Viruses & Malware

Popular US gadget blog Gizmodo apologized to its readers on Tuesday after being duped by malware masquerading as an advertisement.

"Guys, I'm really sorry but we had some malware running on our site in ad boxes for a little while last week on Suzuki ads," Gizmodo editorial director Brian Lam said in a message at Gizmodo.com. "They somehow fooled our ad sales team through an elaborate scam," he said. "It's taken care of now, and only a few people should have been affected, but this isn't something we take lightly as writers, editors and tech geeks.

If you have accidentally found Omega AntiVir on your system, be sure - rogueware creators had already started their attack against you! Don't believe anything that they are trying to convince you about. Neither these hackers, nor their created programs will protect your computer. Therefore, do all your best to avoid this rogue entering your PC and follow this article in order to get acquainted with its basic characteristics.

Google announced this week that it will provide certain website administrators with samples of malicious code found on their sites to help them clear the infection.

The new feature is part of Google's free Webmaster Tools suite that was launched in 2005 and helps webmasters improve their sites' search ranking, diagnose website problems, and share information with each other.

An investigative series I've been writing about organized cyber crime gangs stealing millions of dollars from small to mid-sized businesses has generated more than a few responses from business owners who were concerned about how best to protect themselves from this type of fraud.

The simplest, most cost-effective answer I know of? Don't use Microsoft Windows when accessing your bank account online.

A rise in malware has caused the number of infected PCs worldwide to increase 15 percent just from

August to September, says a report released Tuesday from antivirus vendor Panda Security.
Across the globe, the average number of PCs hit by malware now stands around 59 percent, an all-time high for the year. Among 29 countries tracked, the U.S. ranked ninth with slightly more than 58 percent of its PCs infected. Taiwan hit first place with an infection ratio of 69 percent, while Norway came in lowest with only 39 percent of its PCs attacked by malware.

The use of password-stealing trojans has jumped some 400 per cent in the past year, according to a recent report from McAfee.

The security firm said that in 2008, nearly 400,000 variants on trojans designed to log keystrokes and record passwords were found. By comparison, fewer than 100,000 such samples were detected in 2007.

Criminals are waging a nasty online campaign right now, hoping that their victims' fears of the tax collecter will lead them to inadvertently install malicious software.

The spam campaign, entering its third week now, is showing no signs of slowing down, according to Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics with the University of Alabama at Birmingham. This one campaign accounts for about 10 percent of the spam e-mail that his group is presently tracking, he said. "This is the most prominent spam-delivered virus in the world right now," he said.

A computer virus may be behind the theft of $350,000 from a northwest suburban school district.

The money was taken from Crystal Lake Elementary School District 47.

Officials are blaming it on the so-called clampi virus which captures usernames and passwords to wire money out of bank accounts. The Washington Post reports that hackers may have used the virus to steal millions from American companies, banks and schools nationwide.

Another day, another spam scam.

This time, hackers are luring unsuspecting users with an invitation to play an online game of Monopoly. But there's no Boardwalk or Park Place -- just a Trojan that, if activated, will turn your PC or mobile device into a spam distribution center.

The discovery was made Monday by members of McAfee's MX Logic security software team. This so-called social engineering tactic isn't new, however, though it's fairly well done and conceived, according to Sam Masiello, MX Logic's director of threat management.

Do you remember the Confiker worm that was going to bring the internet to a grinding halt a few months back?

The world breathed a sigh of relief when the predicted apocalypse never eventuated and it appeared as if the worm, for all its sophistication, was simply another attempt to create a new spambot network. Well according to the latest reports, Conficker isn't finished yet and there are still around five million computers that remain infected and connected.