antivirus

Avast, a largest antivirus scanner, brought its apologies this week for wrongly defining most of the web as malicious. 

Adobe is developing a patch to its Flash media player to address a critical vulnerability exploited in targeted attacks to install malware on users’ PCs. According to a blog post written by an independent security researcher Mila Parkour the attacks are launched using emails that attach a Microsoft Word document that contains a booby-trapped Flash file.

Clicking on the document causes Windows-based machines to install a backdoor known as Zolpiq, separate researchers from antivirus provider Kaspersky said.

Last week Microsoft started offering free antivirus software to its customers via Windows’ built-in update service. The move was questioned by a security vendor who is concerned by the anti-competitiveness of the Redmond’s behavior.

Microsoft started offering Security Essentials as an optional download to the users of Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7.

A new deceptive trick was created by the scammers who develop scareware. The new malicious code called by specialists as Zeven was developed by fraudsters to automatically detect a user's browser before serving up a warning page that poses as the genuine pages generated by IE, Firefox or Chrome. Victims are warned about the putative infection in their systems to lure them into installing a fake anti-virus software package, called Win7 AV. Such warnings are generated from malicious scripts planted on compromised websites.

Security firm Websense has found a new Trojan virus that exploits built-in Windows feature to disable all the PC security software and compromise systems. The malware comes under guise of an antivirus update and exploits Windows input method editor (IME) to infect a system.

IME technology is usually used to allow users to enter characters not supported with their input device. Thus, for instance, PC users with a 'Western' keyboard would take advantage of the technology to input Chinese or Japanese characters.

Kaspersky Lab announced the launch of a completely new product to protect TV users against malicious content like spam, cookies and other malware, as reported by the Russian media source SecurityLab.

According to some experts though there are no viruses targeting TV sets yet it won’t be a challenge to the wide popularity of the product.

According to the latest report by Internet security firm NetWitness nearly 75,000 machines in 2,500 organizations across the globe were infected by a new type of computer virus, including user accounts of popular social network websites.

The new malware known as "Kneber botnet" collects login information to online financial systems, social networking sites and email systems from infested computers and reports the information back to hackers, says NetWitness in the report.

Hackers behind the new version of the Zeus/Zbot banking Trojan expressed their gratefulness to the creators of the antivirus software, Kaspersky Lab and Avira in particular. The Trojan comes with a hidden message that thanks and taunts the security vendors for ‘helping’ them improve their malware.

The news was reported at Trend Micro blog which wrote about the new binary file identified as TROJ_ZBOT.BTM. The malware steals online banking information, including user names and passwords, and has earned a reputation as one of the deadliest banking Trojans.

Tuesday Google visitors got malicious instead of search results clicking Google's front-page Doodle sketch, dedicated to 150th anniversary of the birth of Esperanto's creator L. L. Zamenhof.

Searchers were taken to to dodgy advertisements or pages that tried to trick visitors into thinking their computers were infected and paying for fake antivirus software.

This case reflected the latest example of just how good scammers have become at manipulating Google search results.

 A PC security solutions provider Kaspersky has launched an exclusive promotion offer for Windows 7 Launch Party Attendees & Hosts under terms of which users can download free 1-year license of Kaspersky Internet Security 2010!

These are the terms for those who can take advantage of the program:

• Offer is valid only for attendees and hosts of Windows 7 launch parties.
• Offer is only extended to hosts and attendees of launch parties in the USA and Canada.
• Only 15 license codes are available for each launch party.