Spammers have entered GMail

Websense Security Labs has announced that spammers have managed to circumvent GMails CAPTCHA recognition

This means that you can get spam from GMail address in the future.

Websense says that spammers might get many benefits from using GMail. It's very unlikely that GMail mails would be blacklisted and GMail has so many users that picking spammers among them would be very difficult.

Banker trojan spread widely yesterday in Finland

Yesterday many Finns got a new kind of spam - this time in Finnish.

It warned of a radioactive cloud spreading from a nuclear reactor close to the Finnish city of Mikkeli.

Well, there is no nuclear power plant near Mikkeli so it didn't get much success ;)

Another version claims to be from a woman seeking love.

File needed to view pictures was actually a banker trojan targeted to Finnish online banks.

Read more here

Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.18.309 released

Comodo Firewall Pro has been 3.0.18.309 released.

See below release notes:

* FIXED! Import functionality does not work correctly
* FIXED! Logging does not work for "Allow" rules
* FIXED! Duplicate entries are created for some applications with 8.3 path names
* FIXED! Logoff/Login stops the functionality of some applications

Download
Comodo Firewall Pro

In 1.3 percent of Google searches have malware hits

During one year research Google has found more than 3 million malware installing web sites. Majority of them are porn sites but also other sites are listed. Two thirds of those sites are hosted in China.

Most worrying thing is that more and more malware installing sites are in search results. In about 1.3 percent of Google searches have at least one malware hit and amount has been rising all the time.

Read more here

Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.17.304 released

Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.17.304 has been released.

Below are release notes from Comodo web site:

* FIXED! Exceptions could not be added in protections window
* FIXED! Ask rules do not work in firewall rules when there is an allow/block rule in the policy
* FIXED! Windows Vista D+ protection was not properly working for pseudo-COM interfaces(e.g. DNS resolver or service control manager access)
* FIXED! Updates are going to provide configuration migration wizard to make the old configurations compatible with the new one
* FIXED! Windows Vista virus scanner does not run

Download
Comodo Firewall Pro

Microsoft February updates released

February updates have 11 updates which fix 17 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office and Works products.

Six of them are classified as critical, 3 of them is for Windows and 3 for Office. One of the critical Windows updates fixes 4 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer considering handling of html pages, pictures, ActiveX components and memory. These vulnerabilities enable to execute malicious code
using user rights.

Other updates are for Windows Vista tcp/ip protocol stack, IIS server software and Active Directory directory service.

Office updates are for handling of objects in Office documents and .doc, .wps and .pub file formats. Attacker can execute malicious code using system rights if user opens a document created by certain way.

Excel vulnerability discussed in January was not fixed yet.

Read more here

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12 released

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12 has been released yesterday.

It fixes these vulnerabilities

See release notes and download Firefox 2.0.0.12 here

My favorite programs

To my favorite programs include both commercial and freeware programs.

Antivirus

Free and payed version of Avira AntiVir

AntiVir is very effective and lightweight antivirus. I have used different versions of it more than 5 years.

Firewall

Free version of Comodo Firewall Pro

This firewall has beaten many commercial ones in leaktests and is very lightweight.
In addition to just firewall, it has also Comodo Anti-Virus as on-demand scanner and Defense+-feature as HIPS.
2000/XP/Vista.

Anti-spyware programs

Free version of SUPERAntiSpyware
Free version of Spybot - Search and Destroy
Free version of AVG anti-spyware

Multi purpose support utility
Free and commercial version of WinPatrol

Burning tools
BurnAware Free Edition

Easy-to-use and lightweight burning software.

Features below:

* Absolutely FREE. No spyware, no adware, no banners
* Writes to all CD/DVD media types including Blu-Ray (BD-R/BD-RE)
* Writes discs from disc images
* Writes DVDs from DVD-Video files
* Writes Audio CDs from WAV, MP3, or WMA files
* Creates disc images
* Supports all current hardware interfaces
* On-the-fly writing for all image types
* Writes Multi-Session to all supported media formats
* Auto-verification of written files
* Supports unicode for multi-byte languages
* Clean, flexible, easy to use interface
* Supports Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista (32 and 64 Bit)

Cleaner tools

CCleaner Cleans both temporary files and registry (free)
ATF-Cleaner
Free temporary file cleaner (XP/2000/Vista)

Data backup and disk management

Acronis True Image (commercial)

Acronis Disk Director Suite (commercial)

Screen capture

SnagIt (commercial)

Using SnagIt, you can select and capture anything on your screen, then easily add text, arrows, or effects, and save the screen capture to a file or share it immediately by e-mail or IM.

Defragment

Diskeeper 2008 Pro Premium (commercial)

DisKeeper runs here silently on background with automatic defragmentation and does it using low CPU priority resources.

Easy to use with nice amount of options and good Help file/documentation.

Media players

Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra (commercial)

VLC media player (free)

Web site update checker

Website-Watcher (commercial)

* Monitor web pages
* Monitor password protected pages
* Monitor forums for new postings and replies
* Monitor RSS feeds, Newsgroups and local files
* Highlight changes in a page
* Powerful filter system to ignore unwanted content

Browser

Mozilla FireFox

Email client

Mozilla ThunderBird

Download manager

GetRight Professional (commercial)

Orbit Downloader (free)

Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.16.295 released

Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.16.295 has been released.

Release notes from Comodo web site:

* NEW! Anti-Leak Configuration:
- A new default configuration is introduced to make D+ show fewer number of popup alerts while still remaning leak proof.
* NEW! On-Demand Virus Scanning:
- CFP now provides an option to scan for viruses during the installation and from its graphical user interface
* NEW! A-VSMART Warranty Program:
- CFP now provides the users an option to enroll one of the available A-VSMART Warranty programs
* IMPROVED! Self-Defense:
- There has been various reports that CFP 3.0 is attacked by some malware to disable its protection.
The self defense has been modified such that an ungraceful termination of CFP will block every unknown action (i.e. it will function as if "Block all unknown actions if the application is closed" option is selected. This option was not enabled by default).
* IMPROVED! Default Configuration:
- Default configuration now protects more registry keys and more COM interfaces.
- Default Web Browser and FTP Client policies are modified to support passive FTP requests
* IMPROVED! Handling of known code executing applications:
- Defense+ has been modified such that some known code executing programs such as rundll32.exe or windows scripting host are not autimatically trusted anymore.
* IMPROVED! Pending Files:
- Defense+ has been modified such that it is not going to report any pending files if it is not in clean PC mode.
* FIXED! Bugs in Defense+ Engine:
- Fixed numerous bugs that could stop Defense+ to properly handle the suspicious actions(e.g.bugs in registry and file protection, key logging etc).
- Fixed the bug that could prevent CFP from functioning properly in certain types of hardware configurations(e.g. when a USB harddisk is present etc.).
* FIXED! Minor Bugs in the Graphical User Interface

Download
Comodo Firewall Pro

Panda received last year over new 3000 malware files daily

PandaLabs (virus laboratory of Panda Security) has announced that it received 3000 new malware samples daily on average.

That mean there were 800 per cent more samples than in 2006 and around 1400 per cent more than in 2005.
That's why Panda said that current situation can be called as silent malware epidemic (hasn't received publicity in media and no major alarms).

Just virus definition updates don't help anymore to ensure users security. PandaLabs reveals that 23 per cent of home users were infected despite of using security programs.

Source: Panda