-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
The School of Hacking
,----[ Quote ]
| If college students can beat the best antivirus programs, why do people spend
| nearly $5 billion a year on them?
`----
http://www.newsweek.com/id/158730
Snake oil.
Recent:
Anti-virus program carves up Windows
,----[ Quote ]
| Following an update on 4 September of the pattern files for Trend Micro's PC
| Cillin 14, Internet Security 2007 and Internet Security 2008 anti-virus
| programs, their friend-or-foe identification – particularly under Windows XP
| with Service Pack 2 – appears to have failed. These programs incorrectly
| identified important Windows system files such as netui0.dll, pstorec.dll
| and – seemingly in more infrequent cases – winsocks32.dll as trojans, and
| either deleted or quarantined them.
`----
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/115611
Virus protection is a matter of faith
,----[ Quote ]
| SHINTO FAITHFUL are dragging their computers and gadgets into the local
| shrine in a bid to protect them from viruses and Trojan horses.
|
| At Tokyo's Kanda-Myojin Shinto shrine, priests are using centuries-old
| ceremonies to ask the gods for help and protection for computers.
`----
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/08/gods-virus-protection
Schneier: Lots of Security Software Is 'snake Oil'
,----[ Quote ]
| IDG News Service: So what do you think is the biggest threat right now?
|
| Schneier: Crime.
|
| IDG News Service: So how do you fix it? It's expensive to investigate, it's
| cross-jurisdictional.
|
| Schneier: It might not be fixable. A lot of [the solution] is going to be
| making the things that criminals are going after harder to get. You're not
| going to stop the criminals.
`----
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144938/schneier_lots_of_security_software_is_snake_oil.html
Malware still malingering for up-to-date anti-virus users
,----[ Quote ]
| Having anti-virus software and keeping it up to date is no longer enough to
| keep from geting infected by malware.
`----
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/04/11/panda_infected_or_not/
The rise of the Malware Mafia
,----[ Quote ]
| Organized group's embrace of cyber crime has been made possible by the
| availability of highly specialized malware, which has lowered the barriers to
| entry. As a result, Alperovitch said, "The profile of arrested criminals is
| changing from tech savvy teens to traditional criminals with mile-long rap
| sheets for drugs and propagating fake checks."
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/11/organized_crime_embraces_net/
The Dirty Secret Behind 1,000,000 Viruses
,----[ Quote ]
| But there's something missing in this paragraph – and, indeed, in the whole
| story: it's the word “Windows”. This is the dirty secret behind viruses: they
| are overwhelmingly found on Windows systems. The huge, global cost of viruses
| is just one of the hidden extra fees that we all, collectively, must pay when
| others use Microsoft Windows. Pity Microsoft doesn't use some of its
| extensive cash holdings to compensate victims of its poor coding.
|
| Now, of course, if all the world used GNU/Linux, that wouldn't mean that
| viruses would cease to exist: the focus of malware would shift, and viruses
| would become more common for that system too. But you can bet they'd be far
| harder to write, and that there would be far less than a million.
`----
http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/blogs/index.cfm?blogid=14&entryid=685
Bots rule in cyberspace
,----[ Quote ]
| USA TODAY REPORTS that on an average day, 40 per cent of the 800 million
| computers connected to the Internet are bots used to send out spam, viruses
| and to mine for sensitive personal data.
`----
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/03/17/bots-rule-cyberspace
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2008-03-16-computer-botnets_N.htm
China Faced With Severe Botnet Problem
,----[ Quote ]
| China faces a serious threat from botnets, networks of computers infected
| with software that allows them to be controlled remotely for
| denial-of-service attacks and to send spam, according to a report issued by
| China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT).
`----
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144931/china_faced_with_severe_botnet_problem.html
Microsoft Data Show Web Attacks Taking off
,----[ Quote ]
| The company saw the number of Trojan downloader programs it removed from
| Windows machines jump by 300 percent, according to Jimmy Kuo, principal
| architect with Microsoft's Malware Protection Center.
`----
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144928/microsoft_data_show_web_attacks_taking_off.html
Related:
Online banking fraud 'up 8,000%'
,----[ Quote ]
| The UK has seen an 8,000% increase in fake internet banking scams
| in the past two years, the government's financial watchdog has warned.
|
| The Financial Services Authority (FSA) told peers it was "very concerned"
| about the growth in "phishing".
`----
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6177555.stm
Trend, Sophos and McAfee flunk Vista SP1 anti-virus tests
,----[ Quote ]
| Top tier anti-virus vendors including McAfee, Trend Micro, and Sophos all
| failed to secure Windows Vista SP1 in recent independent tests.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/03/vista_sp1_av_tests/
Does antivirus have a future?
,----[ Quote
| Peter Gutmann, a researcher at the University of Auckland who presented the
| results of a study of the commercial market for malware at August's Defcon,
| estimates that a good virus programmer can make as much as $200,000 a year
| (here, a 660KB PDF). Alan Cox, an open-source security researcher, points out
| some additional possibilities. One is malware designed to sit under today's
| virtual machines. A proof-of-concept paper proposing such an attack, called
| Subvirt (PDF), appeared last year, written by three researchers from
| Microsoft and two from the University of Michigan. A presentation at last
| year's Black Hat security conference from Joanna Rutkowska, a researcher at
| Coseinc, a Singapore-based security company, covered a much leaner attack she
| called Blue Pill, which targets the virtualisation built into Windows Vista
| and into current processors from both AMD and Intel.
`----
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/sep/20/guardianweeklytechnologysection.spam
Is an antivirus gap looming?
,----[ Quote ]
| The failure of antivirus companies to adapt to the dramatic malware
| appearance rates in 2007 tells us there's time for a change and there's room
| for a new class of tools. "AV is dead" is the battle cry of a new industry
| analyst report. Antivirus companies may not be going the way of the dodo, but
| to many customers, the concept of antivirus as the last line of defense has
| been thrown out the window. It's time for a better approach, one that can
| keep up and really defend networks.
`----
http://news.com.com/2010-7348_3-6195322.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news
Predicting the demise of antivirus apps
,----[ Quote ]
| "It's the beginning of the end for antivirus," says Robin Bloor, partner
| at consulting firm Hurwitz & Associates, who adds he began his
| "antivirus is dead" campaign a year ago and feels even more strongly
| about it today. "I'm going to keep beating this drum. The approach
| antivirus vendors take is completely wrong. The criminals working to
| release these viruses against computer users are testing against
| antivirus software. They know what works and how to create variants."
`----
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/mgmt/0047A206FF40A92ECC2572C3000FD867
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
iEYEARECAAYFAkjO0uwACgkQU4xAY3RXLo5lvQCbB2PRYbrp1XPhIeF/s659xZyP
XeAAoJyahpv6cgHdw2PaRd9jkxeqvKYy
=AXQC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
|
