Pinboard (guardiantech)

Apple drops 'We don't get PC viruses' schtick >> Wired.com

guardiantech — 2012-06-26T21:21:46+00:00

Apple has made a small change to a Mac marketing webpage that is a big deal to people who care about computer security.
We’re talking about the “Why you’ll love a Mac” webpage. For the past couple of years, Apple has claimed that the Mac “doesn’t get PC viruses,” adding that “a Mac isn’t susceptible to the thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers.”
That’s a tough one to argue with. After all, Windows software doesn’t work on the Mac operating system. But now, it’s a claim that Apple doesn’t seem comfortable making anymore.

Finally. Something like that, anyway.

Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting >> Ars Technica

guardiantech — 2012-04-05T06:44:49+00:00

"According to Dr. Web, the 57 percent of the infected Macs are located in the US and 20 percent are in Canada. Like older versions of the malware, the latest Flashback variant searches an infected Mac for a number of antivirus applications before generating a list of botnet control servers and beginning the process of checking in with them. Now that the fix for the Java vulnerability is out, however, there's no excuse not to update—the malware installs itself after you visit a compromised or malicious webpage, so if you're on the Internet, you're potentially at risk."

Microsoft Research: spammers act just like HIV virus in avoiding filters >> threatpost

guardiantech — 2011-12-05T22:48:20+00:00

"A report from Microsoft Research in honor of World AIDS Day yesterday described how Microsoft Researchers David Heckerman and Jonathan Carlson were called upon to help AIDS researchers analyze data about how the human immune system attacks the HIV virus using technology and algorithms Microsoft had developed to fight spam e-mail in the company's Hotmail, Outlook and Exchange e-mail products."

Where Have All the Spambots Gone? >> Krebs on Security

guardiantech — 2011-07-03T17:01:58+00:00

Mostly offline as owners have been jailed or gone into hiding. Spam volumes have fallen by 90% over the past year. But there's a new rootkit around, called TDL-4, infecting millions of machines: "Getting infected with TDL-4 may not be such a raw deal if your computer is already heavily infected with other malware: According to Kaspersky, the bot will remove threats like the ZeuS Trojan and 20 other malicious bot programs from host PCs. “TDSS scans the registry, searches for specific file names, blacklists the addresses of the command and control centers of other botnets and prevents victim machines from contacting them,” wrote Kaspersky analysts Sergey Golovanov and Igor Soumenkov."

Makes it sound like a boon.

How prevalent is malware on Windows PCs? >> ZDNet

guardiantech — 2011-04-19T21:48:42+00:00

"The best numbers I’ve seen from an independent source (i.e., one that isn’t trying to sell a security product) are in Microsoft’s annual Security Intelligence Report. The Malware Trends section of the most recent report contains telemetry data drawn from more than 600 million Windows computers worldwide by a number of different Microsoft security tools and services, including the Malicious Software Removal Tool (which is included with automatic Windows updates every month), the free Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Defender programs, and Microsoft’s enterprise security software."

The figure: between 1% and 6%. It would be interesting to know how sensitive this is at detecting botnets. But of course it won't apply to pirated versions of Windows on PCs in Asia, where most botnets take hold.