One in Five PCs Infected With Rootkits
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Malware researchers have uncovered 'massive growth' in the number of PCs harboring silent rootkit infections.
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Workshop Windows virus cleanup primer
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More PCs run the alternative OS, but many will end up with a pirated version of Windows, report says.
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More than 30,000 PCs per day are being recruited into secret networks that spread spam and viruses, a study shows. Six months ago only 2,000 Windows machines per day were being recruited into these so-called bot nets.
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A fifth of the applications installed on Windows PCs are missing security patches, according to Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia APS.
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As infected images plant back doors on PCs, experts see possibility of virus too.
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Blog: The most serious vulnerabilities allow attackers to run code on compromised machines.
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Over the past month, a new type of malicious software has emerged, using a decades-old technique to hide itself from antivirus software.The malware, called Trojan.Mebroot by Symantec, installs itself on the first part of the computer&#39;s hard drive to be read on startup, then makes changes to the Windows kernel, making it hard for security software to detect it.Criminals have been installing Trojan.Mebroot, known as a master boot record rootkit, since mid-December, and were able to infect nearly 5,000 users in two separate attacks, staged on Dec. 12 and Dec. 19, according to Verisign&#39;s iDefense Intelligence Team. In order to install the software on a victim&#39;s computer, attackers first lure them to a compromised Web site, which then launches a variety of attacks against the victim&#39;s computer in hopes of finding a way to run the rootkit code on the PC.Once installed, the malware gives attackers control over the victim&#39;s machine.The group behind this latest rootkit is the same one responsible for the Torpig Trojan, and it is believed to have already installed more than 250,000 Trojan programs, iDefense said in a report on the rootkit published Monday.The interesting thing about Trojan.Mebroot is that it installs itself on the master boot record (MBR). This is the first sector of the computer&#39;s hard drive and it is the place the computer goes to first whenever it wants to boot up the operating system. &quot;Basically, if you can control the MBR, you can control the operating system and therefore the computer it resides on,&quot; wrote Symantec researcher Elia Florio in a blog posting on Trojan.Mebroot.The criminals are using several different versions of this attack code, some of which are not currently being detected by some antivirus products, iDefense said.&quot;At the moment the AV detection is hit and miss across the board, however in the last day a number of vendors have added detection for it already,&quot; said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with nCircle Network Security. &quot;As for penetration, so far many people are showing it as having a low overall distribution. The concern is that the group which may be preparing to distribute the rootkit is well-prepared.&quot;Malicious software that infected the master boot record was common during the MS-DOS era, but it has not been used much in attacks in recent years.In 2005, however, researchers at eEye Digital Security gave a talk at the Black Hat security conference, showing how a rootkit could hide itself on the MBR. This Trojan.Mebroot software is derived from that code, iDefense said.Getting this kind of malicious software to work reliably is a technical challenge, and there have generally been easier ways for the bad guys to take over PCs in recent years, said Marc Maiffret, an independent security researcher who was chief technology officer at eEye when the code was first developed.Attackers were given a hand last year, however, when researchers at NV Labs published a proof of concept MBR rootkit.Maiffret said that while we may soon see more of these MBR rootkits, &quot;it won&#39;t take long for all the antivirus companies to react.&quot;&quot;It&#39;s not some new attack vector that&#39;s going to be hard to prevent,&quot; he said. &quot;It&#39;s just something that people haven&#39;t really paid attention to.&quot;
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Most users think their computer is safe from adware and spyware--but they're wrong.
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Left online for 24 days to see how hackers would attack them, four Linux computers with weak passwords were hit by some 270,000 intrusion attempts-- about one attempt every 39 seconds, according to a study conducted by a researcher at the University of Maryland.
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To see the e-mail I get every day from readers about security issues is to develop a deep discomfort with the state of computing today. Keeping a Windows PC safe can demand a high degree of vigilance. -Rob Pegoraro
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Study shows most attacks come from exploited PCs beloging to DSL or cable customers.
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With viruses, worms, spyware, spam and phishing, running a computer this year -- especially one with Windows -- has often been a colossal headache. -Rob Pegoraro
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The rate at which personal computers are being hijacked by hackers rocketed in the first half of 2004, reveals a new report. An average of 30,000 computers per day were turned into enslaved âzombiesâ, compared with just 2000 per day in 2003.
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An attack combining malicious codes on Web sites and end-user laziness could compromise millions of routers still configured with their out-of-the-box defaults.
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Virus attack occurs just as PC vulnerability is discovered.
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A Trojan horse computer program that uses infected computers to churn out mobile phone spam messages is causing concern among antivirus firms.