malware

Russia has passed China to become the largest generator of spyware and other malicious code, according to a report set to be released on Friday.

Security software maker PC Tools says that Russia now accounts for 27.9 percent of such software, compared with China's 26.5 percent. The U.S., which had been the second largest producer in prior surveys, is now in third place, accounting for a hair less than 10 percent of malware.

Russia is also known as a hotbed for junk e-mail, known as spam.

PC Tools said that the death of Russian Business Network, … Read more

Published by Aaron; Monroe, Mich.

Hooray for an event-filled Saturday afternoon with FailDows eXtraPainful edition (Windows XP)! I have been having a Trojan problem for the last week, but thought it was no big deal. Its name was something starting with "CC/." I forget the rest, but it didn't show up in either Symantec or McAfee's databases.

I updated my Avira AntiVir and started a full system scan. After about 40 minutes of scanning, it found one Trojan in three different parts of my hard drive. One was in the system restore files, one in my … Read more

Editor's note: Last week's story on spyware as a form of domestic abuse ('Do you know your hacker?') generated much response, including very personal stories from women whose lives were at one point dominated by the kind of controlling abuse described last week. Because of the deep personal, as well as technological, impact on these users' lives, one story is featured here today. Scroll below for the editor's response or click to jump ahead.

Published by Elissa; Michigan, U.S.

Shortly after a nasty custody battle erupted with my network-hobbyist ex-husband, my once efficiently reliable technological life … Read more

It's tempting to jam criminal hackers into a safe, distant profile. To assume the creep helping themselves to your e-mail, bank account, and surf history is a smug, slaphappy youth, or conniving foreign national. But what if you discovered that the one spying on your life was someone much, much closer?

How close? Like a parent, spouse, roommate, or significant other.

This is the topic of today's meeting in Washington. The Anti-Spyware Coalition gathered with representatives from McAfee and Google, to discuss the extent to which spyware abuse also constitutes domestic abuse.

Anna Stepanov, the Anti-Spyware program manager … Read more

Published by William; Sydney, Australia

In our house, we used to share a computer. I had Spybot - Search & Destroy and Norton Antivirus installed on it, and I became the scanning boss since my parents barely knew how to click a mouse. After about a year, I discovered "DriveCleaner" in the program manager window. I tried uninstalling it, got an error, then saw the progress bar roll backward fairly fast. At least these malware people have a sense of humor.

But then: My computer was exceedingly slow and gave me constant pop-up problems. Stress session. I tried … Read more

I got a taste today of the ever present danger that is the Internet. A client of mine is often in the news, so I watch for articles using Google Alerts. Once a day, I'm sent an email listing the new web pages Google found that contain my client's name. After doing this for well over a year without incident, Google today included a malicious web page in the list of those referencing my client. The page tried to install malicious software on my computer. Hopefully the details of the scam, described below, will educate anyone not yet … Read more

Published by Al, Port Alberni, Canada

I'm a 57-year-old retired truck driver with three stepdaughters, two of whom don't think the old man knows a thing about computers. Little do they know that I have a BA in computer science and can run circles around all of their friends. One time, the oldest girl's computer got so clogged up it would freeze, and the only way out was to hard-boot it. I cleaned it up, but there was so much damage done to the OS that I had to reformat the drive and do a fresh install … Read more

Care should be taken when plugging holiday gift gadgets into your personal computer and laptop, said security researchers at Sans.org, Microsoft, and Kaspersky in recent blog posts. Reports of strange files being found on USB storage devices increased over the holiday season. Reporting Monday on the SANS' Internet Storm Center blog, director Marcus Sachs said, "In years past this would have been limited to iPods and USB memory sticks, but now it includes digital photo frames, GPS devices, external hard drives, and of course digital cameras."

The unofficial Sans.org investigation started on Christmas after researcher David … Read more

I'll be the first to admit that the appearance of an ominously blue, ominously blank screen followed by an instant shut-down smacks of malware. Well, it smacks of something, and file-eating, process-disrupting intruders are the most likely cause.

They're also the most convenient excuse for explaining away perplexing computer abnormality. As Sara from Southend, U.K., reminds us, however, that might not be exactly the case.

Complete your scans, by all means, but if nothing suspicious turns up, start looking at your hardware, particularly if it's a few years old. Dust, crumbs, and other crud pile up, … Read more