Quite a calm week?

Sep 2, 2007 07:18 GMT  ·  By

This has been a great week for security - we had a few anti-virus releases, a lot of security improvements and a few "how to"-s on software and hardware as well. All the sites that I have checked this week and that had a threat-o-meter displayed a green bar, so the malware level was normal.

Thursday really came to me with good news because spam levels dropped a little bit with the crash and burn of PDF spam. Now that was great! It seems that people are just too lazy to pay attention to this form of unwanted mail, a fact which made it inefficient. That was good news for computer users, at least - I can't say the same about cell phone customers, since SMS spam has hit mobile users from Seattle. Cell phone spam is easy picking for hackers, since there are no filters for phones and nothing that can stop them from sending those unwanted messages.

Compared to what happened last week, the last seven days were a little bit quieter. I mean, the only incident that is worth mentioning is the fact that security experts have discovered that Sony uses rootkit technology again. And like I said in the article, this is just rotten - why? Because rootkits act just like Trojans and they make your machine vulnerable. Also, related to last week's incidents, finally the Monster crisis is over and the site started rebuilding its defenses, but this Friday I found out that even one of the government sites has been affected by this.

The virus activity this week was nothing compared with what I've seen earlier this month. We just had a few Trojans here and there, but the damage was not too great. Storm changed its face again, but that doesn't come as a surprise since it happened many times before. What was a bit astonishing is that it bypassed Google's defenses and infected some Blogger sites. That isn't something you see everyday, but still, the damage wasn't too big.

This Monday I had a story covering the recent dumb down of web based piracy and how easy it is to illegally download MP3, but other than that there were no real threats to DRM. Even better, a new system has been developed to protect streaming media, second by second. This is said to be hacker proof!

There were not too many vulnerabilities disclosed this week and you can see them here but in any case, as I've said before, security has just been cranked up a notch in the last days and here are some useful "How To" articles: on firewalls, on anti-viruses, and, of course, on spam filtering.

Hacking news - well, nothing really worth mentioning except for the one with the porn filter. The thing is that Aussie government paid a lot of dough for this utility that is supposed to help parents control what their kids see on the Web. The worst thing isn't the fact that it has been hacked but the fact that this has been done by a 16-year old. Other than that we had the basic web hacks that happen every week, with the most severe one being against the Bank of India that had been infested with about 25 malicious programs. Go visit it, perhaps you'll get a Trojan virus!

The best stuff that happened this week is, like I said at the beginning of the article, the release of Norton Anti-Virus 2008 (as well as Norton Security 2008) and of another version of Eset's NOD32, a better one. Also, another thing - BitDefender has been tested by German specialists and it took down 99.51% of malware. That was just great, this has got to be one of the greatest anti-viruses ever.

As a smart man once said, artificial intelligence is no match for human stupidity and this week we've had our share of stupid happenings. For example, if you wanted to vote on the web in Somerset, you would most probably end up on a porn site, as a hacker has linked two pages together. I got a hold of this material on Friday, the same day I read about the clumsiest hacker ever - this guy wanted to hack a site and use the malicious code, but he couldn't get it right. He mistook one part of the site for another and he did? absolutely nothing!

This pretty much sums it up for these seven days - a great week for security software and at least we are going through a period in which the good guys have the upper hand!

In any case, here are this week's pieces of advice:

1. Keep your hard disk defragmented in order for your anti-virus to run better! 2. If you're an IT manager, make sure you have a well-configured blacklist!

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