September 2009 saw some key security analysis raining directly onto the Adobe PDF platform, particularly with SANS pointing towards remote code execution within PDFs as one of the top threat vectors: Adobe Acrobat, Reader, and Flash Player Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2009-1862) Adobe Reader Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2009-1493) Kudos to Adobe for patching these

While serving in the Marine Corps, one activity that I felt was effective in preparing both myself and my unit to be able to handle real-world scenarios, was getting as much experience as possible from military training exercises. In most cases multiple branches worked together or, as in the case with NATO exercises, multiple countries

I just noticed a blog on "Security vendor’s “top-threat” list proof for their less-than-perfect performance?" at http://hype-free.blogspot.com/2010/01/security-vendors-top-threat-list-proof.html. The essential point seems to be that periodic virus detection statistics (like our monthly ThreatSense reports) are likely to be based in part on infections spotted on a protected machine when a signature/update is released that wasn't available

As our December ThreatSense report (now available at http://www.eset.com/threat-center/threat_trends/Global_Threat_Trends_December_2009.pdf) was not only the last of the year but the last of the decade, it's rather longer and more detailed than usual, including a look back at the last 12 months. I suppose we could have gone back over the whole decade, but I have to

We interrupt our – well, my - scheduled programming to bring to your attention an article in "The Register" that I think deserves your attention. I put up what was intended to be a brief pointer on the AVIEN blog (http://avien.net/blog/?p=253), but I found myself kind of warming to the subject, to the extent that I

I was recently asked to share some predictions about what 2010 will bring in the security space. I asked some colleagues from ESET Research to share their thoughts as well -Randy Randy Abrams Director of Technical Education Social Engineering attacks will continue to grow in prevalence. As operating systems and eventually applications become more secure,

I recently learned a new acronym: SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It). What this refers to is the defense that criminals routinely use (plausible deniability) – and even more so when it comes to illicit activities on the Internet. On Sunday, November 8th 2009 the Associated Press published an article regarding an individual that was

ESET released its Global Threat Report for the month of September, 2009, identifying the top ten threats seen during the month by ESET's ThreatSense.Net™ cloud.  You can view the report here and, as always, the complete collection is available here in the Threat Trends section of our web site.  While the report identifies a number

The results (released yesterday) from a study conducted by the Ponemon Institute yielded some interesting data points. The most visible of these was the finding that 85% of U.S. organizations experienced data breaches of varying magnitudes. This study, entitled "U.S. Enterprise Encryption Trends", has completed its fourth annual publication.  The data was directly obtained from

You may have noticed that I’ve been making a lot of references to this over the past few weeks. You can now download it here. Quite a few people have worked pretty hard to make this project happen, and I’d like to thank them now. I hope some of you will find it interesting and