Monthly Archives: April 2010

TrendMicro Toolbar + Long URL = Fail

April 12, 2010

Many anti-virus products — particularly the “Internet security suite” variety — now ship with various Web browser toolbars, plug-ins and add-ons designed to help protect the customer’s personal information and to detect malicious Web sites. Unfortunately, if designed poorly, these browser extras can actually lower the security posture of the user’s system by introducing security and stability issues.

ISP Privacy Proposal Draws Fire

April 7, 2010

A proposal to let Internet service providers conceal the contact information for their business customers is drawing fire from a number of experts in the security community, who say the change will make it harder to mitigate the threat from botnets and malicious software.

e-Banking Guidance for Banks & Businesses

April 6, 2010

One bit of criticism I’ve heard about my stories on small businesses losing their shirts over online banking fraud is that I don’t often enough point out what banks and customers should be doing differently to lessen the chance of suffering one of these incidents. As it happens, a source of mine was recently at a conference where one of the key speakers was a senior official from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, one of the main banking industry regulators.

Virus Scanners for Virus Authors, Part II

April 5, 2010

The very first entry I posted at Krebs on Security, Virus Scanners for Virus Authors, introduced readers to two services that let virus writers upload their creations to see how well they are detected by various commercial anti-virus scanners on the market. In this follow-up post, I’ll take you inside of a pair of similar services that allow customers to periodically scan a malware sample ad receive alerts via instant message or e-mail when a new anti-virus product begins to detect the submission as malicious.

Java Patch Plugs 27 Security Holes

April 1, 2010

A new version of Java is available that fixes at least 27 security vulnerabilities in the ubiquitous software. To see which version of Java you have installed, visit this link and click the “Do I Have Java?” link under the big red “Free Java Download” button. The newest version that includes these 27 fixes is Java 6 Update 19.