Viruses & Malware

Nearly half the cyber-attacks hitting Chinese systems, whether they are botnets, Trojans or Web attacks, originate abroad, and the United States is the source for the largest share, Chinese officials said.

A new bit of Android malware has popped onto security experts’ radar, and this particular trojan can record your phone calls.

Security researchers at CA Technologies have posted their findings about the new trojan. In a blog post, mobile malware specialist Dinesh Venkatesan wrote that the Android package can record phone calls the victim makes as .amr files; the .amr files are then stored to the mobile device’s SD card.

Sophos has released its Mid-Year 2011 Security Threat Report, which reveals that since the beginning of 2011, the company has identified an average of 150,000 malware samples every day.

This equates to a unique malware file being created every half-second, a 60 percent increase since 2010. In addition, around 19,000 malicious website addresses (URLs) are now identified daily, with 80 percent of those URLs being pages on legitimate websites that have been hacked or compromised.

Banking security firm Trusteer has warned that the infamous information-stealing SpyEye Trojan has expanded its global reach to target even more countries, while adapting its code to circumvent banks' transaction monitoring systems.

Trusteer chief executive Mickey Boodaei explained in an updated blog post that the majority of botnet activity is aimed at UK and US computers, but that countries including Japan, China and Russia, among numerous others, have been added to the hitlist in the past three months.

Botnets and botnet kits are flourishing. They're now a commodity, as are the use of controlled machines. Just about daily, a new and frightening major system crack is revealed, data released, embarrassed IT security people called on the carpet. Were these a human virus, the CDC would be subjecting it to observation, protocols, all while someone was racing to invent (perhaps too many) vaccinations for the world to use. It would be an effort that had procedure, and a plan. The U.S.

Claims by anti-virus vendors that they block 99 percent of malware is chaff, according to a security chief.

John Vigouroux, the chief executive officer of web gateway company M86 Security, said anti-virus vendors claim to block 99 percent of known malware, but most criminals use unknown variants. Vigouroux said that the security industry has "done a miserable job of protecting customers and industry".

The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday sentenced a 28-year-old man to two years and six months in prison without suspension on charges of property destruction for creating a computer virus, spreading it on the Internet and damaging data in infected computers.

This is the first time that property destruction charges have been applied to a computer virus creator.

Czech security vendor Avast today launched its business protection security suite, aimed at small and medium-sized companies.

Avast! Business Protection is built on top of version 6 of its anti-virus engine, made available in its consumer offering earlier in February.

Microsoft decided to extend their efforts to establish the identity of those responsible for controlling the Rustock botnet by issuing a $250,000 reward for new information that results in the identification, arrest and criminal conviction of such individual(s).

Residents of any country are eligible for the reward pursuant to the laws of that country.

Malwarebytes has quietly become a force in security technology, achieving more than 100 million downloads of its anti-malware product since 2008. Now the profitable company is adding a million users monthly for its Malwarebytes software, which cleans infections off computers.