Have you ever had an ad come onto the TV or radio with an opening line like "Are you a 55 year old woman that took Metabolife between 2001 and 2005?" Since they asked a question, the polite thing to do is to answer them. I can usually tell them 'no' 99% of them time. Despite responding with 'no', they continue to waste their time and mine for the next 30 seconds, minute, or … [Read more...]
AVG’s Second Quarter Report Shows Malware Trends Across Multiple Platforms
Antivirus software is installed around the world and gets to see (and hopefully stop) a lot of malicious attempts to infect a computer. AVG has compiled their data from the second quarter of what their anti-virus and Internet Security software has recognized in the AVG Community Powered Threat Report - Q2 2011 (pdf). The numbers are nicely graphed out to make it quite apparent … [Read more...]
Google Takes Strides Against Insecure Javascript
In the past few days, Google's Online Security blog has made a few posts related to closing the security hole that Javascript opens. As a popular vector for infecting site visitors, Google is helping where they can - inside the Google Chrome browser. Mozilla Firefox has its add-on, NoScript, which helps secure users with it installed from malicious Javascript on webpages. While … [Read more...]
WordPress Warns: Popular WordPress Plugins Given Backdoors and Pushed Out
WordPress.org warned tonight that a few popular plugins (AddThis, WPtouch, and W3 Total Cache) for self-hosted WordPress blogs were suspiciously updated today. Upon closer inspection, the updates did not appear to come from the plugins' respective authors and the changes made to the code included backdoors to allow others access to the site. Since becoming aware of these … [Read more...]
How To See If Your Computer is Part of a BotNet
Malware has a few different intentions when it infects your computer. It could want to: show you ads to make money (adware) Watch where you go on the web and steal your passwords to either use your accounts for sending out spam or access your bank/credit card account Make you think you have a virus so you pay them to fix it (scareware) Make your computer part of a … [Read more...]