Virus writers charged with copyright violation
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Movie-munching Trojan miscreants go all Winny Japan has arrested its first suspected virus writers, but in a strange twist the three suspected creators and distributors of a strain of P2P malware have been charged with copyright violation, in an arrest that recalls Al Capone's prosecution for tax evasion.â¦
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Malware with manaces Virus writers are revisiting the tactic of holding data on compromised machines to ransom with a new strain of so-called "ransom-ware" Trojan.â¦
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The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has voted to investigate claims by Trend Micro of competitors&#39; 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&#39;s complaint accuses the three companies of infringing its patent for virus detection and removal apparatus for computer networks. The technology &quot;represents a dramatic departure from the traditional antivirus methods of safeguarding individual computers,&quot; 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&#39;s products also contain code imported into the U.S., the Trend Micro complaint says.A Barracuda spokeswoman said the complaint is curious. &quot;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,&quot; said Kylie Heintz.A Panda representative didn&#39;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.
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A Swedish prosecutor filed charges Thursday against the organizers of popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, saying it has helped millions of users worldwide violate copyrights.
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$133K salary awaits Fujacks fiend A Chinese virus writer sent to jail for four years earlier this week has being offered a well-paying job by one of his victims.â¦
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US recording companies have filed copyright infringement lawsuits against 754 computer users in the latest round of legal action in the industryâs effort to stop unauthorised swapping of music online.
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FTC charges that New York firm infected victims' computers with adware.
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(InfoWorld) - They just don't make malware like they used to. Or at least like they did earlier this year. Even low-quality malware, however, is taxing the resources of security companies, since it is being detected in ever-higher numbers. Over the last six months, the technical creativity of malware has fallen along with the ability to cause massive damage, such as that created by the MyDoom and Sasser worms of years past, wrote Alexander Gostev, senior virus analyst for Kaspersky Lab, in a recent report. Gostev's lab intermittently sees highly technical malware, but most is "the same unending stream of Trojans, viruses and worms," he wrote. In many cases, hackers simply take existing malware and create variants, by tweaking the older code to evade antivirus software. At times, the process is simple trial and error. Malware writers use online scanners such as Virustotal , which check to see if their new code will be detected by antivirus software, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for F-Secure. If the code is detectable, they can make a slight modification and run it through the scanner again. "I'd like to tell you that we're winning this war," Hypponen said. "But frankly, I'm not so sure. We need new kinds of solutions." Because much of the code is not new, it tends to remain effective for shorter periods of time before antivirus companies detect it. Still, the time it takes to identify and create a signature for a new virus, which can range from a few minutes to a few hours, is often long enough for hackers to infect computers. "Antivirus companies are working at the limits of their capabilities in terms of speed," Gostev wrote. To be sure, some malicious hackers are doing creative work. This year saw some sophisticated phishing attacks, and virus writers have been branching into relatively new areas like instant messaging and social networking sites, noted Christopher Boyd, security research manager for FaceTime Communications. But the trend overall, he said, has been "quantity over quality." Kaspersky Lab in Moscow is on the front lines of the battle. Its analysts added 2,000 signatures to their database in January 2005. Last month they added 10,000 signatures -- a five-fold increase, said Stanislav Shevchenko, head of the lab. The virus analysts work 12-hours shifts, pulling up screen after screen of rolling lines of code. Automated tools analyze some pieces of malware, but human analysis is still needed for others. A good analyst should process an average piece of malware within 5 minutes, Shevchenko said. But some of the rarer, more creative code is harder to crack. Polymorphic viruses -- ones that can change their byte sequences to throw off antivirus software -- can take up to a week to analyze, Shevchenko said. The signatures are added to a database used by Kaspersky's antivirus engine, which is licensed by other security vendors such as Juniper Networks, ClearSwift , and F-Secure. The increase in the volume of malicious code can be attributed in part to the impunity enjoyed by malware writers, said Eugene Kaspersky, head of antivirus research. Despite efforts by law enforcement agencies to strengthen international cooperation, most malware writers are never punished. "It's quite safe for them," Kaspersky said. "If they are clever enough, there is almost no risk for them at the moment." The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the country's KGB intelligence agency, frequently ask Kaspersky Lab for information, said Kaspersky spokesman Timur Tsoriev. The FSB, however, approaches Kaspersky less these days since the agency has bolstered its in-house expertise, Kaspersky said. Kaspersky said his lab focuses less on finding the root of criminal activity than protecting the company's customers. But the burden of rising online criminal activity directly impacts security companies, he said. "If there is no help from the police and if they don't reduce the number of criminals, I'm afraid the detection for all antivirus products will go down," Kaspersky said.
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CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh explains why convicted virus and worm authors are more likely to do Club Fed than hard time.
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The recording industry has filed copyright infringement lawsuits against 761 computer users, the latest round of litigation in the record companies' effort to stamp out unauthorized trading of music online.
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In the past, virus writers seeking fame and attention wrote their malicious programs to spread as quickly and broadly as possible, boasting to colleagues when they manage to cripple hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide in a matter of hours.
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WinHex spell fails to take Virus writers have created a proof-of-concept virus that targets a widely-used computer forensics tool.â¦
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The IT industry&#39;s war against virus writers has seen battles won on both sides this year. Sven Jaschan, the 18-year-old German responsible for spreading 70 per cent of viruses in the first six months of 2004
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The alleged writer of the disruptive Sasser virus has been formally charged by German prosecutors.
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InfoWorld - Two more defendants have pleaded guilty to charges of criminal copyright infringement for selling counterfeit software with a retail value of nearly $6 million on eBay Inc., the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
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Virus writers go after anti-virus vulnerabilities When the Storm Worm swept through the internet in mid-January, the program's writers took a brute force approach to evading anti-virus defenses: They created a massive number of slightly different copies of the program and released them all at the same time.â¦
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Virus writers have created a new Trojan horse capable of helping crooks to break into the accounts of British internet banking customers.