Dueling DDoS?
News sites on the Web today seem to have just discovered a story from last Thursday’s Guardian newspaper in the UK that said government agencies in the U.S. and U.K. are preparing to go after the servers of the criminal gangs and government-sponsored hackers in Russia, China and North Korea. The measures could include the subtle installation of spyware to try to identify the miscreants all the way up to denial-of-service attacks.
The Guardian quotes unnamed sources saying that the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency and the Metropolitan police e-crime unit have already begun operations.
It also said a recent federal government review of cyber security in the U.S. stated that the president has the legal authorization to carry out such attacks to defend the national security under the Communications Act of 1934.
This isn’t the first time this has been discussed. While the increase in hacking and malware recently must be dealt with, a lot of observers draw the conclusion that there could be serious collateral damage if government agencies and the dark side begin exchanging attacks. Since the main “business model” for Internet crime is to organize botnets of other people’s computers to command and control, launch the denial-of-service attacks, store the porn and do the drive-by downloads, this could get really ugly.
Better update the emergency phone numbers for your up-stream provider and dust off the ol’ disaster recovery plan.
Story here.
Autorun Worm Invades ZIP Formats
Stealth technique used by malware is considered a core characteristic which has been developed, improved, redesigned, and reused. Michael Tants, Threat Researcher at Regional TrendLabs in Europe, has notified us of a worm that has a unique way of hiding: on infection, WORM_AUTORUN.JFZ writes a copy of itself in every ZIP-compressed file it finds on a system.
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When WORM_AUTORUN.JFZ places a copy of itself in an archive, it uses double extension by adding .GIF and .SCR.
The .GIF extension is used as its social engineering factor. Curious users who still have their default configurations set in Windows Explorer (where the extension of known file types is hidden) may have an unpleasant experience once they double-click on the purported image file. The .SCR extension, on the other hand, makes it an executable file.
Writing in data files is not the only way this worm assures its existence on a system. It also makes use of traditional spreading methods like dropping a copy of itself (which is kkk.exe) in tandem with autorun.inf into all available physical, removable, and shared drives.
If you think your computer has become infected, I strongly encourage you to run a free Antivirus / Antimalware Scan from Paretologic’s Antivirus Plus!
The Top Free Antivirus Softwares for your PC
Top Free Antivirus Programs
If you don’t have antivirus already, you probably are experiencing a very slow computer! Unfortunately due to the extensive work that it takes to keep up with maintaining an accurate virus signature database, many more popular antivirus software can sometimes be out of many peoples budgets, especially if you are not using your computer very often or have a spare computer that still needs protecting.
Thankfully if you are looking for a great, free antivirus solution there are many to choose from. In this article we will look at some of the top antivirus software from leading manufacturers. Any of these programs should be able to provide great protection for your computer.
AVG Antivirus – http://free.avg.com/
- AVG is one of the more popular antivirus solutions, especially in the free market. The program is easy to use and has some useful features like daily scanning. Updates are generally released quite soon after new viruses have been made. They also do offer a paid version for greater detection.
Avast! Antivirus – http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
- An excellent choice for antivirus software, although can only be used for non-commercial purposes. Many people do find that it uses a lot of system resources though, so we do not recommend this for older computers. If you have a newer computer it should be perfectly fine though.
Avira Personal Free Antivirus – http://www.free-av.com/…_personal__free_antivirus.html
- Although not as full-featured as some of the other antivirus software, the Avira Personal Free Antivirus provides excellent virus detection and has an attractive user interface. According to AV-Test.org Avira rates slightly higher than other competing products. Unfortunately Avira do not include any spyware protection in their free version.
Being that these anti viruses are totally free, they may not detect 100% of all viruses that are out in the wild. I would strongly suggest running something like Eset NOD32’s FREE online scan periodically as well to make certain your computer is free of infections. Once a month should do perfectly for most people. You can find it here http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/.
We hope you enjoy this article, if you wish feel free to give us a comment below, or post in our forums! We’d love to hear from you.
