I received a couple of questions from a reader about cleaning files. I thought the topic might be of interest to more than the reader, so I decided to post and answer the questions here, as well as providing a bit more information. The first question is: When an AV cleans an infected file, why

R.I.P. IE6 Targeted and sophisticated attacks against Google, Adobe, and Juniper used an unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer to breach computers. These incidents are receiving a lot of attention from the media much due to the size and notability of the companies affected. France, Germany and now Australia have issued guidelines and urged users to

Apple has released its first patches of 2010 and if you are running Snow Leopard I recommend you apply the patches. Apple users have the distinct advantage of Windows users of predominantly being ignored. Despite the fact that playing a malformed audio file can cause arbitrary code execution (which means your Mac is vulnerable to

There is a vulnerability in Internet Explorer that Microsoft will patch tomorrow. Normally Microsoft releases patches on the second Tuesday of each month, but in the case Microsoft is making the patch available much sooner. The most probable reason for the “out of band” patch is that this vulnerability received a ton of attention as

Jeff Debrosse, ESET's Senior Director of Research, has published some further resources on his personal blog at http://jeffdebrosse.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/haiti-info-and-update/ (help resources and security resources). As he explains there, Jeff is personally and emotionally closer to this tragedy than most of us, and I hope that his family all turn up safe and sound. I've also received pointers to

SC Magazine recently reported a malicious application in Google’s Android online market store http://www.scmagazineus.com/malicious-apps-found-in-googles-android-online-store/article/161001/. Due to the highly open nature of Android applications, this is going to probably be a huge problem. Here is the real irony. Many people will probably switch from Android to the iPhone because of the security concerns. Why is it

Update: more resources I picked up on  a security list just now (I'm drowning in email here!) Apologies for any duplication. Update 2: more additions below. @imaguid pointed out in a microblog that there's a pattern to the use of social engineering around disasters like the Haiti earthquake:  "first comes the tragedy, then malware purveyors exploiting the

[Part 4 of an occasional series, updating a blog series I ran in early 2009 to reflect changes in the threat landscape. This series will also be available shortly as a white paper.] Good Password Practice Use different passwords for your computer and on-line services. Also, it’s good practice to change passwords on a regular basis

You may have seen the news that Facebook is teaming up with McAfee to improve security. Frankly, providing users with McAfee’s product is not likely to do much in terms of improving security. Facebook users all over the world have access to free and paid solutions, so this isn’t likely to make a big difference.

In this day of high tech international data theft, sometimes we forget that all of the old school attacks are still out there.  There was a stark reminder reported by Apple Insider. Apple purchasers may be at more risk because of the high dollar value of Apple computers compared to PCs. If I go to