SAN DIEGO, September 30, 2008 — ESET, the leader in proactive threat protection, today announced it has captured a record 52nd VB100 award from Virus Bulletin, a widely-respected independent comparative testing group. The October 2008 comparative review was conducted on the Windows Server 2008 platform, showcasing ESET’s continued support for the latest Windows environments. ESET is still the only company with more than 50 VB100 awards and continues to lead the industry with the highest detection rates with zero false positives — the winning formula in malware prevention.

Virus Bulletin introduced its first VB100 award in 1998, and conducts several comparatives every year, rotating its platforms between Linux, Windows, Windows servers and Novell Netware. In order to display the VB100 logo, an antivirus product must meet two criteria: (1) Demonstrate it detects all "In-the-Wild" viruses during both on-demand and on-access scanning; and, (2) Generate no false positives when scanning a set of clean files. Since the inception of VB100 awards in 1998, ESET’s antivirus products continue to boast a success rate of over 96 percent — the industry's highest. Most antivirus vendors have success ratios in the 50-75 percent range.

Posted by Justin Payton in Eset Software at 16:11 | Comments (0) | (0)

If you like to watch YouTube videos on your computer, beware. The State Department of Consumer Affairs is warning you about a virus from a site made to look like YouTube that can steal your personal information or corrupt your computer.

We asked Gaetan Hemond with IT Professionals in Spartanburg to explain how the virus it works. He says you’ll receive an email urging you to watch video through a link. Some emails say you’re in the video.

Explained Hemond, “They click on it, they’re going to go to a website that looks like its YouTube, looks like a legitimate site. And when you go to load the video, its going to say that you need software in order to view the video and to load that software.”

But you’re really downloading malicious software or mal-ware that corrupts your files or steals your personal information. Said Hemond, “Picking up keystrokes, looking at what sites you’re going to or controlling where your browser goes, so it redirects you to pages it wants you to go to.”

Posted by Justin Payton at 14:59

CHICAGO — E-mail inboxes may be clogged with a little less spam — at least for a while.

Authorities said Tuesday they have shut down one of the largest spam operations in the world, a vast network involving countries from New Zealand to China and the United States.

The spammers sent out billions of e-mails in recent years encouraging people to click through to Web sites that allegedly used false claims to peddle prescription drugs, as well as "male enhancement" and weight-loss pills.

The Federal Trade Commission received more than 3 million complaints about the spam and related Web sites, illustrating the scale of the operation, officials said.

The sites, including one called "Canadian Healthcare," were difficult to distinguish from legitimate online pharmacies — making the pitches more persuasive, said Steve Baker, the FTC's Midwest Region director.

"These sites are really professionally constructed," he said. "Some years ago you used to be able to tell the bogus things because they looked cheesy and had misspellings. Anymore, I don't think that's true."

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 10:14

Whether it's your iPhone, Windows Mobile device, Android, or BlackBerry -- you're probably using your smartphone more like a computer more and more. That's great, but the more your phone acts like a PC -- the more likely all of the problems associated with PCs will follow, researchers said today. Should you care?

We've been warning about the security of mobile devices for years, and years, and years. I've written so many stories about the security risks of mobile phones that I'm starting to feel like Chicken Little. So far, we've not seen a major virus or malware event. That doesn't mean it's not going to happen. The infamous Morris worm hit in 1988 -- and we didn't see a similar event at any time in the 1990s. Viruses were a problem, but they didn't become a really big humungo problem until the LoveBug overloaded e-mail servers in the spring of 2000.

These things don't always happen when we first expect them. But we can see the trend lines: more criminals are turning to cybercrime to steal, snoop, and destroy; and smartphones are growing exponentially in processing and storage power. We're also starting to see smartphones with more open, generative platforms, such asGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG)'s Android.

It's a safe bet to predict these two trend lines will cross, and criminals will turn to mobile phones to conduct all of the types of crimes they do on PCs and the Internet today. Predicting exactly when this will happen: not so easy.

Researchers contributing to Georgia Tech's Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2009: Data, Mobility, and Questions of Responsibility Will Drive Cyber Threats in 2009 And Beyond, see the risks.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 08:30