Spyware

Security software vendors may soon side with US government authorities and intentionally fail to report "certain spyware" to customers if ordered by a court to remain quiet, according to a survey of leading firms.

When I hear customers say, "I keep getting strange error messages, my computer is so slow or suddenly my home page is totally different," I know the probable culprits: viruses, spyware and adware.

I plugged in the name of the virus into Google and got a “guaranteed fix,” which turned out to be more spyware, called “SpyNoMore. Incidents like this, which trick people into infecting their own systems, underscore the need to know about the trustworthiness of software before installing it, said Jeff Crume, an IT security expert with IBM. With a number of reputable antivirus and antispyware tools available, there is no need to take a chance on lesser-known programs that might not be effective and legitimate, Crume said. Once installed, a keystroke logger runs silently in the background without the user’s knowledge, then attempts to copy the information it has snagged such as online banking passwords or other sensitive data to the attacker. What’s more, a good personal firewall should generate a warning when the keystroke logging program attempts to send data back to the attacker and can, therefore, block its transmission, he said. More Spyware News

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clipped from reviews.cnet.com Why spam isn’t going away soon (Hint: Blame the Storm worm) Recently, Symantec said in its February 2008 State of Spam report that 78.5 percent of all e-mail is spam; they also said most of that is now coming from Europe. That’s a change from previous reports that had suggested servers in North America were responsible. What the Symantec report doesn’t explicitly state is that much of the European spam doesn’t come from individuals sitting at their desks pumping out lists. Europe is one of the hotbeds for the Storm worm botnet, notorious for automatically co-opting its victims into spam relays.

Blink Professional Edition 3.5 scopes out the vulnerabilities in your system and helps protect against evildoers.

Double bluffThe ex-chief of a South Korea-based anti-virus firm has been charged with using bogus security warnings to shift anti-spyware software of questionable value.…

CHANTILLY, Va., BUSINESS WIRE -- BIA Information Network, a leading provider of private-label desktop applications, announced today that New York-based American Business Media (ABM), the trade association for business information providers, will begin using its ActiveAccess desktop application to reach its members for the communication of ABM news, events and programs.

Double bluff The ex-chief of a South Korea-based anti-virus firm has been charged with using bogus security warnings to shift anti-spyware software of questionable value.…

Remember that '70s Reese's commercial? You got chocolate in my peanut butter…you got peanut butter on my chocolate? Well, Linksys and Trend Micro have joined forces to create an Internet security version of two great tastes that taste great together.