Category Archives: Latest Warnings

A Closer Look at Rapport from Trusteer

April 29, 2010
121 Comments

A number of readers recently have written in to say their banks recently have urged customers to install a security program called Rapport as a way to protect their online bank accounts from fraud. The readers who pinged me all said they didn’t know much about this product, and did I recommend installing it? Since it has been almost two years since I last reviewed the software, I thought it might be useful to touch base with its creators to see how this program has kept pace with the latest threats.

Infamous Storm Worm Stages a Comeback

April 28, 2010
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The “Storm Worm,” a prolific strain of malicious software once responsible for blasting out 20 percent of spam sent worldwide before it died an ignominious death roughly 18 months ago, was resurrected this week. Researchers familiar with former strains of the worm say telltale fingerprints in the new version strongly suggest that it was either rebuilt by its original creators or was sold to another criminal malware gang.

Rogue Antivirus Gangs Seize on McAfee Snafu

April 22, 2010
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Purveyors of rogue anti-virus, a.k.a. “scareware,” often seize upon hot trending topics in their daily efforts to beef up the search engine rankings of their booby-trapped landing pages. So it’s perhaps no surprise that these scammers are capitalizing on search terms surrounding McAfee, which just yesterday shipped a faulty anti-virus update that caused serious problems for a large number of customers.

Java Patch Targets Latest Attacks

April 15, 2010
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Oracle Corp. has shipped a new version of its Java software that nixes a feature in Java that hackers have been using to foist malicious software. Java 6 Update 20 was released sometime in the last 24 hours, and includes some security fixes, although Oracle’s documentation on that front is somewhat opaque. Most significantly, the update removes a feature that hackers have started using to install malware.

Unpatched Java Exploit Spotted In-the-Wild

April 14, 2010
33 Comments

Last week, a Google security researcher detailed a little-known feature built into Java that can be used to launch third-party applications. Today, security experts unearthed evidence that a popular song lyrics Web site was compromised and seeded with code that leverages this Java feature to install malicious software.

TrendMicro Toolbar + Long URL = Fail

April 12, 2010
24 Comments

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.