’t know if anybody’s got them (the tapes), but if someone’s got them, we don’t want to give them additional information.

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An Austin based security researcher demonstrated how a software flaw, used to control oil refineries, power plants and other critical structures, can be hacked by terrorist groups or criminals.

The software is used to manage supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems - computers that regulate the functioning of such important infrastructure as oil and gas pipelines, water treatment and power transmission facilities and the giant factories used by large technology companies.

Attendees at Defacon hackers conference on computer security were surprised as well anxious about vulnerabilities in infrastructures which affect our day-to-day life such as SCADA system.

The flaw can pose major problems, as it is capable of crushing SCADA computer systems, which carry mostly lightweight software, making it easy for intruders to cheat by sending a false request.

The main targets of attack are sensors within the facilities, linked to internet through encrypted connections, said Ganesh Devrajana, a security researcher with 3Com Corp.’s TippingPoint in Austin, Texas.

Authorities and other officials present at conference took it as a matter of great terrorism concern and emphasized the need to point out similar weaknesses existing in other programs.

Image Credit: ABC News

Via: Aviran