• Sophos: Free Anti Virus for Mac OS

    Posted November 9, 2010 By in Blog With | Comments Off Sophos: Free Anti Virus for Mac OS

    Free Anti-Virus Protection For Your Mac

    For years, the Mac community has been relatively ignored by the malware community thanks to Windows’ market share, but that era is starting to fade as a result of Apple’s new appeal in the computing market.

    Sophos anti-virus app

    Sophos

    Now security company Sophos has released a Mac anti-virus/anti-malware product for download free of charge.

    As I’ve long said, the only thing that made Macs more ‘secure’ is there were only a fraction of the users and even less hackers dedicating their time to finding exploits. That era is coming to a close.

    As the popularity of Apple’s other products has brought huge surges of demand in computing products, the malware community can no longer ignore the potential of co-opting our Macs for their botnets.

    Microsoft Security Essentials

    Microsoft already upset the apple cart in the PC security market by releasing a free anti-virus application for home and small business (10 user limit for businesses) in the form of Microsoft Security Essentials, providing an excellent alternative to other free anti-virus software which is often very limited or has annoying restrictions.

    Personally, I’ve never found any one single application that will catch everything – a sentiment most IT professionals will agree to, but having even one installed is better than none and for users who take proper security precautions and keep their systems up to date, one tool might be fine.

    Links

  • Fake Microsoft Security Essentials Alert Is a Trojan

    Posted September 28, 2010 By in Blog With | Comments Off Fake Microsoft Security Essentials Alert Is a Trojan

    Have you seen this? Did the ‘Clean computer’ and ‘Apply action’ buttons fail to remove the trojan?

    If your answer to the above questions were yes, you’ve been had. This is a big fat fake. This sucker reared its head on a PC in my work network today and I knew it was a fake because Microsoft Security Essentials is not installed on that PC.

    Beyond knowing that, there were other indications that immediately pointed to this being rogue software vs. a genuine malware/virus alert:

    • opening a browser prompted the display of the virus warning
    • opening outlook prompted the display of the virus warning
    • a a locally installed anti-virus isn’t about to encourage you to do an online scan

    I have seen other rogue software before, but not this particular version, so I did some digging:

    What this infection does:

    The fake Microsoft Security Essentials Alert is a Trojan that attempts to trick you into thinking you are infected so that you will then install and purchase one of 5 rogue anti-virus programs that it is distributing. When the Trojan is run it will masquerade as an alert from the legitimate Windows Microsoft Security Essentials Program anti-virus program. This alert will be titled Microsoft Security Essentials Alert and states that a Trojan was detected on your computer. It will list this Trojan as Unknown Win32/Trojan and state that it is a severe infection. It will then prompt you to clean your computer using the program in order to remove it. When you click on the Clean Computer or Apply actions button, it will state that it was unable to remove it and then prompt you to scan online. If you click on the Scan Online button it will list 35 different anti-virus programs, 30 of which are legitimate anti-virus programs and 5 that are rogues that the Trojan is distributing. These five rogue programs are:

    • Peak Protection 2010
    • Pest Detector 4.1
    • Major Defense Kit
    • AntiSpySafeguard or AntiSpy Safeguard
    • Red Cross Antivirus

    During this fake online scan only the 5 fake anti-virus programs listed above will state that this supposed Trojan is an infection. It does this to scare you into clicking the Free Install button next to them that will install the rogue program onto your computer and then reboot your computer. It should be noted that Red Cross Antivirus, Peak Protection 2010, Pest Detector 4.1, Major Defense Kit, AntiSpySafeguard, and AntiSpy Safeguard that this Trojan is distributing are exactly the same.

    via Remove the Fake Microsoft Security Essentials Alert Trojan and AntiSpySafeguard.http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/

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