Computer Security Articles

Published by Blanca Carton, Abril 2011

How many times you wished you could have accessed documents stored in your home PC when you were out? In my case, many. And I hate to say “I cannot send it right now”

This situation has changed. My Panda Global Protection 2011 integrates the BeAnywhere technology which allows remote access to my home computer from any other machine through the Internet. It does not matter whether it is done from work or from a cyber-café. Now, everything is at hand.

Installing it is really easy.

1. Go to Start / Programs / Panda Global Protection 2011 / Additional tools.
2. Select Install remote access.
3. The program installation wizard will give you two installation options:
   • Install to this computer. This option installs the program on your computer.
   • Install to a pen drive (any USB removable storage device). This option lets you store the file on a USB drive so that you can install the Remote Access program on other computers later on.
4. Finally, click Next.

Once you have installed the product, you need to create a remote access administrator account. To do this:

1. Open the program from Start/ Programs / Remote Access (BeAnywhere) / Beanywhere Drive.
2. Select a language from those available: English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and Dutch.
3. Create a login account for using the program. This account consists of an email address and password.
4. You will receive a confirmation email to activate your account by clicking the link in the message.
5. Once you have completed these steps you will have an administrator access account to manage computers remotely.

With these steps, you can remotely access all the documentation and files available. Easy and safe

Remember that if you have queries during the installation and activation of your antivirus you can always find help in the Technical Support forum.

The following data are the result of the monitoring and recording process made by spam sensors spread all around the world to provide the trend of security in terms of compromised systems.
Spam sensors are designed to record the malicious spam activity made by compromised systems mostly identified as bots.

The following charts and analysis is a report of data showing:

• Percentage of compromised systems worldwide
• Percentage of compromised systems in Europe
• Percentage of compromised systems in Latin America
• Percentage of compromised systems in APJ (Russia included)

The period of observation is January, February and March 2011.

[Figure 1 - Data about spam bots worldwide]

[Figure 2 - Data about spam bots in Europe]

[Figure 3 - Data about spam bots in Latin America]

[Figure 4 - Data about spam bots in APJ]

Analysis:

According to the data obtained, we have information regarding the global situation (Figure 1) where APJ (31%) surpasses Europe region (26%) in terms of compromised systems followed by LAM (18%), India (15%) and again US (10%) at the last position.

Drilling down into the European region (Figure 2) we have Romania (19%) followed by Italy (13%), Poland (12%) and Germany (11%).

The Latin American  region (Figure 3) shows Brazil is still at the top with more than 65% of the compromised systems.

In APJ (Figure4) we have Russia (40%) at the top followed by Vietnam (13%), China (13%) and Indonesia (13%) which are at the same level.

The general trend did not change as shown in the results, though we have noticed an increase of compromised systems in Brazil (last report indicated a level of 60%) and Romania (last report indicated a level of 10%) and a decrease in the level of compromised systems in France  (last report indicated 10%) and Italy (last report indicated 14%).
Globally the overall SPAM levels remain almost stationary as expected.

You can download a full-resolution version of the infographic here.

This Infographic was first featured on mashable.com on 16th of March, 2011.

On 18/03/11 At 12:41 PM

A few tips on choosing an anti-virus!

Video Rating:

As the role that computer-based systems play in our lives continues to evolve, so do the tactics and strategies of computer attackers. While early data breaches seemed to be mostly motivated by curiosity, fun, fame and poor judgement, modern intrusions are dominated by premeditated financial and, sometimes, political goals. The manner in which attackers execute their campaigns is changing accordingly.

Knowing Where to Strike

Computer attackers now place a greater emphasis on their targets’ business inner-workings , deriving long-term benefits from knowing where and how to locate the data they seek. For instance:

• We’ve seen targeted attacks, such as the APT incidents described in Mandiant’s M-Trends report, where attackers obtained a clear understanding of the organizational and technological aspects of the company to maintain persistent presence there.
• We’ve seen credit card breaches where attackers learned enough about the flow of payment data to find the best way to capture it. This involved scraping credit card numbers from memory, as Verizon discussed in its 2009 Data Breach Investigations Report. Intruders have also been known to recompile and deploying a payment-processing application to include a back door.
• We’ve seen attackers gain access to messaging systems that process sensitive communications. One example of this was the NASDAQ breach, where a private communications application for Board management needs Directors Desk was compromised. Presumably, such access provided intruders with insider details about publicly-traded companies.

Focused, Nimble Attacks vs. Large-Scale, Heavy Tactics

A documentary I watched on the History Channel discussed the extent to which naval warfare has changed from World War I to World War II. While earlier naval victories were mostly the function of battleship size and firepower, World War II victories were mostly attributed to smaller ships being used strategically to disrupt the enemy’s logistics and supply operations. According to Dr. Cliff Welborn,

“Allied navies waged a tonnage war to limit the volume of supplies reaching military operations. A tonnage war is a naval strategy designed to disrupt the enemy’s economic supply chain by destroying merchant shipping.”

We’re seeing a similar trend in computer intrusions. Large-scale, brute-force attacks still work, and will be part of the threat landscape for a long time. At the same time, the more advanced threat agents are using well-planned, nimble, focused strategies to strike at the heart of their target to derive the maximum benefit.

— Lenny Zeltser

We’ve just published a video going through the last 25 years of PC malware history in 9 minutes.

The video contains several demos of what old viruses used to look like.

Check it out here.

On 09/02/11 At 07:57 AM

Is this for real?

An Australian newspaper reports that a 93-year-old woman has been scammed by criminals who rang her up, pretending to be Microsoft, and told her that she had a virus infection on her computer.

These scams, of course, are nothing new and we’ve warned users about them before.

The reason why this one caught my eye is the tall story that the criminals used to fleece Ailsa Hamblin, of Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne.

According to the media reports:

Mrs Hamblin was told recent heavy rain and storms had caused more computer viruses to circulate.

Yes, you read that right.

They said that bad weather could help computer viruses to spread. (Is this some kind of cloud-based security issue? Maybe they meant the Storm virus?)

And what’s more (and seemingly without any pun intended), the report continues:

"It's high-pressure salesmanship," Mrs Hamblin said.

Meteorological jokes aside, we have to recognise that these fake tech support calls claiming that PCs beloning to computer users have fallen foul of malware are a significant problem.

As Sophos explained in a recent podcast, it can be hard for vulnerable people to tell the difference between a legitimate phone call and someone trying to scam you:

(Duration 6:15 minutes, size 4.5MBytes)

Make sure that your family and friends are on their guard against suspicious tech support calls telling them about infections on their computer – even if the callers do claim to be from Microsoft. It only takes a lapse of common sense for you to hand your credit card details straight down the line to a criminal.

Oh, and read the full story over on the Herald Sun website of how scammers are using the weather as an excuse for malware infections.

Full story: Naked Security – Sophos

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It's better to check twice a site than infect your computer.

Full story: MalwareCity Blog

CSA DISCLAIMER: This video taken from YouTube. As well as any other video found on this site is not hosted here, it just embedded, and it taken randomly by our system from video hosting services like YouTube, Metacafe, and others. Therefore, we are not responsible for any copyright violations, video materials, hacking or cracking activities, or any other. If you have any legal issues, please contact the appropriate host site.

CSA DISCLAIMER: This video taken from YouTube. As well as any other video found on this site is not hosted here, it just embedded, and it taken randomly by our system from video hosting services like YouTube, Metacafe, and others. Therefore, we are not responsible for any copyright violations, video materials, hacking or cracking activities, or any other. If you have any legal issues, please contact the appropriate host site.

CSA DISCLAIMER: This video taken from YouTube. As well as any other video found on this site is not hosted here, it just embedded, and it taken randomly by our system from video hosting services like YouTube, Metacafe, and others. Therefore, we are not responsible for any copyright violations, video materials, hacking or cracking activities, or any other. If you have any legal issues, please contact the appropriate host site.

I didn’t expect a part 5, but here it is! Adobe has announced that they will be making some significant changes to Flash. In a blog post http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2011/01/on-improving-privacy-managing-local-storage-in-flash-player.html Adobe’s marketing machine really pours it on thick, but there appears to be some good news.
In the blog it is stat4ed that a future release of Flash … Read More.

Full story: ESET ThreatBlog

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Law enforcement agencies throughout Southern California now have a new tool for fighting crime: a new regional computer forensics crime lab in Orange….

Full story: Computer Crime Research News

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CSA DISCLAIMER: This video taken from YouTube. As well as any other video found on this site is not hosted here, it just embedded, and it taken randomly by our system from video hosting services like YouTube, Metacafe, and others. Therefore, we are not responsible for any copyright violations, video materials, hacking or cracking activities, or any other. If you have any legal issues, please contact the appropriate host site.

CSA DISCLAIMER: This video taken from YouTube. As well as any other video found on this site is not hosted here, it just embedded, and it taken randomly by our system from video hosting services like YouTube, Metacafe, and others. Therefore, we are not responsible for any copyright violations, video materials, hacking or cracking activities, or any other. If you have any legal issues, please contact the appropriate host site.

Increasingly, Americans are being victimized by computer crimes, Gallup’s 2010 crime survey finds.

Eleven percent of U.S. adults said they or a household member were the target of a computer crime on their home computer in the past year, up from 6 to 8 percent in recent years, Gallup reported Monday.

Theft of money or property was the most common crime overall, at 16 percent, followed by vandalism of a home, car or other property at 14 percent. Next, after computer crime, was the closely related category of identity theft at 8 percent.

Fewer than 5 percent of respondents reported being victimized by a home break-in, a car theft or a violent crime. A third of all U.S. households suffered at least one of the nine categories Gallup found.

The computer crime rise was felt most in younger age groups.

The telephone survey of 1,025 adults was conducted Oct. 7-10 with a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

CSA DISCLAIMER: This video taken from YouTube. As well as any other video found on this site is not hosted here, it just embedded, and it taken randomly by our system from video hosting services like YouTube, Metacafe, and others. Therefore, we are not responsible for any copyright violations, video materials, hacking or cracking activities, or any other. If you have any legal issues, please contact the appropriate host site.

CSA DISCLAIMER: This video taken from YouTube. As well as any other video found on this site is not hosted here, it just embedded, and it taken randomly by our system from video hosting services like YouTube, Metacafe, and others. Therefore, we are not responsible for any copyright violations, video materials, hacking or cracking activities, or any other. If you have any legal issues, please contact the appropriate host site.

CSA DISCLAIMER: This video taken from YouTube. As well as any other video found on this site is not hosted here, it just embedded, and it taken randomly by our system from video hosting services like YouTube, Metacafe, and others. Therefore, we are not responsible for any copyright violations, video materials, hacking or cracking activities, or any other. If you have any legal issues, please contact the appropriate host site.

CSA DISCLAIMER: This video taken from YouTube. As well as any other video found on this site is not hosted here, it just embedded, and it taken randomly by our system from video hosting services like YouTube, Metacafe, and others. Therefore, we are not responsible for any copyright violations, video materials, hacking or cracking activities, or any other. If you have any legal issues, please contact the appropriate host site.

CSA DISCLAIMER: This video taken from YouTube. As well as any other video found on this site is not hosted here, it just embedded, and it taken randomly by our system from video hosting services like YouTube, Metacafe, and others. Therefore, we are not responsible for any copyright violations, video materials, hacking or cracking activities, or any other. If you have any legal issues, please contact the appropriate host site.