Anti Virus Blog

So, you have the best firewall, intrusion-detection and antivirus systems technology has to offer. Yet, despite your Fort Knox approach, you’re still hit with security breaches and the occasional malware du jour. One reason for this may be the lack of motivation by your workers. Unlike owners, they don’t have a direct interest in the success of the company. Or do they? How far are they willing to go to ensure corporate success?

Usually, not very. In fact, in most cases, they don’t put much additional effort into executing their duties — just enough to get the work done and retain their jobs. According to Ken Shaurette, information security solutions manager at MPC Technology Solutions, however, “a too-often overlooked way to improve these attitudes is to include information security in the job descriptions of employees.” When your organization makes security awareness and policy compliance mandatory, the apathetic trend can be reversed.

When management requires security policy compliance to be a key part of an employee’s job, interest is generated. An added benefit is that security becomes part of the corporate culture. With performance reviews (hence, possible raises) looming periodically, employees are more apt to fit compliance into their daily routine. Knowing that they’re being graded encourages employees to comply with policies.

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Microsoft has succeeded to end, through buying or negotiating, every antitrust lawsuit it faced so far… But there are still many lands to conquer and since Microsoft is the indisputable leader on the operating system market, why shouldn’t it be the same with an antivirus solution or an anti-spyware product?

The security solution announced last week by Microsoft, under the name of Microsoft Client Protection, is aimed at companies, but the company is also preparing Windows OneCare Live, an antivirus and anti-spyware solution for end users.

This outcome has been expected ever since Microsoft announced the acquisition
of several security companies. The corporation signed in June 2003 a contract for the intellectual property and technological resources of the Romanian company GeCAD SRL. GeCAD technologies are allegedly integrated in the security products and services.

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Symantec last week quietly raised the price of annual renewals for its consumer and small business line of security products by as much as 33 percent, saying that it was part of a long-considered move toward a subscription-based business model, and not a reaction to Microsoft’s recent entry into the security space.

As of Monday, renewals for Symantec’s popular Norton AntiVirus and Norton SystemWorks jumped to US$30, up 20 percent from 2004’s $25; annual subscription renewals to Norton Personal Firewall and the Norton Internet Security suite, meanwhile, climbed 33 percent to US$20 and US$40, respectively.

Symantec has charged existing users renewal fees for years to pay for minor software updates, new anti-virus signatures, and intrusion detection definitions to protect users against new worms, viruses, Trojans, adware, and spyware. These price hikes, however, are among the largest ever.

They also highlight the rapid rise in security maintenance costs for home and small business users. As recently as 2001, for instance, Symantec charged just US$4 for an annual renewal to Norton AntiVirus; that translates into a 750 percent in five years.

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A new variant of the IRCbot Trojan horse is taking aim at users of Skype Technologies S.A.’s VoIP software, according to New York-based e-mail security firm MessageLabs Ltd. As of Monday, the firm said it had blocked more than 150 copies of the Trojan, also known as Fanbot. The malware is being distributed by e-mail disguised as the newest release of the popular Skype software client — version 1.4, which was released Oct. 10.

“When executed, the attached malware program displays a fake ‘installation error’ box while, in fact, it is installing itself as %sysdir%remote.exe, altering the registry and shutting down shared access and Windows update services,” MessageLabs said. “It then tries to connect to either an IRC server named ‘jojogirl.3322.org’ or ’smallphantom.meibu.com,’ but fails.” According to Skype’s Web site, its Internet voice-calling software has been downloaded more than 184 million times.

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US non-profit IT company MITRE today announced the Common Malware Enumeration Initiative. Headed by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) and supported by an editorial board of anti-virus vendors and related organizations it should provide a neutral, shared identification method for malware outbreaks.

During a virus outbreak, participants on the CME board request an identifier from an automated system by providing a sample of the virus and as much additional information as possible. An identifier in the format ‘CME-N’ where N is an integer between 1 and 999 is generated and distributed to the other participants. The participants then disseminate the CME identifier to their contacts in the industry and reference the CME identifier on their web pages, in their product, or when speaking to the press.

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Kaspersky Lab confirmed Tuesday that a potentially serious flaw exists in its antivirus software, but said a fix is on the way.

The security software maker said it had offered preliminary protection to customers last week and that a permanent patch will be available on Wednesday.

Kaspersky also said that the vulnerability is limited to Microsoft Windows-based versions of its products. Additionally, while it does license the vulnerable component to some third parties, most partner products that use Kaspersky code are not affected, the Moscow-based company said in a statement.

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MessageLabs Ltd. announced today the release of new security software that scans Web traffic for viruses, detects spyware and filters content to enforce company Internet policies.

The company’s Web Protect service’s antivirus functionality uses a heuristics approach with multiple virus-scanning engines, while its antispyware features scans in real time. Incoming and outgoing Web traffic is scanned for malicious code, spyware, adware and phishing attacks, it said. The services are administered through MessageLabs’ portal.

Its Web Control product includes address filtering that allows companies to be in control of how its employees use the Internet.

“We started to see an increasing amount of spyware and malware in the Web browsing area,” said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer for MessageLabs. “We’ve realized there’s quite an unplugged gap here.”

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