If you thought it could not get worse with all the tracking and personalization on the Internet, then you have just been proven wrong. According to The Wall Street Journal and other sources, both Visa and MasterCard are planning to tie credit card purchases with personalized online advertisement. What does it mean? You recently bought [...]

Sometimes you do not want to or cannot install another security software on your computer system to scan for malware. Maybe you do not have the rights to install software on the computer or you have a program installed and do not want to risk incompatibilities. The alternative is an application like F-Secure’s Online Scanner [...]

I have to admit that I’m not downloading many files from Cnet’s download.com software portal. I usually prefer direct downloads from developer sites. Sometimes however developers link to the downloads on download.com instead of offering the downloads on their sites. This can make sense from a business perspective, but removes some of the controls they [...]

Rkill stops malware processes from running. It is useful because active malware processes running on your PC may not be detected by antivirus software. You can always go to the Task Manager in Windows to view active processes. If you cannot identify them, or they are blocked from the Task Manager list, you will find [...]

IrfanView is a popular image viewer capable of opening a wide array of common and rare file types. It has an array of features that make it useful in this function, but also in related tasks. Not only can you use it as a simple image viewer, but also as a wallpaper manager, wallpaper changer, [...]

The developers of the popular antispyware scanner and cleaner Spybot-Search & Destroy have released a first public beta version of the soon to be released version 2.0 of the application. You will notice right away that the Spybot application has turned into a heavyweight over the years. The 66 Megabyte download indicates this already, and [...]

It’s been reported that the total volume of global spam email that is being sent has fallen, month-on-month since the beginning of August 2010 and nobody knows why. The fall, which you can see in the graph below, shows a steady decline from almost a quarter of a trillion messages every day to just 50 [...]

File defragmentation is not that much of a concern anymore on my PC system because the two main hard drives are Solid State Drives which do not need defragmentation. Still, the 2 Terabyte data drive is a conventional hard drive and I run a defragmentation job on it every now and then. Windows users have [...]

We start the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway with Kaspersky Pure, Kaspersky’s top of the line product that combines all features of Kaspersky Internet Security, Kaspersky Antivirus and then some. Security companies in recent years have improved their applications in many regards, and one of the more recent trends is the addition of modules that have ties [...]

FreeApp is an online service that offers a simple concept. Pick all your favorite applications from the list of offered apps to create a custom installer that will install all those applications on the target system once executed. The idea is not new as there are other services like Ninite which offer a similar functionality. [...]

Pentagon has been working on a special type of technology that would turn bugs in to something that would really live up to the multiple meanings of bug. Okay, I will give it to you straight – they are working on something that’ll turn normal bugs in to remote controlled ones that can be controlled, [...]

If you’ve been following the Ubuntu release cycle you know that the .10 release is forth coming. Slated to hit the bandwidth October 29th, 2009, 9.10 promises to have quite a number of new features that should please even the most discerning of Linux users. But what can you expect and how should it run? [...]

Hijack This is probably one of the most popular security tools to scan a computer system for spyware and suspicious files. It’s rather cryptic reports makes it sometimes difficulty to distinguish between harmless and potentially dangerous files on the computer system. That’s what the comparable software program Free Fixer tries to make better Free Fixer [...]

If you are a webmaster you usually know what spam is. Blog owners experience spam usually in the form of comments, trackbacks or pings that spammer use to place links to their content on websites. These spammers can be classified as three different types. First the manual spammer who researches blogs in the niche and [...]

There are hundreds if not thousands of free spyware removal tools for the Windows operating system. The choice ranges from to popular spyware removal tools such as Windows Defender, Spybot Search And Destroy or Spyware Terminator to lesser known anti spyware software programs and even so called rogue applications that look like spyware removal tools [...]

Windows Defender is a Microsoft security software product that is included in the Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating system. It is also available as an option download for the Windows XP system. The program is a anti-spyware program that can scan a computer system for malicious software and delete or quarantine the findings. Windows [...]

The Master Boot Record contains important boot information which are essential to boot a computer system. A corrupted master boot record usually makes a system unbootable until the issue is fixed. Users who installed multiple operating systems might have also experienced difficulties when the operating systems installed their own boot manager which erased another one. [...]

What a week. This week has seen so many updates, it took almost twice as long to compile the list than last week. Several popular applications have been updated this week including such heavyweight ones like Autoruns, Opera, uTorrent and Flock. It definitely was an exciting week and I had to update lots of the [...]

If you are like us you have a healthy dose of paranoia in your blood and if that means going the extra mile we know that you will walk by our sides to get there. Deleting files in Windows does not remove the file from the hard drive, it simply removes the pointer to the [...]

I totally forgot to post the software updates article yesterday and apologize for that. This week was rather eventful with updates to several popular applications including three Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Open Suse and Damn Small Linux). A short explanation for those that never followed one of my software updates articles before. I collect information about [...]

McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008 retails for $39.99 for a one year license normally but you can get it for free for a limited time. It runs on computers with Windows 2000 or newer Microsoft operating systems including Windows Vista and protects your system from various threats such as spyware, viruses, trojans and phishing.

Avedesk was mentioned on one of my favorite websites Donation Coder and it sounded so incredible that I had to give it a try immediately. One could say that Avedesk adds widgets to your desktop, not the kind of useless widgets like the clock in Windows Vista. I’m talking about widgets that look great and provide enough functionality to justify their presence on the desktop.

Runscanner is a security scanner much like Hijack This but aims to be helpful for all kinds of users. It has three different modes depending on the experience level of the user, they are called Beginner, Classic and Expert Mode. The Beginner Mode scans the system and writes the results in a log file that can be given to security experts in various forums that are mentioned on the Runscanner homepage.

If you ask computer users about the anti-spyware software that they have installed to protect their system they will most likely name Spybot Search and Destroy or Ad-Aware. Those are the most commonly used anti-spyware programs. Some would probably name Windows Defender from Microsoft or Spyware Terminator or some commercial products.

I’m not that fond of online virus scanners because they always need special file access privileges and scan your files which could be a privacy issue as well. Infected or Not from Panda Antivirus however catched my attention by providing interesting statistics about infected computers on a worldwide and country wide scale.

I bet you have never seen such a tempting Trojan before. The Trojan named Melissa Strip, identified as TROJ_CAPTCHAR.A by TrendMicro and Trj/RompeCaptchas.A by Panda, starts by asking the user if he wants to play a game where she (Melissa) will strip for the user if the enters the correct code.

A reader send me an email last night asking if I had any information about the orbitnet.exe process that was started when Orbit Downloader was active. Zonealarm would describe the process as “P2P service of Orbit Downloader” and that seemed to have rang some alarm bells because P2P services are often used as spyware.

If you do not know yet there is a Skype worm spreading around that is affecting Skype Windows clients. The virus automatically sends a chat message to other Skype users containing a link to an image on a website where he is prompted to download a file with the .scr extension using a simple redirection

Microsoft released a pdf file called MSRT – Progress Made Lessons Learned yesterday which provides an analysis of the data that the program reported when scanning computers. The tool itself was executed more than 2.7 billion times on at least 270 million unique computers since January 13th, 2005. The tool has removed more than 16 million instances of malicious software which means that on average every 311th computer was infected.

This has been around for some time now but its possible that some of you have not heard of it yet. I found a site through digg.com that has a neat list of 40000 entries that you could partially or fully add to your windows host list and prevent ads from those 40000 hosts to be shown on your system, ever again.

No matter which internet page you open this days you are guaranteed to find at least one article mentioning the Sony rootkit affair. Instead of providing you with the latest news on the case customer vs. Sony BMG I´d like to analyse an interesting aspect of it.

In the beginning, there was one guy, who found out about the rootkit software, analysed it in depth and wrote an entry in his blog named Mark’s Sysinternals Blog on a well frequented site. Then the ball got rolling, the news was copied and commented on other sites, big portals like slashdot.org and digg.com had articles that soon became the most popular ones for the day.

This article explains it all. It provides links to consumer made cd listings that contain the rootkit software, shows how cds with the rootkit software look like, explains how one can check his personal computer for the rootkit and finally gives a detailed walkthrough on how to remove the rootkit software manually from your computer.

After lots of controversy about their rootkit music cds Sony announced today that it will halt the production of rootkit music cds. It seems that consumer and media backlash finally paid off.

The first trojan using Sony´s rootkit software to hide itself has been discovered by anti-virus companies.

The news spread like fire last week: Sony has a installer on some of their music cd´s that might install a rootkit on customers pc´s if they put them into their personal computer. The rootkit software could not be uninstalled by normal means and has already been used by hackers to hide World of Warcraft cheat scripts from being detected by Blizzards Warden client.

It has come to our attention that World of Warcraft Hackers already are using Sonys Rootkit Software to hide their hacking from Blizzards Warden Client.
We reported earlier this week that some Music Cds by Sony labeled “Content enhanced & protected” would bring up an installation program when the music cd was put into a personal computer.

News.com reports that Sony BMG Music Entertainment will provide a patch for the software that could be installed on computers when a Music Cd is put into a cd or dvd drive. The software as is could be used by virus writers to hide software from antivirus software when the program from the music cd was installed on the home computer.

And another player joins the rangs of the companies that might install spyware with their Music Cds when you put them into your pc drives. “Fontana Distribution, part of Universal Music Group and distributors for Upstairs Records Inc., are encouraging the independent records labels they distribute to use content protection on their CDs. “Twelve Eighteen”, featuring the hit song “Summer Nights”, carries the same content protection currently being used by Sony BMG.

John Lopez of Upstairs Records commented: “we are very pleased with the seamless production of the album. The media player on the CD has a good user experience and we intend using the technology on more new releases.”

A few minutes ago I read a news article written by Brian Krebs who described how some Sony Music Cds try to install a software on pcs that could be labeled as spyware.

It seems that we have reached a new level in the fight between the record companies and its consumers. If you put a music cd in question into your drive a installer will popup. If you agree to install the software you won´t find a uninstall feature anywhere on your pc.

Apparently all Music Cds labeled “Content enhanced & protected” have the installer on the CD, make sure you check this before you buy a cd you would want to hear using your pc.

Process Patrol allows you to manage the Windows processes on your computer. You can set stop lists for spyware, adware, and virus programs that will be automatically killed. Program files are renamed to prevent restarts.

Greg Hoglund with some time at his hands performed a long reversing session on a game most of us played or have at least heard of: World of Warcraft.