Star Trek Based Anti-Virus: Klingon Anti-Virus (KAV)

May 22, 2009

Sophos put out a Star Trek Based Anti-Virus. Pure genius. The downloads for it are off the charts. Its free. Its fun and its increbibly smart marketing. Like many brilliant ideas it was an accident. Well, it was put out as an accident. But I for one am glad it was.

The Star Trek movie was awesome by the way! Great move for a franchise that deserves a larger commercial audience. I’m anxious for more movies and shows.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Written by elamb.security · Filed Under Main Digg, Malware, Malware/Malware Removal, Malware/Trojans, Malware/Virus, security

Osama Hanged (virus)

October 2, 2008

*verified with snopes.com and about anti-virus*

Emails with pictures of Osama Bin-Laden hanged are being sent and the
moment that you open these emails your computer will crash and you
will not be able to fix it!

1.) If you get an e-mail along the lines of ‘Osama Bin Laden Captured’
or ‘Osama Hanged’ , don’t open the Attachment!!!!

This e-mail is being distributed through countries around the globe,
but mainly in the US and Israel.

Be considerate & send this warning to whomever you know..

PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS.

2.) You should be alert during the next few days:

Do not open any message with an attached file called ‘Invitation’
regardless of who sent it.

It is a virus that opens an Olympic Torch which ‘burns’ the whole hard
disc C of your computer!!!!

This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address
in his/her contact list, that is why you should send this E-Mail to all
your contacts.

It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus
and open it.

If you receive e-mail called ‘invitation’, though sent by a friend. Do
not open it!!! Shut down your computer immediately!!!!

This is the worst virus announced by CNN, it has been classified by
Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever.

This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair
yet for this kind of virus.

This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the
vital information is kept.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Written by elamb.security · Filed Under Main Digg, Malware, Malware/Trojans, Malware/Virus, scam, security

Ed Skoudis lists the Top 5 Worst Attacks of 1998 – 2002

June 10, 2008

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

In the November 2002, Information Security Magazine article, Infosec’s Worst NightMares, Ed Skoudis lists the Top 5 Worst Attacks of 1998 – 2002. Mr. Skoudis is the founders of Intelguardians Network Intelligence, LLC and is a handler of the very popular Internet Storm Center.

Mr. Skoudis mentions that the Top five major destructive attacks of 1998 – 2002 made many industries “battle-tested” and more likely to be proactive rather than reactive. The 5 year Worst Skoudis list is based on exploits that shook our very faith in the Internet and security of e-commerce.

1. Code Red (2001). July 13 2001, the worm attacked Microsoft IIS systems. By 19 July 2001, the worm had affected over 350,000 systems. SANS and Honeynet Project set up honey pots to capture the worm. But E-eye Digital Security Programmers did the most intense research on the worm and also named it. The worm exploited a vulnerability in the indexing software distributed with IIS, described in Microsoft’s MS01-033 patch. It was a buffer overflow attack. Some of the lessons learned: Keep systems patched, use of honey pots to capture malware, coordinated response helps to contain worms.

2. Nimda (2001). Shortly after 9/11, the Nimda worm was unleashed. It caused more damage financially than Code Red. There were rumors that it was China that released it to hurt the US further, but this is unlikely due to the nature of Nimda.

While it was bad, it had the appearance of a being written by a determined amateur, not a nation-state that spends $1 Billion annually on cyberwarfare capabilities. – Skoudis.

Nimda affected Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, or 2000 and servers running Windows NT and 2000. It was so affective because it attacked IIS, e-mail, browsers and network shares. This multi dimensional attack method could mark a trend in future cyberfare.

Lessons Learned: The importance of an incident response capability, disabling arbitrary scripts in e-mail and browsers.

3. Melissa (1999) & LoveLetter (2000). Both of these exploited malware through e-mail propagation. Melissa used Microsoft Word Macro virus and LoveLetter (I Love You Virus). The worm harvested the victims address book to forward itself to more victims which killed a lot of email servers. Lessons Learned: Many companies got serious about implementing anti-virus applications throughout the network.

4. Distributed Denial-of-Service (DdoS) attacks (2000). After all the panic of pre-Y2K, a completely new and unexpected storm hit major sites: Yahoo!, Amazon, CNN, E*Trade ZDNet and eBay. All by a single child hacker nicked named Mafiaboy. He had spread zombie flooding agents to hundreds of machines around the world and used them to attack sites with billions of useless packets. Lessons Learned: employ anti-spoofing filters.

5. Remote Control Trojan Horse Backdoors (1998 – 2000). In 1998, the Cult of the Dead Cow hackers group created the Trojan, Back Orifice which initially targeted Windows NT/9x. The tool allowed unskilled attackers to attack any vulnerable system. It also marked the rise of the “script kiddies” and produced a bunch of spin offs such as Subseven, Netbus and Hack-a-Tack.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Written by elamb.security · Filed Under Malware, Malware/Malware Removal, Malware/Trojans, Malware/Virus, Security Awareness, Security Management, hacking

w32 serflike a

December 1, 2007

I have never heard of any virus called "w32 serflike a", however if you believe you have this or any other malware a good place to start investigating this is to use Autoruns

Autoruns is the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows Me and XP.

Netdrvr Ext W32 Spybot Worm

November 25, 2007

Those looking for “Netdrvr Ext W32 Spybot Worm”

You typed “Netdrvr Ext” Did you mean “netdrvr.exe”?

If you meant “netdrvr.exe” then you definitely have malware. More than likely you have a virus running in a critical system folder of Windows: C:\Windows\System32\netdrvr.exe. This virus looks like it might be a device driver (Network DRV) but it is like a cancer to your system resources and privacy.

This virus can be removed with free tools such as Adaware, HijackThis or Microsoft’s Autoruns (recommended).

Popularity: 7% [?]

Written by elamb.security · Filed Under Malware, Malware/Malware Removal, Malware/Virus, Worm

Storm Worm Erupts Into Worst Virus Sustained Attack In the Last 2 Years

July 25, 2007

The Storm worm authors are waging a multi-pronged attack and generating the largest virus attack some researchers say they’ve seen in two years.”We are basically in the midst of an incredibly large attack,” said Adam Swidler, a senior manager with security company Postini. “It’s the most sustained attack that we’ve seen. There’s been nine to 10 days straight days of attack at this level.”

Swidler said in an interview with InformationWeek that the attack started a little more than a week ago, and Postini since then has recorded 200 million spam e-mails luring users to malicious Web sites. Before this attack, an average day sees about 1 million virus-laden e-mails, according to Postini. Last Thursday, however, the company tracked 42 million Storm-related messages in that day alone. As of Tuesday afternoon, Postini researchers were predicting they would see that day between 4 million and 6 million virus e-mails — 99% of them associated with the Storm worm.

more on the complete ad heavy Infoweek site

Popularity: 4% [?]

Written by elamb.security · Filed Under Malware/Virus

myspace virus (simple thing you can do to avoid it)

January 24, 2007

There have been some very sneaky viruses on myspace such as flash based redirects.

But some are a little less sneaky and only take the slightest change in user actions.

Phishing attempts will do something like this. They will ask you to put in your myspace e-mail and password. More on Myspace viruses

Popularity: 4% [?]

Written by elamb.security · Filed Under Malware/Virus, myspace

Myspace gets Hacked

January 24, 2007

Myspace doesn’t seem safe, if someone can change everyone’s about me. This happened a few weeks ago. Changed everyone’s about me to “but most of all nathan is my hero”

Prevent Computer Viruses

December 26, 2006

In the last three years or so I haven’t had a single computer virus on my main system unless I put it there on purpose. I use a very simple method to prevent computer viruses and malware from ever getting on my system.

check it out here: http://elamb.org/hacked/how-to-prevent-computer-virus.htm

Popularity: 12% [?]

Written by elamb.security · Filed Under Computer Security, Computer Security/Home Computer Security, Computer Security/Home Computer Security/Home Computer , Howto, I got hacked, Main Digg, Malware, Malware/Malware Removal, Malware/Trojans, Malware/Virus

Computer Viruses Monitored via Dynamic Worldmap

May 30, 2006

You'll be able to view Previous Hour, Previous Day, Previous Month, This Year, and Previous Year. Color Coding has 6 Ranges (No Data, Quiet, Low, Medium, High, and Epidemic)