viruses

Cyberattacks from Anonymous and LulzSec and breaches against everyone from Sony to Lockheed Martin turned the second quarter into "one of the worst on record," according to a new report from Panda Security.

Released this week, Panda's second-quarter report (PDF) examined the security landscape from April to June and highlighted a string of alarming incidents.

Pointing to the attacks by Anonymous and LulzSec against the likes of Sony, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Spanish police, and several government sites, Panda said that the line between "hacktivism" and criminal behavor has gotten fuzzier.

Panda clearly questioned the methods of the new breed of hackers, saying that Anonymous calls its actions "peaceful protests," even though such actions are illegal. Also mincing no words with LulzSec, Panda said that "if you took the most irresponsible and brainless members of Anonymous and put them all together, they would be considered the most refined gentlemen compared to LulzSec."

Though LulzSec recently announced that it would be ending its attacks, the group urged other hackers to carry on the fight via operation Anti-Security, or AntiSec.… Read more

Seemingly random names are embossed on the interior glass walls of the Avast offices and conference rooms in its Prague headquarters, and the June morning light illuminates them from behind. Written in black, these names and the orange-colored names of cities below them are, in fact, the forum nicknames of the people who use Avast and the cities they originate from. It appears there are Avast users on every continent, and that, said the company's CEO Vincent Steckler, is by design.

"Two-thirds of new users come from personal recommendations," he said. "Trying to get 35 million … Read more

PRAGUE--The city of Brno in the Czech Republic is a place people go to learn. Situated some 130 miles southeast of Prague, its 11 universities host approximately 80,000 students, many of whom are computer engineers. So it's no surprise that while AVG's corporate offices are headquartered back in Prague, Brno hosts the lifeblood of the company: the virus lab.

Although consumer computer security has grown tremendously in the past five years--with nearly all the major security suite makers including some form of community-based protection, URL verification, or phishing prevention to accompany more traditional tools like firewalls and … Read more

Facebook users can lean on a new app to help them fight spam and malware.

Designed by a team of students at the University of California at Riverside, MyPageKeeper is a free Facebook app that continually monitors wall posts and news feeds for malicious content. If the app suspects that any content may contain spam or malware, it alerts you and gives you the ability to remove it.

Beyond protecting your own Facebook account, it can also protect the accounts of friends who may get infected by viruses or hit by spam just by viewing your page.

The app was … Read more

Few of us have been given the tools to make us instantly beautiful. Not even visits to the finest surgeons in LA seem to do the trick.

We deal with our imperfections. However, it appears that 30,000 who tried to gain access to BeautifulPeople.com, a dating site for the supremely pretty, are having extreme difficulty dealing with rejection.

You might remember this site. Two years ago, it declared that its standards were strict. It declared that British people were, in general, on the less blessed side of pulchritude.

But now the Guardian reports that Beautiful People has turned … Read more

Is malware really a problem on Android smartphones? It might just be, as evidenced by the rash of malicious apps that recently appeared in the Android Market.

As much as I dislike the idea of needing antivirus and antispyware software for my phone, better safe than sorry. And if I'm going to run such an app, it might as well kill multiple security birds with one stone.

ESET Mobile Security for Android offers malware protection, an antitheft system, call blocking, SMS blacklisting, and more. It's currently in beta, and currently free.

When you first install it, ESET Mobile Security identifies any immediate threats, which on my new Nexus S 4G included disabled SIM matching, an undefined "trusted" SIM, and an undefined password (for the app itself; it's there to prevent unauthorized attempts to uninstall it).

From there it's not immediately clear what you're supposed to do, if anything, but each of EMS' primary modules--Antivirus, Antispam, Anti-Theft, and Security Audit--comes with extensive built-in help.… Read more

A new version of rogue antivirus malware that targets the Macintosh operating system does not need victims to type in their administrator passwords to install and infect the machine, a security company said today.

The latest version of the malware has been overhauled to look like a native Mac OS X application and is using the application name MacGuard, according to an Intego blog post. But particularly concerning is the fact that unlike previous versions, which were dubbed Mac Defender, MacProtector, and MacSecurity, MacGuard installs itself without prompting for the admin password.

"If Safari's 'Open safe files after … Read more

A new malware infection has apparently been spreading relatively rapidly among Mac users, and it's unclear both how pervasive the infection is and whether Apple is addressing the problem. What is known, however, is how to get rid of it.

What is it? Most often called MacDefender, but also known as MacProtector and MacSecurity, this bit of malware is a socially engineered threat of a type that's more familiar to Windows users. It often starts with a Web advertisement that suckers you into downloading a rogue antivirus program, which purports to protect you. In fact, once installed it … Read more

In yesterday's article on protecting your Mac from recent malware developments in the Mac community, I mentioned briefly to exclude specific download folders from your Time Machine backups or other backup options to prevent any downloaded malware installers from being retained in a backup. In response to this article, MacFixIt reader "Harry" wrote in wondering what to do if malware or other unwanted items do get backed up to Time Machine.

Time Machine runs every hour, so if you have installed the recent malware or another unwanted item and your backup routine has run, then it is … Read more