Fighting Off Viruses: Advancements In Antivirus Software Suites

Protecting your computer from a virus is getting harder and harder each day. While it may border on the paranoid, it goes without saying that you can’t leave your guard down for one second. Even corporate giant Microsoft has found its own systems compromised on more than one occasion.

Remember the “good old days”, before the advent of the Internet and downloadable programs? Life was simple then in terms of computer viruses. With the primary way in which a virus could be transmitted being limited to floppy disks, the ability to catch and eradicate the virus was a lot easier. By today’s standards, it used to take quite a while before a virus was able to infect a computer and slow down the system. The antivirus software of that time was typically able to identify and eradicate viruses before they caused too much damage. Additionally, computer users were pretty savvy on how to protect themselves in terms of scanning all floppy disks before copying them to our desktop.

The Internet helped change all that. The Internet provided a conduit by which viruses could move from host to host with lightening speed. No longer could a computer user just worry about floppy disks as points of entry, but they now had to worry about email, email attachments, peer-to-peer file sharing, instant messaging, and software downloads. Today’s viruses can attack through multiple entry points, spread without human intervention, and take full advantage of vulnerabilities within a system or program. With technology advancing everyday, and the convergence of computers with other mobile devices, the potential of new types of threats also increase.

Protecting Your Computer

Luckily, the advancement of antivirus software has kept pace with current virus threats. Antivirus software is essential to a computer’s ability to fend off viruses and other malicious programs. These products are designed to protect against the ability of a virus to enter a computer through email, web browsers, file servers and desktops. Additionally, these programs offer a centralized control feature that handle deployment, configuration and updating.

A computer user should remain diligent and follow a few simple steps to protect against the threat of a virus:

1. Evaluate your current computer security system.
With the threat of a new generation of viruses able to attack in a multitude of ways, the approach of having just one antivirus software version has become outdated. You need to be confident that you have protected all aspects of your computer system from the desktop to the network, and from the gateway to the server. Consider a more comprehensive security system which includes several features including antivirus, firewall, content filtering, and intrusion detection. This type of system will make it more difficult for the virus to penetrate your system.

2. Only install antivirus software created by a well-known, reputable company. Because new viruses erupt daily, it is important that you regularly update your antivirus software. Become familiar with the software’s real-time scan feature and configure it to start automatically each time you boot your computer. This will protect your system by automatically checking your computer each time it is powered up.

3. Make it a habit to always scan all new programs or files no matter from where they originate.

4. Exercise caution when opening binary, Word, or Excel documents of unknown sources especially if they were received during an online chat or as an attachment to an email.

5. Perform regular backups in case your system is corrupted. It may be the only way to recover your data if infected.
Recommended Antivirus Software

There are numerous applications available to consumers. With a little research, you can pick the program that is right for you. Many programs provide a trial version which allows you to download the program and test its abilities. However, be aware that some anti-virus programs can be difficult to uninstall. As a precaution make sure to set up a System Restore point before installing.

Here are a few programs which typically receive high marks in terms of cost, effectiveness, ease of use, and customer service.

The Shield Pro 2005™ provides virus protection and hacker security through ongoing support and updates. When a virus breaks out, The Shield Pro 2005™ promises to provide a patch within 2-3 hours and a fix for the virus within 5 hours. You can set your computer to update viruses weekly and run a complete virus scan.

BitDefender 9 Standard provides antivirus protection, as well as Peer-2-Peer Applications protection, full email protection, and heuristics in a virtual environment. This provides a new security layer that keeps the operating system safe from unknown viruses by detecting malicious pieces of code for which signatures have not been released yet.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal 5.0 program is simple to install and use. The user only needs to choose from three levels of protection. It allows updates as frequently as every hour while promising not to disrupt your computer. The program also offers a two-tier email protection feature and round-the-clock technical support.

PC-cillin Internet Security combines antivirus security and a personal firewall—for comprehensive protection against viruses, worms, Trojans, and hackers. It also detects and removes spyware and blocks spam. It even guards against identity theft by blocking phishing and pharming attacks.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is a free downloadable antivirus program that has received high marks for its reliability. In the past, free downloadable antivirus programs have been viewed skeptically because of issues relating to its reliability. However, AVG from Grisoft, remains one of the best-known free anti-virus programs available. While AVG can not be installed on a server operating system and there is no technical support, it still makes a good choice for many home computer users. The best part is that since it is free, you can try it with no further obligation necessary.

How does anti-virus software work?

An anti-virus software program is a computer program that can be used to scan files to identify and eliminate computer viruses and other malicious software (malware).

Anti-virus software typically uses two different techniques to accomplish this:

Department of Computer Security? It's a Joke

If you want to make a geek laugh derisively, suggest that responsibility for computer security be turned over to the government. This reaction is guaranteed, regardless of ideology. Everyone knows that this is not possible, but rarely are the implications for political economy noted.

Invircible

Invircible is a unique virus detection application from an Israeli security company called Netz Computing.

Unlike other antivirus software, Invircible is built to protect against all viruses, including viruses for which have not yet been detected. While the generic algorithms upon which it is based does necessitate a slightly more advanced user than that of the average virus scanner, it also affords a much higher level of security. The system uses a sophisticated generic scanner to accomplish a level of security that no other virus scanner matches. Their white paper on the subject provides much more detail. Invircible has found a strong niche market among home, corporate, and governmental organizations for which the need for absolute security is paramount.

CounterSpy 2.0

Ever had one of those days when you were on the web one day and the next day your browser refuses to go to the sites you want and jumps from site to site.

Well I’ve had several of those days and I’ve got a program that you need if you want to be on the web each night without worrying what gets on your system. Developed by Sunbelt Software, CounterSpy 2.0has succeeded where other applications such as McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8 and Windows Defender has failed. Not only did it get rid of my browser problem, it alerted me to other security issues on my system (including tracking cookies) filtering out the bad and leaving behind the good.

You can get a free 15-day trial at the Sunbelt Software website and can upgrade to the full version for $19.95. I think it’s totally worth the price since it saved me from viewing webpages I had no interest in seeing. A word of caution though: Active Protection tends to go a bit extreme so try and create a system restore point before your first install and see how it works for you. If it doesn’t work out well the first time, use the restore point and install CounterSpy without enabling Active Protection. Good luck!

Feds Check Out Antivirus Patent Claims

Trend Micro has convinced the trade commission to look into whether competitors are infringing on its patents.

Grant Gross, IDG News Service
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has voted to investigate claims by Trend Micro of competitors' patent infringement involving antivirus products.

Trend Micro filed a trade complaint Nov. 21 against fellow cybersecurity vendors Barracuda Networks of Campbell, California; Panda Software International, based in Spain; and Panda Distribution of Glendale, California.

Trend Micro's complaint accuses the three companies of infringing its patent for virus detection and removal apparatus for computer networks. The technology "represents a dramatic departure from the traditional antivirus methods of safeguarding individual computers," the company says in its complaint.

The Trend Micro complaint accuses Barracuda of importing antivirus software that infringes its patent. The complaint says Barracuda uses code from the open-source antivirus product ClamAV, which is written in part in Europe and Australia. Barracuda also imports hardware components, the complaint says.

Panda's products also contain code imported into the U.S., the Trend Micro complaint says.

A Barracuda spokeswoman said the complaint is curious. "It is interesting that the ITC has decided to take up an investigation, given Barracuda Networks manufactures all of its products in the United States and does not import anything of significance," said Kylie Heintz.

A Panda representative didn't immediately respond to a request for comments.

The ITC case will be referred to an administrative law judge, who will schedule and hold an evidentiary hearing. The judge will make an initial determination as to whether there is a violation of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930. That initial determination is subject to commission review.

The ITC will make a final determination in the investigation at the earliest practicable time, the commission said in a news release. Within 45 days, the ITC will set a target date for completing the investigation.

Free Antivirus

Alwil Avast 4 Home Edition: VB100 and ICSA certified, on-access and on-demand scanning, e-mail scanning for Outlook and POP3/SMTP, automatic updates, e-mail technical support, 7.1MB.

Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus System: VB100 and ICSA certified, on-access and on-demand scanning, e-mail scanning for Outlook and Outlook Express, automatic updates, 5.7MB.
H+BEDV Datentechnik AntiVir Personal Edition: ICSA certified, on-access and on-demand scanning but no e-mail scanning, automatic updates (after fairly significant configuration effort), 3.8MB.

Softwin BitDefender Free Edition Version 7: Uses same scanning engine as the VB100- and ICSA-certified Standard Edition, on-access and on-demand scanning but no e-mail scanning, automatic updates, 8.8MB.

Send your questions and tips to nettips@spanbauer.com. We pay $50 for published items. You'll find more Internet Tips here. Scott Spanbauer is a contributing editor for PC Worl

McAfee steps up online safety education drive

To help educate internet users about the potential dangers of the online world, security firm McAfee has created a free 10-step internet safety plan.

Available through the McAfee Advice Center, the ebook is broken into separate sections each aimed at providing safety guidelines for various age groups and experience levels, including kids, teens, parents, teachers and community groups.

In conjunction with the guidelines, there is also a quiz aimed at that challenges teens' knowledge of online risks and their ability to stay safe from spyware, spam, scams and identity theft.
"The days when people went online only to gather information and send email have changed," said Todd Gebhart, senior vice president and general manager of Consumer, Mobile and Small Business for McAfee.

"Cyberspace is an exciting environment full of opportunity, but it is also increasingly risky, with numerous threats emerging daily. Parents need to be on guard whenever their children venture online, so we've developed some simple steps to help ensure that young people's online experiences are safe and pleasant."

According to recent research, teens and kids are known to engage in risky online behaviour. For example, while 51 per cent of teens have downloaded music, the search term 'digital music' often leads to drive-by download sites that can populate a computer with spyware, viruses and exploits without users' knowledge. In addition, 45 per cent of young people said someone they've never met in person has asked them for personal information online.

The guidelines also include a section on how to save chat session logs, block users, report intruders and it provides recommendations for age-appropriate browsers and search engines, among other tips.

McAfee hopes that its new ebook will help families work together to set boundaries and create a list of rules to follow.

Sourse : VNUNET

Hacked Antivirus Site Delivers a Virus

The Web site of AvSoft Technologies attempts to install a virus on visiting PCs, security firm warns.

Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
The Web site for Indian antivirus vendor AvSoft Technologies has been hacked and is being used to install malicious software on visitors' computers, security researchers said last week.

The download section of AvSoft's S-cop Web site hosts the malicious code, according to Roger Thompson, chief research officer with security vendor AVG. "They let one of their pages get hit by an iFrame injection," he said. "It shows that anyone can be a victim. ... It's hard to protect Web servers properly."

The technique used on the site has been seen in thousands of similar hacks over the past few months. The attackers open an invisible iFrame Window within the victim's browser, which redirects the client to another server. That server, in turn, launches attack code that attempts to install malicious software on the victim's computer.

The malicious software is a variant of the Virut virus family.

The iFrame pages are commonly used by Web developers to insert content into their Web pages, but because it is possible to create an invisible iFrame window, the technology is often misused by hackers as a way to silently redirect victims to malicious Web sites.

AvSoft, based in New Delhi, sells an antivirus product called SmartCOP and has sold a second antivirus product called Smartdog. The company, which is not well-known in the U.S., also specializes in recovering data lost due to virus attacks. The company could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.

That data recovery service could come in handy for some, as Virut is known as a "parasitic infector" virus that is extremely difficult to remove. "It infects all of your programs on your local hard drives, and then it starts hitting your network drives as well the first time you run," Thompson said.

Fortunately, the malware used to install Virut exploits only well-known bugs, meaning that users who are running antivirus software on fully patched systems will probably not be infected by the attack in its current state, security experts say.

Nobody knows how the malware got onto the Web site in the first place. News of the hack was reported on the Full Disclosure security discussion list on Thursday.

McAfee Security Research Manager Dave Marcus believes that the site was compromised by exploiting a Web programming error, most likely in the site's SQL or PHP code. Security experts say that criminals have written automated programs that scour the Web for these types of flaws and then automatically infect sites, making this an increasingly common problem.

Internet Tips: Free Antivirus: Finally Ready for Prime Time

Scott Spanbauer
As W32.blaster, Sobig, and earlier virus threats have shown, the Internet is not a terribly safe place to connect your PC. Besides updating Windows and your Internet applications regularly, please, I beg you, install two key utilities--a firewall and antivirus software--to ward off future attacks. And if you install any of the products I recommend below, the ounce of prevention won't cost you a dime.

In last month's column ("Ultimate Network Security: How to Install a Firewall"), I recommended a quartet of effective no-cost firewalls. If you'd had one of those apps running on your PC when Blaster hit in August, you'd have escaped the worm's effects. Free antivirus utilities have been around for a while, but I've never felt comfortable recommending them because testing organizations such as Virus Bulletin and ICSA Labs hadn't endorsed them. To pass the tests administered by these labs, an antivirus utility must, among other things, stop all viruses known to exist in the wild, on demand (during manual or scheduled scans of the hard disk and memory) and on access (using memory-resident shields to block viruses from loading into memory).

How the Free Four Score
Up-to-date performance test results for free antivirus programs aren't always easy to come by, but the little information I've been able to dredge up indicates that most of these utilities are improving. I tried all four of the programs below--the only free Windows antivirus programs I could find--and though I found Grisoft's AVG and Alwil's Avast 4 to be the most feature-rich, I feel comfortable recommending any of the four. They all update their virus definitions automatically and have a seal of approval from at least one testing lab.

Grisoft's AVG Anti-Virus System: AVG passed Virus Bulletin's June 2003 VB100 Windows XP test (the most recent available at press time) after failing previous attempts; it also passed ICSA's June 2003 test. AVG includes memory-resident scanners, plus e-mail scanners for Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, and Exchange client.

Alwil's Avast 4 Home Edition: Avast likewise passed both the VB100 and ICSA tests, and it offers memory-resident scanning. But Avast surpasses AVG by scanning both Outlook and standard Internet (POP3/SMTP) mail, making it a good choice if you use a non-Microsoft mail client. Amazingly, Alwil also offers support via e-mail for its free product.

H+BEDV Datentechnik's AntiVir Personal Edition: This utility doesn't appear in Virus Bulletin's June 2003 tests; it did, however, pass ICSA's June 2003 tests. AntiVir includes a memory-resident scanner, but it lacks e-mail scanning (it watches only file read and write operations and looks for suspicious macros). You can use AntiVir's separate scheduler program to launch scheduled hard-disk scans, and virus-signature and program updates; but how to perform these tasks (or whether they're possible) is far from obvious.

Softwin's BitDefender Free Edition Version 7: BitDefender Free Edition does not appear in the VB100 and ICSA test results, but the Standard Edition passes both tests using the same scanning engine as the free version. Like the other free AV tools, BitDefender employs a memory-resident scanner and is set to download updates automatically. But like AntiVir Personal Edition, it doesn't scan e-mail for viruses during send and receive operations.

Set Phasers to Kill
After installing one of these programs, configure it for maximum protection. For example, Avast's heuristics (scanning techniques used to trap new and unknown viruses) are set to medium sensitivity by default. To configure the program for maximum safety, click its system tray icon to open the on-access scanner's settings, and then move the scanner sensitivity slider to High. Click OK (see Figure 1).

The downside of setting an antivirus program to its highest security level is that it might noticeably slow PC performance. If you're stuck with an older machine, you may need to go with the default security settings, or try one of the other three freebies to see if it has less impact on performance.

Spam and where it comes from

Author: Carolyn Clayton
In the society that we live in today people now class all unsolicited email as spam. This includes automatic replies, emails containing viruses and unwanted but legitimate business propositions.

In the society that we live in today people now class all unsolicited email as spam. This includes automatic replies, emails containing viruses and unwanted but legitimate business propositions.

Spam is nearly as old as the Internet and many believe that the problem of spam will never really go away as spammers are becoming increasingly difficult to stop. They are also finding more and more ways of delivering spam mail around the Internet.

One thing that many of us never really understand is how spammers get our email addresses in the first place. One of the main ways in which this is done is through spammers using computers to check almost every page of websites on the Internet looking for the ‘@’ symbol. If the symbol is found the spammer knows that it is an email address and then simply adds your email address to their database so that when the spammer sends out an automated spam message everyone who is on the database will receive it.

Spammers get your email address without you even realising it. The way in which you can reduce the chance of this happening is to ensure that you don’t place your email address on pages across the Internet; however if you need to do this for example for customers of your business to get in touch with you or if someone has requested your email address you should make it accessible to them by replacing the @ symbol, i.e. name[at]domain[dot]com. Spammer programmes will not be able to pick this up as an email address and you will still be able to place your email address on webpage’s.

Another way in which spammers are able to get a hold of your email address is if your email address is sorted on someone’s computer who gets a virus. Spam virus takes advantage of an infected computer and sends spam emails to all the addresses sorted within that PC. These spam emails do not get sent from the email address of the infected computer owner; they are sent from a fake, spam email address.

If you are finding that you are getting spam messages there are certain steps that you can take to reduce the amount of spam that you receiving, as well as getting a spam blocker/filter you should always remember to never reply to the spam email and never un-subscribe. Many people think that if they request to be taken off a ‘mailing’ list that they won’t receive any more spam emails. This is in fact opposite of what actually happens. If you request to un-subscribe the only thing that you are doing is verifying to a spammer that your email account is valid and they will simply send you more spam mail as they think that you are reading them.

The best reaction to take to spam mail is no reaction. You should never interact with a spammer in anyway as they will just send you more spam emails. To tackle spam messages you should invest in an anti-spam software and let that take care of the spam for you.

About Author

Helen is the web master of MySpamBin, specialists in Anti Spam Software Solutions.

Please feel free to republish this article providing this resource box remains intact with a working hyperlink to our site.

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Spambots and Forums

Author: Carolyn Clayton
Everyone of us who is a regular Internet user, whether it is merely having an email account, posting on websites or owning your own website have more than likely experienced spam at some point, with most people suffering from the burden everyday.

Everyone of us who is a regular Internet user, whether it is merely having an email account, posting on websites or owning your own website have more than likely experienced spam at some point, with most people suffering from the burden everyday.

Although email spam remains the biggest threat and annoyance to Internet users there are other forms of spam on the Internet that are catching up, the main example being forum spam. If you have a large website that has a lot of space your forum will most likely be powered by MySQL, vBulletin, Invasion Power Board or phpBB etc. These power the biggest forums and are the most used throughout websites on the Internet that have forums. By using one of these programmes to power your forum you will have less of a problem when it comes to spam as in order to post on forums powered by these you have to be a member of the forum.

Forums that have the worst problems with spam aren’t doomed however; there are steps that can be taken to reduce the amount of spam posts that appear on these forums. You should always make sure that people have to register on your forum to be able to post on it. By doing this you are given the opportunity to moderate new users, by doing this you will be able to keep an eye on the type of messages that these new users leave on your forum; if the messages are genuine then you can start to un-moderate these users, however if the posts that they make are spam then you are able to delete their membership before they start posting a vast amount.

Although it was believed that by making people have to register to your forum in order to stop spam being posted, this theory has been proven wrong due to what are known as spambots. These spambots are automated programmes that are made for the purpose of registering on forums. They supply the forum with a fake name and email address and even mask their IP address making them untraceable. Spammers then use these spambots to post on the forums. The spammer sets the message that the spambot will leave and the spambots signature on the forum will be filled with links that will take you to the spammer’s website. These links will more than likely take you to sites that are based around gambling, pornography and pharmaceuticals, which are normally weight loss supplements.

These spambots increase the workload of a forum administrator, making the moderators of a forum have to check every new member and on a forum that has an average of hundreds of new members within a week, this job becomes to time consuming, which in effect pushes up the labour costs of running the site.

Forums are meant to represent a place where opinions on a certain subject matter can be shared, somewhere you can share news with other members as well as being a host for expert advice; spammer’s are taking this privilege away from genuine users and are starting to discourage people from using the forum.

About Author

Helen is the web master for MySpamBin, home of all your Anti Spam needs.

Please feel free to republish this article providing this resource box remains intact with a working hyperlink to our site.

Article Source: http://www.1888articles.com/author-carolyn-clayton-1268.html