Private browsing is a relative new mode that has been added to several popular web browsers recently. It basically allows a user to work with the web browser normally. Data that is accumulated during the private browsing sessions is only temporarily available which is the difference to the normal browsing mode. This means that the [...]

Microsoft has uploaded the emergency patch for their Internet Explorer web browser to various Microsoft properties. This patch fixes a vulnerability that has been exploited in recent time and is currently considered a severe security risk that some countries recommended switching from Internet Explorer to other web browsers to protect the computer systems from attacks. [...]

Have you ever attempted to do something with a file on a Linux machine and been given the error “permission denied”? For some people this isn’t a problem, either su to the root user or use the sudo command to help you along. For some users, however, this can be very frustrating. Why? When you [...]

RockYou, a service that offers applications like slideshows, games, layouts and more for social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace or Orkut that of the network’s users seem to love so much was recently hacked and the service’s entire database of 30+ million data sets exposed. This alone would have been problematic but the situation grew [...]

What do you mean – “scan your Linux machine for viruses”? Linux is immune to viruses right? Well…mostly. Even though a proof of concept virus has been discussed, and nothing has actually made it into the wild…you still have email on your system. Some of that email could easily make its way (by way of [...]

The last days have not been pleasant for Microsoft. A new Windows vulnerability affecting all 32-bit editions of the operating system from Windows 3.11 to Windows 7 was uncovered shortly after the revelation that an exploit in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 was used in the attack on several US companies that included Google and Adobe [...]

A virtual private network serves various purposes. It usually encrypts the traffic between the user and the vpn server increasing the privacy of the user, security of the system and integrity of the data. Many companies use vpn connections to transfer important data to employees or customers. But virtual private networks have other advantages. The [...]

We posted a solution for one of the causes of unauthorized Google redirects yesterday. These redirects can happen in one browser or multiple ones and are usually related to searches that the user performs in search engines such as Google. Yesterdays redirect was caused by a plugin that got installed on the host computer without [...]

iTalc is one of those programs that, when you see it up and running, is a thing of brilliance. But what is it? iTALC is a didactical tool that allows a teacher to view and/or control a students’ PC on the internal network in multiple ways. It supports Linux and Windows and can be used [...]

Goored is an abbreviation for (malicious) Google Redirects although redirects have been noticed in other search engines like Yahoo as well. Firefox users who have been hit with a Goored infection will notice that some of their searches are redirected to other websites. This usually happens when they click on a search result in Google [...]

Moving virus definitions and other core files into the cloud seems to be one of the latest trends in the security software industry. The benefit of this approach is that it is easier, faster and more reliable to update data for all users who use the product opposed to the old way which only updated [...]

Password theft is a common problem on the Internet these days. Attackers use numerous ways to steal login credentials from users including phishing attacks via email, brute force attacks that try to guess the password, trojans and computer viruses or keyloggers that record every keystroke of the user. The best protection against those kind of [...]

A virtual private network offers several advantages over the normal Internet connection. It increased privacy and data safety by making use of encryption. The VPN provider basically works as a proxy for all Internet traffic. The websites and services that are accessed send the data to the VPN without knowing where the data is really [...]

If you’ve worked with a Linux long enough, you will have come in contact with the sudo utility. What is sudo? Sudo has been brilliantly described by the XKCD comic here. What sudo does is allow a user to run commands and applications with the security privileges of another user. Most often this is used [...]

Lately I have been doing a lot of coverage of MySQL. Of course there are a lot of reasons for that – MySQL is as popular a database as it is flexible and reliable. And so far I’ve covered MySQL Workbench (see my article “Complete database administration package MySQL Workbench“), MySQL Administrator (see my article [...]

I have covered MySQL in a number of ways so far. You can read how to administer your MySQL database with MySQL Workbench (see my article “Complete database administration package MySQL Workbench“), MySQL Administrator (see my article “Creating a database with MySQL Administrator“), MySQL Navigator (see my article “Manage you MySQL databases with an easy [...]

For those new to Samba, the configuration of this provider of seamless file and print services to SMB/CIFS clients can sometimes be a nightmare. Not only are you dealing with tricky configuration files, you also have to worry about getting users added to encrypted password files. Of course if you want to tackle this the old-school [...]

I work with secure shell all the time. Day in and day out I am administering personal machines and client machines with the help of ssh. After a while opening up a terminal window and entering the command to connect to all of these clients gets old. And we all know saving time and effort [...]

Avira has published a top list of brands that experienced the most phishing attacks in 2009. The top 3 brands according to their chart are PayPal with 32205 threats followed by Chase Bank with 25901 threats and eBay with 18738 threats. Each threat in this case refers to a unique Internet address that was being [...]

Sandboxie adds a new layer of security to the Windows operating system as it can run programs in a sandboxed environment so that they cannot manipulate data outside of that box. That’s the basic concept and it comes in handy in numerous occasions like executing downloaded programs in the sandbox to protect the rest of [...]

Many Internet users, especially those that have social networking accounts, expose information about themselves but also friends and colleagues on the Internet. Everyone probably read stories in newspapers that cyber criminals are using those information to create false identities or trap friends and colleagues into thinking that they are actually someone they know. What has [...]

Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat have been hit with yet another zero day vulnerability that is affecting all versions of both programs up to Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat 9.2. The vulnerability has been disclosed to the public by Adobe’s Security Response team who wrote in their blog that they “are currently investigating this issue [...]

Virus Total offers a great service for users who want to check files for malicious code. The main benefit of using Virus Total over locally installed antivirus software is the multi-engine approach as it offers to scan files with dozens of different antivirus engines and databases. The Virus Total service can be used on the [...]

Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 is an all-in-one security solution for the Windows operating system. The core modules of Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 are the antivirus protection, the two-way software firewall, web protection, spam and phishing protection as well as privacy and parental controls. The security software will ask the user to update the program’s database [...]

If You Have Something That You Don’t Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn’t Be Doing It In The First Place. That is what Google’s CEO Erik Schmidt said in a live CNBC broadcast last week. The sentence itself does not make that much sense as there is a huge difference between doing something and [...]

Security software like a-squared Anti-Malware protect the computer system from threats and attacks not only on the Internet but also locally. Unlike its name might suggest a-squared Anti-Malware makes use of two scan engines to protect, detect and remove trojans, viruses, spyware, adware, worms, bots, keyloggers, rootkits and dialers. The software combines the a-squared Anti-Spyware [...]

Security Tool is a so called rogue antivirus software that is distributed by various means including malicious software like trojans but also popups on the Internet which will display a fake message that the computer is infected and needs to be secured by downloading the rogue security program. Security Tool will perform a series of [...]

Microsoft has released a new batch of security updates on this month’s Patch Tuesday which patch various security vulnerabilities in Microsoft software products. The vulnerabilities are affecting several popular Microsoft products including various Windows operating systems, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office. Three of the vulnerabilities have a maximum severity rating of critical while the [...]

Cloud based computing can have a serious impact on the time it takes to perform calculations. We have seen join efforts in the past to use cloud computing in research. But research is not the only area that benefits from the processing power of the cloud. WPA Cracker is an online service that offers to [...]

Earlier this year a method to get access to date encrypted with the Open Source software True Crypt was published by security researchers which involved physical access to the protected computer system. Back then many commenters and so called security experts mentioned that this was one of the main differences to Microsoft’s Bitlocker encryption. The [...]

Have you ever asked yourself which information are accessible to quizzes and applications if you allow them to access your account before taking the quiz to find out if you really know everything about becoming a vampire or which superhero your cat resembles most. Most Facebook users might think that those quizzes receive barely any [...]

Panda Internet Security 2010 is an all in one security program for the Windows operating system that protects the computer system in various ways from threats that today’s PC users encounter everyday. The PC program offers antivirus protection, a software firewall, identity protection, Internet browsing protection and backup capabilities. Users of last year’s version of [...]

Microsoft has released the final version of their security software Microsoft Security Essentials on the same day that they have released their latest operating system Windows 7. Microsoft Security Essentials is a free antivirus software for the Windows operating system that can be downloaded and installed on PCs that pass a genuine advantage check. Neowin [...]

If you look around you will notice that most download sites offer ZoneAlarm 8.0.298 on their websites when in fact version 9.1.007.002 of Zonealarm is the newest version. The Zonealarm website itself links to a download over at download.com that is offering version 8 of the Zonealarm firewall. Zonealarm 9.1 on the other hand has [...]

MocoSpace is a so called mobile social networking website. What this means is that it is primarily designed for mobile access and not computer desktop access. Another interesting aspect of MocoSpace is the fact that it is open for anyone regardless of their cell phone brand and carrier. The service provided is similar to that [...]

Alexander over at 4Sysops has performed benchmark comparison tests of the encryption software programs Bitlocker and True Crypt on netbooks. Bitlocker is the encryption software that ships with Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows Vista Ultimate while True Crypt is a freely available Open Source alternative. Both have features that the other software does not offer. [...]

We ran a post in the beginning of this month (read: Avira Antivir Update Hangs)that mentioned a growing problem that users of Avira Antivir were experiencing. The problem these users were experiencing was a permanent update failure during the virus definition update of the antivirus software. Some users were able to fix these difficulties by [...]

I’m fairly confident that you have, at one time or another, run across an md5checksum file as you have perused the internet. Whether it was a download file or even an application upgrade, those md5 files are there for a reason. But just what is the reason? When someone puts a file up on a [...]

According to several reports on websites like Computerworld a new phishing scam is currently in the wild that is trying to get the Facebook login data of Facebook users. Pandalabs, who uncovered the phishing scam, did not release lots of details about the attack other than it mimicked the Facebook login page and displayed an [...]

If you’re like me (and I know you are) you have an endless assortment of passwords stored in your head. And, again, if you’re like me your age is defying your memory such that your brain isn’t always so quick to recall that endless stream of random characters you have for passwords (and you know [...]

Microsoft’s new and free security software Microsoft Security Essentials received some raving reviews since its first release as a beta version. The final version of the antivirus software program was released alongside Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7. Microsoft Security Essentials is using Windows Update to update the virus definition files which can be problematic [...]

Microsoft has released six security bulletins today as part of their monthly Tuesday patch day which fix a total of 15 different security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows. The maximum severity rating for the bulletins contain three critical and three important patches for vulnerabilities that can allow remote code execution and denial of [...]

Panda Cloud Antivirus has been released today after months of being available as a beta version. The antivirus software, which has been offered as a public beta since April 2009, received more press coverage than conventional free antivirus software programs thanks to its cloud based approach. This approach moves some of the virus scanning away [...]

The firewall in Windows 7 is a solid software firewall. It is by far not as advanced as third party firewalls but it does a good job at protecting a computer system running Windows 7. The functionality of the firewall has been improved ever since Microsoft starting shipping Windows XP versions with the software firewall. [...]

PayPal is a widely used financial service that allows people from all over the world to transfer money to other PayPal users by simply specifying an email address the money should be send to. It has become even more popular in recent years with the eBay tie-in which practically made PayPal the preferred payment method [...]

After dabbling around with several music players in Windows 7 I finally decided to stick with AIMP2. The uninstallation of Winamp turned out to be interesting. The uninstaller noted that not all files in the Winamp folder could be deleted during installation. A quick check revealed that the folder contained the files elevator.exe, elevatorps.dll and [...]

Offering a popular website or web service is not always a blessing. This especially becomes apparent when you have to deal with security related issues like phishing attacks. Facebook is without doubt one of the most popular sites on the Internet these days and it therefor comes unsurprisingly that the service is regularly attacked. Trend [...]

The anti-spyware niche and the security software niche in general are crowded with lots of companies competing with their software programs for market share. It is difficulty to get a foothold in that market even with a good product as other factors than the product’s effectiveness play a role in the market. Double Anti-Spy Professional [...]

I have been working for one of the biggest financial organizations in Germany. One of our jobs was to deal with customers who had fallen pray to phishing and other malicious attacks. The attacks in the beginning were not sophisticated at all including emails with errors, no personal information and even some from other organizations [...]

Bitlocker is a data encryption technology that Microsoft implemented into Ultimate and Enterprise editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. The latest version of Bitlocker, which is only available for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 users, adds the function to encrypt removable storage devices with Bitlocker. This could however be problematic in situations [...]