Tag Archives | antivirus

Five Million Websites Carried Koobface Worm Variant

Posted by Ed Oswald on August 16, 2010 at 1:16 pm

In what’s being called a record for the single biggest viral infection, a hack may have potentially delivered a variant of the Koobface worm to visitors of sites that had the “Small Business Success Index” survey widget installed. This included every parked domain hosted by registrar Network Solutions. The company has since removed the offending widget, it said.

Web searches for the code indicate that for the most part, the survey only appeared there — but the size of this infection is stunning: potentially as many as five million websites. Researchers at Armorize say the infected widget would be installable on Blogger, Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook. I guess the best advice here is that if you’ve recently ended up on a parked domain, scan your computer now for viruses.

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Apple Sneaks in Malware Protection in Mac OS X 10.6.4

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 18, 2010 at 12:06 pm

It’s no secret that Apple prides itself on OS X being “much more secure” than its Windows counterpart, so the fact that the company didn’t publicize the fact that it has added some additional malware protection in Mac OS X 10.6.4 shouldn’t be that surprising. Security firm Sophos discovered the changes while peering around the code of Cupertino’s latest update.

The additional protection was found in a file called XProtect.plist, a list of threats to Apple’s operating system. It is intended to protect against what they call HellRTS, a Trojan horse that comes disgused as iPhoto. Infected computers could find their computers sending out spam, have screenshots taken of their computer activity, and access files among other issues.

Sophos was not too happy that Apple did not announce these changes, saying Mac users should know about this potentially dangerous Trojan. “You have to wonder whether their keeping quiet about an anti-malware security update like this was for marketing reasons,” senior technology consultant Graham Cluley said. He added many users are oblivious to the fact that Mac viruses do indeed exist.

I do not run anti-virus software on my Mac, as I like many have felt that the operating system is pretty much impervious to attack. However, it seems as time goes on, and Macs gets much more popular, so could writing viruses and malware for the OS.

Maybe its time to invest in some protection?

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Keeping Your Mac Malware Free

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 21, 2009 at 1:47 pm

macmonday (Ed: Sorry we’re a day late this week!)

My post last week on Mac botnets created quite a stir here on the site. The assertion I made (to the consternation of some) was that it was time for the Mac community to swallow their pride and download and employ anti-malware applications. While several of our readers vocally disagree, i continue to hold this position. Simply put, there are too many valid reasons to protect ourselves.

Let me be perfectly clear that I do believe that Macs will never become as malware and virus-ridden as our PC counterparts. It is all but a fact that the Mac OS operating system has been built to a higher degree of security than Windows has only recently begun to even come close to matching.

At the same time, Mac is gaining increasing popularity. Security experts have often argued that it is not only Apple’s more secure code base that immunizes it from attack, but also its small market share. Think about it: if you were writing a virus that was aiming for worldwide attention, which platform would you pick? With Apple’s increasing user base, Macs will become an ever more popular target.

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