The United Nations and United Kingdom government Web sites have fallen victim to a widespread malware attack that have infected hundreds of thousands of legitimate sites worldwide.

Researchers at Websense Security Labs issued a security advisory on the company's Web site Tuesday warning users of the attack. Researchers first detected initial malware strains last week, however the amount of affected pages began to rise exponentially on Monday and Tuesday, Websense security experts said.

The attack is similar to many others that use legitimate Websites to distribute malware, experts say. This time, users visiting the infected sites will unknowingly download a malicious file that attempts to deliver a combination of eight different exploits with the intention of stealthily infiltrating machines and installing information stealing malware.

Posted by Sean Cannon in Virus & AntiVirus News at 15:04

Have you been a victim of a hacker? It’s most likely the result of a Trojan, according to Microsoft’s latest Security Intelligence Report, or SIR.

CRN reports that Microsoft pooled 450 million computers and found a 300 percent increase in Trojan infections during the second half of 2007.

Why? Experts say Trojans provide the best bang for the buck and link the increase in Trojans to the explosion of botnets, with the most famous being Storm, which turned one at the beginning of this year. In an interview with IT BusinessEdge blogger Carl Weinschenk, FireEye CEO Ashar Aziz agrees that massive profits are driving innovation and more robust designs.

Posted by Sean Cannon in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 15:01

While I will admit that Windows Live OneCare has been improving of late, that doesn't mean I would recommend it to my friends.

I might actually note also that this issue is definitely not as bad as when Kaspersky's AV product was labeling Windows Explorer as a virus.

It's a false positive, and though some would consider it amusing, for those affected by it, it can be painful. In this case Microsoft's security products, Microsoft Forefront Client Security, Windows Live OneCare and Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner were flagging some versions of Skype as malware, namely Trojan:Win32/Vundo.gen!D. In those cases, Skype would no longer run.

Posted by Sean Cannon in Virus & AntiVirus News at 10:34