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
Wearing my vendor-independent Apple/smartphone commentary hat, I've just posted a couple of blogs on the Mac Virus site that some of you might find of interest. OK, suit yourselves. ;-) "Touching (or Bumping) Base" addresses a mixed bag of issues: Charlie Miller's presentation on fuzzing for "20 zero-day holes … in closed source Apple products"
[Part 9 of an occasional series, updating a blog series I ran in early 2009 to reflect changes in the threat landscape. This series is now available as a white paper at http://www.eset.com/download/whitepapers.php.] Be Wireless, not Careless Don’t connect to just any “free Wi-Fi” access point: it might alter your DNS queries or be the “evil twin” of
[Part 8 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.] Anti-Virus isn’t Total Security Don’t expect antivirus alone to protect you from everything. Use additional measures such as a personal firewall, antispam and
I’ve mentioned here before that targeted malware, often delivered by “spear phishing” carried by apparently “harmless” documents such as PDFs, .DOCs and spreadsheets rather than overt programs, can have much more impact than the raw numbers of such attacks suggest. In fact, some sources now use the term “whaling” rather than “spear phishing” to reflect the
Don’t expect antivirus alone to protect you from everything. Use additional measures such as a personal firewall, antispam and anti-phishing toolbars, but be aware that there is a lot of fake security software out there. This means that you need to take care to invest in reputable security solutions, not malware which claims to fix
So the people at untangle.com decide to “test” anti-virus product in an effort to prove their dedication to open source zealousness. I’m not against open source, but if you want to promote it then be honest about it. First untangle grabs a few samples of “viruses” that they know CLAM AV will detect. Unfortunately 1
The Hamburglar, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburglar, was the crook in some old McDonald’s commercials. It appears that Hamburglar has returned to steal information from McDonald’s customers. Don’t worry, you would have to be one of 10,000 winners (in Japan) to get this special treatment, the rest of us losers keep our passwords. McDonald’s unfortunately put their trust in
Audio: /us/resources/podcasts/ESETepisode1.mp3, Transcript: Chief Research Officer Andrew Lee as he discusses the criminalization of malware, zero-day threats and how to proactively protect against them and gives a brief history of ESET.
It’s been a busy day in anti-virus land. There is a reported zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Excel. Currently the exploit of the vulnerability comes in email as an attached Excel spreadsheet. When a user opens the spreadsheet the vulnerability is exploited and malicious software is downloaded. So far the malicious downloads have been proactively detected
