gHacks technology news » malware

iPhone Update: iPhone Has Malicious Code, More Verizon iPhone Rumors And More

Shailpik — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:04:35 +0000

As I continue with my line of iPhone updates, one thing is becoming pretty clear – Apple is going to have a massive year next year. They have always been good at generating vas amounts of publicity by not saying anything at all regarding their future plans and now we have rumors of a Verizon iPhone flying in every direction. I will be doing a general Apple post right after this one and there we can look at the tablet scenario, which is showing no signs of cooling down.

As for the iPhone of the present, we now have the first truly malicious iPhone malware going around while Apple continues to grow in the smartphone business, posting more profits that the Finnish giant Nokia.

iPhone Malicious Code Now A Reality

For those who paid no heed to the first ever iPhone worm, here’s a much scarier piece of a news. While the first worm never really did much other than change your wallpaper to rickroll you, there’s a new piece of code that has truly malicious intents for your iPhone.

It attacks the same way as the last one does but instead of making its presence known, it will silently steal all the personal data that it can find on the iPhone and inside the apps. Thankfully, just like the last worm, this malicious program can only infiltrate jailbroken iPhones that have open SSH sessions and have not changed their default root password. So to all those who are jailbreaking their iPhones, do take your time to understand exactly what you are doing and close this gaping security holes. [read]

New iPhone May Be Verizon Only

After the rumors of the next generation iPhone going worldmode surfaced, we now have rumors about the iPhone being made solely for Verizon. This is the result of a confusion regarding reports from chip-maker Qualcomm who have been making new CDMA chips for their parters, including Verizon. [read]

Famous iPhone Dev Quits, First Of The Many To Follow?

After enduring Apple’s shenanigans with the app store approval process, the famed developer Joe Hewitt (creator of the Facebook app) has officially declared that he is quitting iPhone development. And he makes no bones about being vocal about why he quit, clearly stating that his decision “has had everything to do with Apple’s Policies”.

With so many other developers also complaining about Apple’s policies, Joe’s move may be taken as an example and followed. And if that does happen, Apple will be losing the most important part of what makes the iPhone tick — great apps from great developers. [read]

iPhone Now Has 17% World Smartphone Market Share

Apple is fast closing in on the others in the global mobile Handset Market. After being in the market for barely two and a half years, Apple now constitutes 17.1% of the total global smartphone market.

This is a 50% growth for Apple in recent times, showing exactly how fast a company can grow with the right steps and a brilliant product. The other reason why Nokia is so very important is because it is also one of the largest sellers of smartphones. Its smartphones are the reason why Symbian still holds such a large share of the market. Blackberries may have been very popular in different pockets (RIM is on the wane) but nothing beats Nokia’s worldwide reach. Nothing until now it seems. [read]

Want More Bang For Your Buck? Try The App Store

Analysts have shown that iPhone users have more than just the highest number of Apps to choose from. They also have more value for money when calculated on dollar for dollar. [read]

Apple Creates More Profit Than Nokia

In the last quarter (Q3), Apple made much more money than the world’s number one mobile handset maker – Nokia. And the difference is significant too. While Nokia made $1 billion, Apple made $1.6 billion. [read]

Tags: apple rumor, iPhone, jailbreak iphone, malware, verizon wireless

Recover Computer System After Malware Infection

Martin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:14:41 +0000

The first step to recover a computer system after a malware infection is the malware removal. This is usually done by the security software that is installed on the system. Some security software programs do a great job of removing malware but fail to remove traces that the malware has left behind. That’s where IClean comes into play, a program designed to remove the traces left by malware that has already been removed from the system.

IClean is a portable application that can be run from anywhere including a portable drive or device. The computer program will then display information about the computer system in six tabs that are accessible on top of the interface.

Processes: Displays all running processes with the option to check processes and kill them or kill and delete them.
Services: A list of all running services with the option to delete multiple services at once.
Registry: Several security sensitive Registry settings are displayed here including programs that bypass firewall rules, toolbars and browser helper objects with the option to repair, backup and restore settings.
Startup Folders: Displays a list of startup items that are loaded during system start with the option to enable, disable or clear them.
Hosts: The Windows hosts file that is used by malware to redirect Internet traffic.
Advanced: Option to terminate a known process ID.

Several of these options could come in handy after a sucessful malware removal on the computer system. IClean is available at the developer’s website and compatible with all Windows operating systems from Windows 98 to Windows Vista (and probably Windows 7 as well).

Tags: iclean, malware, malware infection, malware removal, portable software, recover computer system, remove malware, trojan, virus, windows software

What You Should Do After Buying A New Computer System

Martin — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:48:15 +0000

Dante send me a link to another “malware found on purchased laptop” story. The new M&A Companion Touch netbook contained three pieces of malware: An USB worm, a rootkit and a World of Warcraft password stealer.

These things seem to happen regularly and it is not only laptops that are affected by this. We have seen malware on appear virtually anywhere where it can appear in the last years, even on music CDs from a well known company. This leads to the interesting question on what users can do to ensure that their computer system is not already infected by malicious software.

Security companies advise to scan a newly purchased computer system thoroughly before starting to work with it. They also suggest to stay offline during the procedure which can sometimes be problematic if the computer system is the only available at hand. The virus definition files of antivirus software that is already installed on the computer system is usually outdated and might not catch the virus. The same is true for antivirus software that is purchased in stores.

Security experts therefor suggest to download the virus definitions for the antivirus program from a different computer with Internet access. That’s problematic if there is only one computer system available. Solutions for this might be to visit friends, go to an Internet Cafe or computer shop to download it from there.

Which leads to the question: What do you do after buying a new computer system?

Tags: antivirus software, computer system, laptop, malware, netbook, trojan, virus

Identify And Analyze Malicious Webpages

Martin — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 13:58:29 +0000

Malicious webpages make often use of a series of redirects and code obfuscation to make it difficulty for somebody to identify and analyze the threat. Malzilla is an open source software program for Windows that steps in and aids the researcher in identifying and analyzing JavaScript code on webpages.

The name stems from the fact that Malzilla is based on the Firefox JavaScript engine SpiderMonkey. It basically provides opportunities to load a webpage in the program using custom referrers, User-Agents, cookies and proxies.

The application will display the source code and the http header of the webpage in the interface. The user can view the webpage in text mode, hex view, cookie mode and using a links parser. Single or multiple scripts can be send to a script decoder.

Some of the interesting features:

JavaScript decoder
Decode Hex, USC2 and Base64
Link Parser
Clipboard Monitor
Hex Viewer
Note taking
IP Converter

Malzilla is not a tool for just anyone but it can be very helpful for analyzing webpages. It definitely eases the process of analysing and identifying webpages.

Tags: javascript, malicious websites, malware, malware analysis, malzilla, Security, security analysis, webpages

Anti-Malware Toolkit Downloads Security And Cleanup Tools

Martin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:15:42 +0000

After reading the original heading over at Download Squad I thought that the Anti-Malware Toolkit was a software to scan the system for installed security and cleanup tools and update them if necessary. That is apparently not the case. The tool provides downloads to various popular security and cleanup tools of which the latest version will be downloaded to the local computer.

The software programs are divided into four different categories named applications, definitions, recommended and utilities which all contain several programs and checkboxes in front of them. There is also a quick link to four software packages which activate several of the listed applications.

The good thing about this downloader is that it contains several of the most popular applications like Unlocker, Autoruns, Firefox, Comodo Firewall, JavaRa and CCleaner and that it will automatically check if those versions are compatible with the operating system.

The not so good thing is that it does not check if the application is already installed on the system in the latest version. There are also no descriptions of the applications available in the program itself. That’s pretty rough for inexperienced users.

I guess its great for a new system to download several of the recommended applications at once but nothing that could not be done with a web browser or download manager either. Good idea but needs the system scan option in my opinion.

Tags: anti-malware, applications, download, malware, software, Windows

Free A-Squared Anti-Malware

Martin — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:53:55 +0000

The Giveaway of the Day website is offering some very nice software packages from time to time. Today’s offer is A-Squared Anti-Malware in version 3.5 from Emsisoft which can be freely downloaded and installed from the website. The software developers can spread their software to a wide variety of users and gain some free marketing from websites like mine who write about it.

The offer is good for another day which means you have enough time to download and install the software package. The usual retail price for the software is $39.95.

A-Squared Anti-Malware tries to be the ultimate solution in the fight against malicious software, it protects the computer against all kinds like trojans, keyloggers and rootkits meaning it is more than just an antivirus software.

It’s a great PC software especially for the price. It’s especially of interest for those users who missed the A-Squared Anti-Malware offer the last time.

Tags: a-squared, anti-malware, malware, malware protection, offers, software, Windows

Free A-Squared Anti-Malware One Year License

Martin — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:51:40 +0000

Seems to really be a special time in that we are living, free good software popping up every week that is good for at least one year. Raymond seems to be especially good at finding those gems because this new one is coming right from his blog. A-squared Anti-Malware is, as the name suggests, an anti-malware scanner, which retails for $39.95.

All you need to do is to visit the website of the developers Emsisoft and create a new user account which is absolutely free and easy. Just enter your name and email and you are ready to go. An email will be dispatched that contains the password for that account, the username being your email address.

Login into the Customer Center once you have received the email and click on the Manage Licenses entry in the left menu. This will load all valid licenses with the option to extend them or add new ones using coupons.

Use the Convert a coupon code and enter nanova5736 as the coupon code. This will give you a valid one year license for A-Squared Anti-Malware starting at the day you have entered the coupon code.

Download A-Squared Anti-Malware afterwards and enter the same account credentials that you have used to register the account with. The license information will be automatically picked up from the database.

Once you login it will show you that you have a full license.

Tags: malware, malware protection, offers, software, Windows

When on Digg be careful

Martin — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:58:15 +0000

Trend Micro have published another excellent article on their malware blog entitled A Tangled Web … of Malware. It describes how hackers use popular media websites to spread malware and how their methods become more sophisticated by each passing week. The one published on the Trend Micro blog is interesting because of two aspects.

The first is that popular web 2.0 communities, in this case Digg, are being used to spread the malware. A screenshot of a Digg page shows how this is done. The screenshots shows two comments for a not so popular entry and both have a link that seems to point to Youtube at first glance but does not at second.

The url is slightly off, instead of youtube it is youtuhe and ynotube. Many users won’t recognize it and click on the link which leads to a number of redirects to a fake video site that asks you to download an ActiveX control which infects your computer. The number of redirects before the user reaches the destination is the second aspect worth noting.

Tags: activex, digg, malware, trend micro

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

Martin — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 14:16:26 +0000

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.

Malewarebytes Anti-Malware is a software currently in Beta that has an easy to use interface. Users can either quick scan their computer which scans only the hard drive of the operating system and Registry or fully scan their system with the choice of selecting the hard drives that should be scanned.

The quick scan finished on my main Windows XP partition in under 3 minutes while the full scan of all of my hard drives took completed in roughly 30 minutes. Neither scan did find any malware on my computer and I personally find it hard to judge the effectiveness of Anti-Malware.

The main disadvantage of Anti-Malware is in my opinion the non-existent realtime protection which is only available in the Pro version. This is a major drawback and makes the product inferior to other free anti-spyware applications.

It still seems to be pretty useful if you want to scan a system quickly considering that it uses less resources during the scan. CPU in the task manager for instance never went up above 20% while Spybot for instance was always using 65%+.

The beta version of Malewarebytes Anti-Malware is only available in the forums of the homepage with new versions being released every 2-3 days.

Tags: anti-spyware, malware, Spyware, windows software

Rootkits: Sony does it again

Martin — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:27:39 +0000

I would have never thought that a company like Sony would not learn from its mistakes especially after the first rootkit debacle which was a major public relations fiasco for Sony. The first rootkit was placed on several audio CDs that were distributed in 2005 and led to a $6 million settle case in the United States. While the rootkit was intended to make it impossible (albeit ineffectively) to copy music from the CDs it was effectively used by producers of malware, trojans and spyware to hide their code from antivirus software.

The sentenced that always reminds me of how amateurish Sony handled the whole affair went something in the line of “People who don’t know what rootkits do should not care about them”.

It seems Sony did it again. F-Secure is reporting that Sony is now selling a USB stick – the Sony MicroVault – which installs a hidden folder in c:\windows when installing the USB fingerprint software.

So, when enumerating files and subdirectories in the Windows directory, the directory and files inside it are not visible through Windows API. If you know the name of the directory, it is e.g. possible to enter the hidden directory using Command Prompt and it is possible to create new hidden files. There are also ways to run files from this directory. Files in this directory are also hidden from some antivirus scanners (as with the Sony BMG DRM case) — depending on the techniques employed by the antivirus software. It is therefore technically possible for malware to use the hidden directory as a hiding place.

F-Secure suspects that the hidden folder is used to protect the fingerprint authentication and strongly disagrees that this is the correct way to achieve a protection.

I think that Sony made a big mistake in using such a technology again even if it was intended to be of good use for the owner.

Read More:

F-Secure Blog

Tags: fingerprint, malware, rootkit, sony, Spyware, virus

Monitor your PC with WinPatrol

Martin — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 06:40:12 +0000

What happens if your antivirus or antispyware software does not detect a malicious application ? One of the things that will most likely happen is that the malicious application will add itself to the system startup most likely in the registry to make sure it is always executed when the system starts.

WinPatrol offers a new layer of defense against malware that was not detected by your security softwares. It monitors the different Startup possibilities, File Associations, IE Helpers, Scheduled Tasks and Services asking the user every time a program wants to add an entry to those places.

WinPatrol also displays all entries that already exist in those places giving you the opportunity to remove any entries that you want. The best thing to do would probably be to take a look at all menus that WinPatrol offers to make sure that only applications and services are started that you trust. You can remove everything else and let WinPatrol do the rest to make sure that they or other elements are not added again.

The freeware has a size of roughly 700 K and has to run in the background to be able to work correctly.

Tags: malware, pc, protect, Security, virus, winpatrol

Introduction Series Part 2: Adware

Martin — Wed, 10 May 2006 06:07:45 +0000

Adware is another issue that seems to be plaguing the entire world these days and that means that people need to be aware that this is nothing anymore safe then the standard spyware is. There are many that will tell you that adware is nothing more than an advertising venue for online companies but that is false.

Through adware these companies are actually collecting data about you so they can target your computer with advertising that will come up in parts as pop up windows or the computer can actually be hijacked and then all of your search options are then transported through the adware so the results that they want to bring to you can be filtered.This is very wrong and is actually very harmful to your computer. There is a whole host of things that can go wrong with a computer when it has been infected with adware and people are not afraid to say that they want a bunch of money to make it happen. These companies pay a lot of money to the adware companies to have their ads displayed on computers that the adware company has infected over the year. There is little that they can do about it because there is nothing illegal about adware at this time.

Adware is not illegal but that does not make it right either. The possibility of making a lot of mistakes and taking the information from the computer to use for several illegal activities and this will take away the confidence that some of the advertisers he in these adware companies and that can mean that some of the adware companies will actually start to go out of business and that is the best news that anyone can hear.

If you think that you have been infected with adware then you need to get a spyware cleaner that also handles the adware which a good many of them do. There is very little difference in the way that spyware and adware works so the cleaners should not have a problem in getting the whole thing cleaned. In most cases it is easy to get rid of adware as a simple delete can take place once the script is found but that is usually the hardest part because these companies know how to bury the script in the computer very well making it hard to find without a program

Tags: adware, malware

System Safety Monitor 2

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 23:06:39 +0000

System Safety Monitor (SSM) allows you to track down Microsoft Windows operating system activity in real-time and to prevent undesirable actions from various malware and spyware programs. SSM’s main goal is to discover and block malicious actions of any application.

features:

SSM keeps track of the activity of all applications already started or being started and allows you to control:
-which application can be started;
-which child application can be started by a selected one;
-which parent applications are allowed to start a selected one;
-whether a selected application is allowed to start if it was modified;
-whether a selected application is allowed to install a driver;
-whether a selected application is allowed to perform code-injection or DLL-injection;
-create/terminate a process (application);
-suspend a process and resume it afterwards;
-watch the list of DLLs loaded by a selected application.

Tracking and blocking changes in the following important operating system parts:
-Windows registry;
-drivers and services state;
-INI-files;
-”Startup” item of Start menu;
-Microsoft Internet Explorer settings.

Window management:
-watches running applications windows;
-runs “black list” of applications windows, closes “unwanted” applications windows automatically;
-browses the list of applications windows created in the system;
-shows invisible applications windows, hides visible ones, enables user input for “locked down” applications windows.

homepage link

Tags: malware, monitor, Spyware, System Safety Monitor

gHacks technology news » malware

iPhone Update: iPhone Has Malicious Code, More Verizon iPhone Rumors And More

iPhone Malicious Code Now A Reality

New iPhone May Be Verizon Only

Famous iPhone Dev Quits, First Of The Many To Follow?

iPhone Now Has 17% World Smartphone Market Share

Want More Bang For Your Buck? Try The App Store

Apple Creates More Profit Than Nokia

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Rootkits: Sony does it again

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