Archive for the ‘Virus Alerts’ Category

No contest.

If you’ve been paying attention to general computer news, you may have read about the Conficker worm, and what may (or may not) happen to Windows PCs that are infected with Conficker on April 1. The worm has received a lot of attention, leading more than a few Mac users to ask about the worm’s impact on OS X. Mac security maker Intego received so many inquiries that the company added a Conficker entry to its blog.

So, as a Mac user, how worried should you be about Conficker? The short answer to the question is that, unless you’re running Windows inside a virtual machine or via Boot Camp, you really don’t have much to fear from Conficker. It’s a worm that takes advantage of Windows systems with unapplied security patches—a population that may be as high as 30 percent of the Windows machines out there. Conficker won’t work on OS X at all, so most Mac users have nothing to fear from the worm.

Our local news ran a story that made April 1 sound more scary than Y2K in 1999.

Worries that the notorious Conficker worm will somehow rise up and devastate the Internet on April 1 are misplaced, security experts said Friday.

Conficker is thought to have infected more than 10 million PCs worldwide, and researchers estimate that several million of these machines remain infected. If the criminals who created the network wanted to, they could use this network to launch a very powerful distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack against other computers on the Internet.

Read the rest at Yahoo! Tech.

Ack!

The Center for Disease Control has issued a medical alert about a highly contagious, potentially dangerous virus that is transmitted orally, by hand, and even electronically.
This virus is called Weekly Overload Recreational Killer (WORK).
If you receive WORK from your boss, any of your colleagues or anyone else via any means whatsoever – DO NOT TOUCH IT!!! This virus will wipe out your private life entirely. If you should come into contact with WORK you should immediately leave the premises.

Take two good friends to the nearest liquor store and purchase one or both of the antidotes – Work Isolating Neutralizer Extract (WINE) and Bothersome Employer Elimination Rebooter (BEER). Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your system.

You should immediately forward this medical alert to five friends. If you do not have five friends, you have already been infected and WORK is controlling your life.

Of course this is important information, so take a moment after your next microdermabrasion to make sure you are not afflicted.

It seems like the hackers are trying to stay one step ahead.

Computers infected with the Conficker worm are being updated with a new variant that sidesteps an industry effort to sever the link between the worm and its hacker controllers, researchers at Symantec Corp. said Friday.

The new version, dubbed Conficker.c, represents the first set of “orders” that researchers have witnessed being sent to infected systems, said Vincent Weafer, vice president of Symantec Corp.’s security response group. The update shows that the hackers want to defend their collection of compromised PCs, Weafer argued.

They’ll trip soon enough.

A computer virus that may leave Microsoft Windows users vulnerable to digital hijacking is spreading through companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia, already infecting close to 9 million machines, according to a private online security firm.

Fortunately, however, it may be a dud.

…

F-Secure’s chief security adviser, Patrik Runald, said the virus’s coding suggests a type of bug that alerts computer users to bogus infections on their machines and offers to help by selling them antivirus software.

Instead, the virus is simply spreading to little effect, though it may still pose a threat to infected computers.

Make sure your anti-virus software is up to date.

It seems there is another security threat out there, just in time for Christmas.

Microsoft has confirmed the existence of a new and potentially serious security threat to users of its SQL Server database software.

“Microsoft is aware that exploit code has been published on the Internet for the vulnerability addressed by this advisory,” the company said in a bulletin published Monday.

The threat is essentially software code that hackers could use to access or alter corporate databases built with SQL Server. The malicious code could allow what’s known in IT security as remote code execution, a process by which hackers could, for instance, alter figures in a bank account without ever setting foot on the bank’s premises.

Thank goodness InformationWeek was there to put it all in plain English for us.

Just like in real life, it took three hospitals several weeks to cure a common virus.

Three London hospitals whose computer systems were infected with a relatively old worm are now almost back online.

Around 5,000 PCs at St Bartholomew’s, the Royal London Hospital and The London Chest Hospital were hit in mid-November by an infection of Mytob, a worm that e-mails itself to other PCs and can be used to put other malicious software on a machine.

About 97 percent of those PCs are now clear of Mytob, according to a statement issued Friday. The remaining PCs, which are located in non-clinical areas, should soon come back online.

The question here is, now that they have healed them, are they immune from catching it again or is it just a matter of time?

Have you updated your Windows PC lately?

A worm dubbed Win32/Conficker.A is making the rounds on Windows machines, exploiting a security hole that Microsoft released a patch for in October, Microsoft said on Wednesday.

The number of attacks have increased over the past couple of days, exploiting a critical vulnerability that was addressed by security update MS08-067.

If you haven’t been patching your Windows, you better get on those Windows Updates like real quick. Fixes for Windows are coming and going faster than diet supplements at the health food store.

If your anti-virus software presents you with this mis-information, you may want to double check before deleting the file.

More proof that anti-malware software isn’t perfect: A virus definitions update for the popular AVG antivirus system has been tagging a file called user32.dll as a threat and recommends it be deleted.

The catch: user32.dll is a rather essential part of Windows. Delete it and you won’t be able to boot your PC.

I hope, by the time you read this, that AVG has already corrected the problem and you won’t find yourself in the position of having to repair your computer. Choosing the right anti-virus software is like picking the right diet pills, but once you pick the right one, you know you’re on your way to a better life. AVG is the best anti-virus software for Windows.

You could solve the whole problem by purchasing a Mac too.

When you read this quote, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?

A malicious computer virus that steals passwords has been brought on board the International Space Station, Nasa has confirmed.

The virus, known as W32.Gammima.AG, was carried into orbit on laptops brought up by astronauts in July.

The space station’s core operations have not been affected – Nasa described the infection as nothing more than a “nuisance” – but an investigation has been launched into how security systems were breached.

Yeah. If laptops on the ISS actually had an internet connection I would be questioning who was surfing for pr0n. Maybe they should just stick to books while they’re up there.