Monthly Archive for September, 2009
Microsoft's free new anti-virus product is earning decent marks in preliminary tests, putting it roughly on par with many other stand-alone anti-virus products available today. A number of readers seem keen to try out Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), but are eager to hear how the program stacks up against other free anti-virus tools in terms of detecting and removing malware. While the results of early testing may not provide that side-by-side comparison, they do offer a glimpse of how effective MSE may be in blocking and tackling some of the most common threats currently in circulation. The MSE performance analysis comes from av-test.org, a group that routinely publishes the results of anti-virus stress tests. AV-Test ran MSE against 3,732 samples of malware that are currently infecting PCs around the world, and found that the program blocked all of them, both when the samples were opened or accessed and when the
Windows users looking for a free anti-virus alternative can now take advantage of an offering from Microsoft, which today began offering its Security Essentials anti-virus program. Microsoft Security Essentials is a real-time and on-demand anti-virus scanner that is free for personal use. It runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions). Note that in order to use this software, Windows users will first need to pass Microsoft's Genuine Validation (anti-piracy) check, which checks to make sure that you're running a legitimate, licensed copy of Windows. The version made available today didn't seem to differ too much from the beta I reviewed earlier this summer: The initial install and update were painless, and the default quick scan took about 10 minutes, while using limited resources on my test machine. Only time will tell how this offering stacks up against other free AV choices out there,
The Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team is warning Internet users to be on guard against a convincing e-mail virus scam disguised as a message from auditors at the Internal Revenue Service. According to one victim interviewed by Security Fix, falling for the ruse could cost you or your employer tens of thousand of dollars. An alert issued Monday by the U.S.-CERT states: "The attacks arrive via an unsolicited email message and may contain a subject line of 'Notice of Underreported Income.' These messages may contain a link or attachment. If users click on this link or open the attachment, they may be infected with malicious code, including the Zeus Trojan." The Zeus Trojan is exceptionally good at stealing sensitive data, and it is especially interested in online banking credentials. This fake IRS/Zeus campaign has been ongoing for several weeks now, according to Gary Warner, director of research
Organized cyber thieves that have stolen millions from corporations and schools over the past few months recently defrauded several health care providers, including a number of non-profit organizations that cater to the disabled and the uninsured. The victims are the latest casualties of an online crime wave being perpetrated against U.S.-based organizations at the hands of cyber thieves thought to be based out of Eastern Europe. On Sept. 9, crooks stole $30,000 from the Evergreen Children's Association (currently doing business as Kids Co.), a non-profit organization in Seattle that provides on-site childcare for public schools. Kids Co. chief executive and founder Susan Brown said the attackers tried to send an additional $30,000 batch payment out of the company's account, but that her bank blocked the transfer at her request. "Now we're in this battle with our bank, because my staff accountant checks the account every day, and we notified the
A recent attack in which tainted banner ads served up rogue software for visitors of popular sites such as drudgereport.com, lyrics.com and horoscope.com is a stark reminder of the importance of keeping up-to-date on software patches. According to Web vulnerability scanning firm ScanSafe, between Sept. 19 and 21, tainted ads that tried to foist malicious software cycled through some of the Web's most popular destinations (drudgereport.com receives more a million visitors per day, according to compete.com). Unlike the attack last week from rogue ads on the New York Times Web site - which heaved bogus anti-virus software onto visitors' systems - this series of bad ads sought to drop a Trojan horse that hijacks the victim's search results, ScanSafe found. The hostile ads tried to exploit several software vulnerabilities in order to drop the search hijackers onto victim PCs. One was a Microsoft Windows/Internet Explorer vulnerability that Redmond issued a
In a blog post earlier this week, Security Fix examined the crucial role of "money mules" -- people in the United States who are willingly or unwittingly recruited to help cyber fraudsters steal money from businesses. In this column, we'll peer a bit deeper into how mules are recruited, and how they often communicate with their employers. Security Fix interviewed one of the mules hired to receive money from Sanford School District, a small school system in Colorado that was robbed of $117,000 last month when hackers used the district's online banking credentials to send sub-$10,000 payments to this mule and 16 others. The mule I spoke with said she was hired by a company called the Scope Group Inc., which claimed to be a nearly 20-year-old investment firm operating out of New York. The Scope Group did not return e-mails seeking comment, but there is no listing for a
A construction firm in Maine is suing a local bank after cyber thieves stole more than a half million dollars from the company in a sophisticated online bank heist. On Friday, Sanford, Maine based Patco Construction Co. filed suit in York County Superior Court against Ocean Bank, a division of Bridgeport, Conn. based People's United Bank. The lawsuit alleges that Ocean Bank did not do enough to prevent cyber crooks from transferring approximately $588,000 to dozens of co-conspirators throughout the United States over an eight-day period in May. People's United Bank spokeswoman Valerie Carlson declined to comment for this story, saying the company is aware of the lawsuit but does not discuss pending litigation. According to the complaint, the fraudulent transfers began on Thursday, May 7, when thieves who had hijacked the company's online banking credentials initiated a series of transfers totaling $56,594 to several individuals that had no prior
Microsoft this week released a stopgap security fix for a critical flaw present in some Windows PCs that could let attackers remotely seize control of vulnerable systems. But as scary as this vulnerability sounds, it may actually be better for some Vista users to wait until Microsoft issues an official update. Microsoft issued the emergency workaround after reports that security researchers were publishing proof-of-concept exploits that attackers might use to figure out how to attack the flaw. The workaround Microsoft released doesn't fix the problem so much as disable the vulnerable component. In the meantime, Redmond says, it is working on developing a more precise, official patch. The flaw resides in the file-sharing capability of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 systems. It does not affect Windows XP, Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003 computers. Microsoft says the vulnerability does not exist in the version of Windows 7 that the
Clarification: This blog post refers to an entity calling itself the Entrust Group, using the Web site name entrust-group.cn, that allegedly helped recruit people to help commit online crime. We were contacted soon after this published by a Reno, Nev. based financial services firm named The Entrust Group (TEG) - with the Web site name theentrustgroup.com - which informed us that people were calling the company under the mistaken impression that the blog posting refers to TEG. TEG is in no way affiliated with or connected to the fraudulent activities associated with the Entrust Group named in the body of this story. Because fraudsters tend to use generic-sounding names when they create fake corporations, there may be a number of businesses which have names similar to the Entrust Group named in this story that have nothing to do with the perpetrators of this crime. On Friday, Brunswick, Maine-based heating and
