archives
September 2009

Greyware: Trust Me, I’m a Lawyer

Since I’ve just spent several days at a major conference, you might have expected a flurry of blogs about it. And indeed, there’s a lot more I hope to say about VB 2009, but I’ve been beset by a number of other issues that have demanded my attention, in and out of the blogosphere.  I did rather hope

Microsoft Security – Essential?

People keep asking me about Microsoft’s newly released Security Essentials free anti-malware (formerly known as Morro). Randy and I both blogged about it at some length back in June – see http://www.eset.com/threat-center/blog/category/microsoft-security-essentials and http://www.eset.com/threat-center/blog/2009/08/03/more-free-lunches, for instance – but there’s still a lot of interest in the impact that the product is likely to have on ESET

Making Malware

McAfee Avert Labs has been advertising a "Malware Experience" session for the "Focus 09" security conference, which offers attendees the chance to "to work with a Trojan horse, commandeer a botnet, install a rootkit and experience first hand how easy it is to modify websites to serve up malware." Actually, this text has been modified: it

Dissipating the Cloud

The next presentation here at Virus Bulletin is called “Tales from Cloud Nine” and is presented by Mihai Chiriac, the head of research from BitDefender. While using the word “cloud”, Mihai continued to explain what the technology is that is being used, how and why it used. This was an exceptionally well balanced presentation that

A Cloud is a Container of Fog that Obscures Vision

I’m sitting in a presentation at the Virus Bulletin conference in Geneva. The topic is “Why in the Cloud scanning is not a solution. The presentation is done by Andreas Marx and Maik Morgenstern from AV-Test.org. What they found in extensive testing is that “Cloud” scanners do not have a detection advantage over traditional solutions.

Postcard from Geneva

Virus Bulletin 2009 is now in full swing, though meetings and other issues have kept me from seeing as much as I’d like. Still, excellent opening and keynote speeches, and a very interesting talk on cyber-insurance from Pascal Lointier. (A bit of a first for me: though I’ve been attending VB most years since 1996 and

Genial Geneva and a note for Francophones

Bonjour mes amis! Well, I am in Switzerland, and very close to the French border, for the Virus Bulletin conference – perhaps the most eagerly anticipated event in the anti-malware researcher’s calendar. How sad is that? I also thought you might like to further extend your French skills on an article here, about a presentation

That BT Scam Again

A few days ago, I mentioned an email chain letter that’s going round in the UK about a scam where where "the bad guy poses as a telephone company operative and threatens to cut off service unless the panicked recipient of the call immediately pays an allegedly unpaid bill. Faced with a sceptical potential victim,

Do You Wear a Seatbelt?

Modern cars are designed with crumple zones. These crumple zones help to decrease the risk of death in a severe car accident. Modern cars also have airbags. The airbags reduce your risk of death or injury in the case of an accident. If you don’t use a seatbelt your airbag and crumple zone are unlikely

Can’t Surf the Web?

Australia’s Internet Industry Association (IIA) is working on best practices for isolating computers with bots on them (http://iia.net.au/index.php/initiatives/isps-guide.html) At the same time, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is also drafting a document about the same thing (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-oreirdan-mody-bot-remediation-03) If these recommendations are adopted then people who have bots on their computers would have to get

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