I have the feeling that this offer wont last long so you better hurry up. A free registration at the Chinese Kaspersky forum will reward the user with a Kaspersky Anti-Virus key that is valid for one year. The only catch, if you can speak of a catch, is that the website is in Chinese and that users have to navigate and register an account on that website.

Categories: Operating Systems, Security, Software, Windows

This article is going to explain NTFS Alternate Data Streams: what they are, where they are, how you can detect them, create them and how they are used by hackers. In short, NTFS Alternate Data Streams can be used by hackers to fork file data into existing files without altering the existing file’s function or size. You can guess where this is going, right ? They make it relatively easy to hide malicious code inside them which is much harder to detect.

Categories: Operating Systems, Security, Software, Windows

Giveaways, more giveaways and even more giveaways. Seems we can expect more free software giveaways this year. It’s Avira again with a promotion to test the AntiVir PersonalEdition Premium for six months with no obligations whatsoever. All you have to do is fill out a small form and they will send you a working serial number that is valid for the next six months.

Categories: Operating Systems, Security, Software, Windows

If you are running Windows as an administrator, it is possible to disable the task manager. This is one of the options you would get if you right click your system tray. However, the most common reason for a disabled task manager is viruses. Disabling the task manager is one way for a virus to [...]

Categories: Advice, Security, Windows

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.

Categories: Security, 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

Categories: Security, Spyware

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.

Categories: Music Industry, Security, The Web

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.

Categories: Operating Systems, Security, Tools, Windows

You might have come upon this problem during scans for viruses and Trojans on your system. A malicious file was identified by your favorite virus scanner and it prompts for action. You can delete, move, rename or move the file into quarantine. It is however not possible to delete malicious files when you choose to delete them because they are currently in use and can’t be therefor deleted.

Categories: Security, Tools