WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms around. However, if you self-host your blog (and not host on wordpress.com), you are responsible to make it more secure. WordPress blogs are constant target of automated and manual hacker attacks. When your site gets infected, it redirects your visitors to Read more…
Although websites are usual way to distribute malware, email is far from forgotten by malware makers. Spam volume goes down, but targeted spam messages work wonders. One of the popular tactics is sending out mails with zipped files or links to them claiming this is document you asked for, or Read more…
There is a spam campaign going on Twitter that promotes Blackhole exploit kit or some fake antiviruses. The messages look like “young girls are waiting” or similar. Sure, these messages look spammy like hell, but some people click on them and land in fake online scanner pages. Such pages resemble Read more…
Online reputation is important. Everyone checks product information and reviews online. In many cases, more than a single source is checked. Thus it is critical to have decent reputation which is quite hard for people with malicious intents. However, it is still possible and malware makers use more than a Read more…
Rogue AV market was mostly dead through August and September. Although this might be caused by Chronopay raid, the timing of the raids did not match with the decline. Additionally, we have seen significant shift to different kind of malware: google redirects, new kinds of rootkits, Bitcoin mining software and Read more…
Several botnets were shut down and the CEO of rogue parmacy and fake antivirus credit card processor was arrested recently. This resulted in the significant drop of malicious software activity in August. Many took time to celebrate and rightfully so. However, I do not think this is the end of Fake Read more…
A goal of typical fake antivirus program is convincing you into giving away your credit card details. This can be done in several ways: 1. Simulating PC problems: showing porn, slowing it down, blocking other programs. This forces users into searching for solution to make PC usable. Quite often fake Read more…
Last autumn was lead by ThinkPoint (or fake Microsoft essentials alerts) family of malware. Together with Security Tool Virus it was one of the biggest and the most promoted parasites. Most of other parasite families were divided in smallish, slower attacks that haven’t hit that huge amount of PCs. However, Read more…
A new fake system maintenance utility is infecting more and more PCs this weekend: Ultra Defragger. This malware is clone of HDD Defragmenter/System Defragmenter/etc and has little differences except in the name. It shows same outrageous claims about hardware malfunctions and offers software-based “cure” for 80 USD. Everything it shows Read more…
The popularity of rogue anti-virus programs, such as Security Tool, or the fake Microsoft Security Essentials clones like Think Point, speaks to the fact that many people are completely oblivious as to how these parasites are to be dealt with. I will therefore try to dispel some misconceptions about these Read more…