AVG antivirus update accidentally cripples Windows XP PCs
"According to messages on AVG’s support forums and its own support site, an update released late Saturday for the company’s security software fingered the "user32.dll" file as a Trojan horse. As per the program’s settings, the AVG software, including the newest version 8.0 and its predecessor 7.5, shut the .dll away in quarantine. The result: A crippled computer.
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Spyware then and now
Google brought back its oldest available index from the year 2001 on the occasion of its 10th birthday. It brought back certain nostalgic memories…I was into my second PC, a Compaq. That was the year I first got the internet connection at home through a 56kbps dial-up connection and that was the year I truly found the meaning of googling…
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Growth of Anti-Botnet Startups Points to AV Deficiencies
"A slew of software companies new and old are shipping tools aimed at slowing the botnet epidemic, but the emergence of this new market is seen by some analysts as an indictment of the existing anti-malware industry. With reliable statistics showing a dramatic rise in botnet-related computer infections, venture capitalists are now pouring money into startups with technology promising to find and eradicate backdoor Trojans, keystroke loggers and stealth rootkits.
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Antivirus Inventor: Security Departments Are Wasting Their Time
"Peter Tippett thinks it’s time for security professionals to wake up and stop wasting their energy. In a presentation here yesterday, Tippett — who is vice president of risk intelligence for Verizon Business, chief scientist at ICSA Labs, and the inventor of the program that became Norton AntiVirus — said that about one third of today’s security practices are based on outmoded or outdated concepts that don’t apply to today’s computing environments.
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Antivirus firms, testers form standards group
"Nearly two dozen companies announced on Monday the creation of an organization to set best practices and standards for the evaluation of antivirus software. As previously reported by SecurityFocus, more than 40 researchers met in Bilbao, Spain, last month to finalize the details of the group, dubbed the Anti-Malware Testing Standard Organization (AMTSO).
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Malware: Malware Evolving Too Fast for Antivirus Apps
"If you think that the latest security suites afford complete protection against malware attacks, think again. Today’s for-profit malware pushers use dedicated test labs and other increasingly professional techniques to improve their chances of infecting your computer. And the techniques they employ to outpace security software makers appear to be working.
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Malware: How Antivirus Programs (Don’t) Work
"For over 25 years, the computer community has been dealing with malicious software. These little pieces of malware started as minor pranks and theoretical explorations into subverting security controls, but soon developed into more malicious programs that have left a significant impact on the computing community. Over the last decade we have seen viruses/Trojans/worms wreck countless computer systems, shutdown entire business, and impact our economy on a scale that rivals that of a major natural disaster.
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Vulnerabilities: Antivirus software as a malware gateway
December 29, 2007 by Shanmuga
Filed under Vulnerabilities
"Critical vulnerabilities have been found this year in virtually all antivirus products. But the danger of protective software, of all things, mutating into a gateway for pests is still largely underestimated. Antivirus software is not only the most important protection against pests arriving from the Internet, it could also be one of the most dangerous gateways for attackers and their damaging software.
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