A newly discovered crimeware toolkit transforms an executable file into a worm so that it can self-replicate and spread malware more readily.

Ryan Sherstobitoff, chief corporate evangelist for Panda Security USA -- which found the toolkit -- says while there are plenty of Trojan-making kits out there, this is the first Panda has seen that turns a Trojan into a worm.

Posted by Annette King in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 16:42

ESET®, the leader in proactive threat protection, today announced the introduction of ESET Mobile Antivirus, a new security solution for mobile devices. This lightweight anti-malware software takes the company's state-of-the-art heuristic technology and optimizes it for the mobile platform.

"Widespread mobile attacks are inevitable in the near future and yet it is likely that these first attacks will be hard to find before they've done their damage," said Brian Burke, program director, Security Products, IDC. "Companies like ESET who are effectively applying their proactive protection to the mobile platform are most readily-equipped to identify and prevent the risks that will slip by most signature-based AV solutions."

One of the biggest challenges for mobile security is the limited memory, processing and bandwidth capabilities inherent with a small platform. Traditional antivirus approaches, with large and frequent signature updates, cannot be successfully applied to a mobile environment without significantly impacting the phone's performance.

Posted by Annette King at 16:32

Have you received an e-mail message today with a subject like "White house hit by lightning, catches fire", "Saddam Hussein found dead," or "Paris Hilton found to be gay!"? Don't touch it; it's evil!

The body of the e-mails contains another off-the-wall statement like "US Soldier throws boy off cliff, villagers enraged" or "Bad press surrounds US Army as renegade soldiers open fire on civilians" along with a link that typically ends in ….de/r.html.

Clicking the link opens a page claiming to be "PornTube," a YouTube-like site specializing in porn movies. However, the site's entire objective is to install an ActiveX control and run a file named video.exe on your system, thereby installing a Trojan that will download additional malware. Sorry, guys, the YouTube-like videos and thumbnails are just static images; any click launches the malware file. According to MX Lab the Trojan is a variant of Trojan.Downloader.Win32Agent.tyw.

At the moment the malicious attack doesn't seem to be functional. I tried letting it run under the watchful eye of PC Tools's ThreatFire 3.5 and of Norton Internet Security 2008. I clicked links and tried to allow installation of the "necessary" ActiveX control, but only got 404 "Not Found" error messages, some in German.

There's no way to close the browser or use it as a browser at this point, so I had to kill it using Task Manager. And of course this exploit might be fixed so it does successfully download malicious software to your computer. If you get one of these outrageous messages, delete it immediately and do NOT click the link contained therein.

By Neil J. Rubenking

Original Story

Posted by Annette King in Virus & AntiVirus News at 14:54

Five hours after Mozilla officially released Firefox 3.0, researchers found a vulnerability in the new browser.

Tipping Point has verified the bug and reported it to Mozilla, Tipping Point said on Wednesday.

Since Mozilla is still working on a fix, the researchers won't share details about the problem. Tipping Point ranked the severity of the vulnerability as high, but said that users would have to click on a link in an e-mail or visit a malicious Web page before being affected. The issue affects users of Firefox 3.0 as well as Firefox 2.0.

Once the problem is fixed, Tipping Point will publish an advisory on its Web site, it said.

Tipping Point found out about the vulnerability through its Zero Day Initiative, which lets researchers earn cash by submitting new vulnerabilities to the company. Once Tipping Point validates the issue, it pays the researcher for the information and notifies the relevant software vendor of the technical details.

Mozilla did not respond to a request for comment.

Mozilla launched its newest browser on Tuesday along with a marketing stunt that went a bit wrong. The company announced that it wanted to set a Guinness World Record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period. However, the volume of downloads crippled Mozilla's site, and so customers in the U.S. couldn't begin downloading the software until two hours later than expected. Still, Mozilla said it logged more than 8 million downloads within 24 hours. There is currently no record for number of software downloads in a day, but Mozilla must now wait for review of the stunt by Guinness officials.

Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service

Original Story

Posted by Annette King in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 14:53