If you visited www.SFgov.org over the last couple of weeks, better check your computer for infections.

A security vendor, Finjan, reported Wednesday that the city's Web site was one of over 1,000 sites treating visitors to malicious code.

Other sites caught up in this latest round of Web attacks include uci.edu (the University of California at Irvine's site); Snapple.com; a site registered to the Marysville, California's police department; an ad network--atdmt.com--acquired by Microsoft; and several international sites.

Posted by Sean Cannon in Virus & AntiVirus News at 10:40

G DATA (Germany), – The malware industry has shifted up a gear and, since the beginning of the year, has swamped the Internet with a malware flood of truly biblical proportions. On a daily basis some 1,500 new malware agents are unleashed against Windows users. In the first six months of the current year alone, G DATA Security Labs has recorded more than 318,000 new malware creations - more malicious code than in the whole of 2007, which was itself a record. If the growth rate remains the same, this would mean an increase of more than 400 percent by the end of 2008. By contrast, an all-clear for the owners of smartphones. The forecast danger for these devices has been shown to be a pure marketing ploy. Within the same period, only 20 new viruses surfaced. Online criminals do not currently regard smartphones as lucrative sources of income.


In 2008, the worldwide networking of online criminals finally bore its threatening fruit. In the G DATA 2008 semi-annual malware report, the Bochum IT security specialists give an insight into the current dangers for PC users.

Posted by Sean Cannon in Virus & AntiVirus News at 10:53

An screen name once connected to animated TV dad Homer Simpson is being used to spread malware.

In a 2003 episode of The Simpsons, writers revealed that Homer's e-mail address was chunkylover53@aol.com. Prior to the episode's airing, the address was registered by one of the show's writers, who used it to answer hundreds of e-mails from Simpsons fans.

Posted by Greg Hewitt-Long in Virus & AntiVirus News at 12:01

Worried about war with Iran, especially after yesterday’s missile test (pictured above, even if it apparently was only three missiles instead of four)?

Open an e-mail about it and you may really have worries.

As the blog Wake Up America noted today, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, has warned that somebody is spreading a computer worm using e-mail messages with subject lines touting dire developments in our relationship with Iran. This is "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" territory, as presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain jokingly sang last year.

The grim e-mail subject lines include: "20000 US soldiers in Iran," "US Army crossed Iran's borders" or "Third World War has begun."

Posted by Greg Hewitt-Long in Virus & AntiVirus News at 16:36