Antispyware Pro XP Analysis and Removal

Antispyware Pro XP or Anti spyware Pro XP is one of the many variants belonging to the family of rogue security software. The following is an account of my experience with this rogue.
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Understanding Search Engine Privacy and How to prevent Snooping Part I

Search engines keep records of every search, ever made in a way that can be traced to individuals. They retain users’ search data -anonymized or not- to eternity. They put web cookies on their computers that makes it possible to match search queries to their computer address, their name…if they are logged in…and possibly more depending on how much information they have shared with the particular search engine.
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XP/Vista Antivirus 2008 Analysis and Removal

This rogue anti-malware application mostly installs via encoded re-directs from hacked web pages. When you happen to visit a hacked web page on a otherwise legitimate website your browser is automatically redirected to a rogue ware hosting website which shows a popup with a the text “Your computer is running slower than normal, maybe it is infected with with Viruses, Adware or Spyware. XP/Vista Antivirus will perform a quick and completely FREE scan of your system for malicious software.”
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Microsoft Plugs Critical Security Holes

"Microsoft released four "critical" security bulletins for September’s Patch Tuesday, including a massive update for Microsoft Windows GDI+ that affects multiple products.
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Google cuts data retention period again

"last year, it bowed to pressure from the EU and shaved six months off its retention of identity information. In a further move to avert potential legislation, Google announced yesterday that it would cut the figure in half: IP addresses in its logs will now be anonymized after nine months.
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EstDomains Inc: A Superlative Scam and Spam Site Registrar

"According to RegistrarStats.com, EstDomains is the 49th largest domain name registrar, with more than 270,000 domains. Security Fix is still working on cataloging all of those domains, but for the purposes of this analysis we’ll examine some 10,000 Web site names that are both registered through EstDomains and using the company’s various domain name servers to route traffic to them.
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Google issues first patches for Chrome

"Just days after it rolled out Chrome, Google Inc. issued an update after Vietnamese security researchers reported a critical vulnerability in the beta browser.
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McAfee’s Artemis Putting Malware Signatures in the Cloud

"Essentially the idea is to offload some malware checks to an online database. When the software detects a program or file as being suspicious, probably through behavior checks, it takes some form of hash of the files involved and submits it in a database query to their most updated malware database. If a hit is detected then the user can be notified, and perhaps the malware removed.
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Celebrity Malicious Spam Analysis and Removal

Recently my inbox was filled with spam containing subject lines "Re: Offical Update 2008" and number of catchy celebrity themed storm worm lines… I opened one of the spam mail with the paris hilton subject line and clicked on the single link which promised to let me view a previously unseen video of the celebrity.
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Fake XP SecurityCenter Analysis and Removal

XP SecurityCenter is rogue antimalware application installed through dubious means like a link in a spam mail or through a link in a hacked website. It’s look-alike of the legitimate Windows Security Center and it does what other rogue antimalware apps do that is to scare the unfortunate victim by throwing various pop-up messages about the state of the health of their PC.
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