Wednesday, March 24, 2010

“AhnLab Inc. Introduces Antivirus Software For iPhones, Android Phones (Bernama)” plus 3 more

“AhnLab Inc. Introduces Antivirus Software For iPhones, Android Phones (Bernama)” plus 3 more

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

AhnLab Inc. Introduces Antivirus Software For iPhones, Android Phones (Bernama)

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 01:30 AM PDT

Internet Explorer users targeted by fake antivirus (PC Advisor)

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 02:21 AM PDT

Criminals are stepping up their attacks on an unpatched flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, using it to install fake antivirus products and malicious back doors on victim's computers.

Microsoft first warned of the bug on March 9, saying that it had been used in "targeted attacks". But now, according to researchers, the exploits are much more widespread. By late last week, security vendor AVG was getting reports of 30,000 attacks per day, according to Roger Thompson, AVG's chief research officer.

"It's not a massive attack, but it's an unpatched exploit being used aggressively," he said Tuesday.

It appears that two separate cybergangs have begun using the exploit - the first uses it to install fake antivirus software on victim's computers; the second group is installing a variant of the Sinowal Trojan, Thompson said.

Most of the attacks are being hosted on websites that appear to be specifically set up to host the attack code, rather than hacked sites, Thompson said.

Although AVG tracked just 16,000 attacks on Monday, Thompson predicted that problem would get worse in the next few days, putting pressure on Microsoft to rush out a fix for the bug ahead of it's scheduled April 13 security updates. "I would expect it to be adopted by more gangs over the next couple of weeks, as soon as they figure out where to find a copy," Thompson said.

Rival AV vendor Trend Micro agreed that attacks are on the rise. "It's popping up all over the place," said Paul Ferguson, a researcher with the company. "It started off slowly, but I really started noticing it yesterday, and then today - there were a bunch of sites which harboured this exploit," he said.

Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7 are vulnerable to the attack. For it to work, however, the victim has to first visit a website hosting the malicious code.

Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment on this story.

See more:

PC security advice

Internet Explorer 8 review

Internet Explorer 9 review

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

AhnLab intros antivirus for iPhone, Android phones. (Macworld UK)

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 02:46 AM PDT

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Antivirus firm Immunet brings scanning to the cloud (TechWorld)

Posted: 23 Mar 2010 03:09 AM PDT

Although some like to say "antivirus is dead" because of the explosion in malware that makes signature-based desktop protection harder than ever, start-up Immunet wants to bring new life to antivirus scanning through cloud computing.

Founded by CEO Oliver Friedrichs, former director of emerging technologies at Symantec, Immunet is developing what Friedrichs calls "the next generation antivirus product" that's based on a cloud-styled antivirus platform that will work with a fairly lightweight desktop agent to block and destroy malware. "Our goal is to reinvent the antivirus space."

"With the cloud-based antivirus platform, there's no downloading," Friedrichs says.The Windows-based desktop agent, about 4MB, "queries the Immunet cloud. All our knowledge base is in the cloud, and it can grow indefinitely. It also lets us remediate false positives immediately. We operate like a standard A/V product except we're a tenth of the usual size."

Fake antivirus software is most costly security scam of 2010 | Antivirus software often foxed by malicious URLs | Websites offered free anti-hijack scans

Immunet has had a free beta version out since last year, which is said to be in use by about 60,000 individuals, and the start-up expects to have a commercial product for the consumer market in the second quarter. The firm last November received about $2 million in venture funding from ALTOS Ventures and TechOperators.

Immunet, founded in 2008, has about 10 employees, including former Symantec vice president of engineering Alfred Huger, who holds the same title at Immunet, as well as director of cloud engineering Adam O'Donnell, who held the same title at antispam messaging security firm CloudMark.

Friedrichs says the cloud-based collective-intelligence approach developed by Immunet works quickly to add new detection signatures, and though the tiny start-up is surrounded by several far larger players in the antivirus market that are also developing their own cloud-based approaches to malware detection, Immunet believes its approach outstrips "what larger incumbents are doing today."

Immunet is also building its software agent to "run alongside McAfee, Symantec and AVG as well as about 23 other products," Friedrichs says, adding the ability to co-exist with more antivirus products are being added all the time.

The idea behind this co-existence is that Immunet watches what another antivirus product might be doing to protect the user on the desktop to learn about new threats so "we're harnessing the collective power on another A/V," Friedrichs says. Immunet is mainly focused on core file-based threats, and when it comes to web downloads, "we'll catch the threat if it hits your hard drive."

Immunet operates its own crawlers and sensors to collect evidence of threats. As to whether Immunet now feels in competition with Symantec, where Friedrichs and Huger used to work, Friedrichs will only say, "We have a good working relationship with them. The companies work together on many cases."

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