Viruses & Malware

TalkTalk is to begin trials of its Virus Alert security system, despite having run into trouble earlier this year with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) over the service. Virus Alerts is an anti-malware service that monitors all destination URLs in order to prevent customers visiting unsafe sites.

However, the product angered privacy campaigners when TalkTalk tried to launch the service in September, because users were apparently being enrolled without their knowledge.

Miscreants behind one variant of the ZeuS Trojan have outfoxed themselves in their attempts to outwit anti-virus analysts by releasing a variant of the malware that only infects high-performance PCs.

Malware authors have been very busy this year. How busy? According to Panda Security, 20 million new strains of malware have already been created this year – the same total as in all of 2009. The shortened lifespan of the malware combined with the increased number of variants demonstrate a shift in the cyber-crime landscape, where many variants are now being created to infect a small number of systems before they disappear, the vendor said.

Anti-virus firm Sophos shows that while Macs may be under increasing malware threats, most of the sludge its anti-virus software found targeted Windows systems - Apple users aren't out of the woods.

Sophos has been giving away free anti-virus software for Mac users for a number of weeks now. The company claims to have more than 150,000 active users, and has sampled nearly 50,000 infection reports, from November 2 through November 16th.

New research from Symantec has unveiled another piece of the puzzle relating to the elusive and troublesome Stuxnet malware. It's already known that the malware targets systems that control the PLC, or Programmable Logic Controller, which is a programmable microprocessor-based device typically used to control production machinery on an assembly line.

Software security firm Sophos has released a list of the 20 most commonly detected types of malware for Mac users. Topping the list is Mal/ASFDldr-A, malware that comes in the form of malicious media files.

The Mal/ASFDldr-A malware uses the scripting capabilities of Microsoft Media Play to force the web browser to visit an infected site instead of playing the media file.

A malware analyst has deconstructed a highly advanced piece of crimeware believed to be the work of the notorious Russian Business Network

The step-by-step instructions for reverse engineering the stealthy ZeroAccess rootkit is a blow to its developers, who took great care to make sure it couldn't be forensically analyzed. The tutorial means other malware researchers may also study the malware to close in on the people behind it and to better design products that can safeguard against it.

Director of malware research Joe Stewart at SecureWorks Counter Threat declared that a fresh banker Trojan named Origami was circulating in the wild. He was speaking at the DLP-Russia 2010 Conference that ended recently. Secureworks.com reported this during the 1st week of November 2010.

Daily malware growth hit a new level in the third quarter, with an average of 60,000 new pieces seen every day, McAfee has found.

The recently-acquired security giant also identified more than 14 million unique pieces of malware over the period - one million more than in the third quarter of 2009. “Our Q3 Threat report shows that cyber criminals are not only becoming more savvy, but attacks are becoming increasingly more severe,” said Mike Gallagher, senior vice president and chief technology officer of global threat intelligence at McAfee.

So far this year, 34,8% of all computers worldwide are infected, and 5.40% of them have been infected with a fake antivirus, generating benefits of $34 million a month ($415 million a year) for hackers

Fake antiviruses, also known as rogueware, are programs that enter user computers and warn of massive infections. Then, they ‘invite’ users to buy a solution to their problem. However, once users have given away their credit card data and money, they are left with a useless solution for a non-existent problem.