Category Archives: Other

Rogue Antivirus Victims Seldom Fight Back

July 27, 2010
52 Comments

Recently I came into possession of a series of documents showing the financial books of an organization that orchestrates the distribution of rogue anti-virus attacks or “scareware,” programs that hijack victim PCs with misleading security alerts in an effort to frighten the user into purchasing worthless security software. I found many interesting details in this data cache, but one pattern in the data I think explains why scareware continues to be a major scourge: Relatively few people victimized by it dispute the transaction with their bank.

Services Let Malware Purveyors Check Their Web Reputation

July 26, 2010
11 Comments

Virus writers and botmasters increasingly are turning to new subscription services that test when and whether malicious links have been flagged by Web reputation programs like Google Safe Browsing and McAfee SiteAdvisor.

Fun with ATM Skimmers, Part III

May 7, 2010
44 Comments

ATM skimmers, or devices that thieves secretly attach to cash machines in order to capture and ultimately clone ATM cards, have captured the imagination of many readers. Past posts on this blog about ATM skimmers have focused on their prevalence and stealth in attacking cash machines in the United States, but these devices also are a major problem in Europe as well.

Immunet: A Second Opinion Worth a Second Look

April 14, 2010
33 Comments

Security experts have long maintained that running two different anti-virus products on the same Windows machine is asking for trouble, because the two programs will compete for resources, slow down or even crash the host PC.

But an upstart anti-virus company called Immunet Protect is hoping Windows users shrug off this conventional wisdom, and embrace the dual anti-virus approach. Indeed, the company’s free product works largely by sharing data about virus detections by other anti-virus products on the PCs of the Immunet user community.