80 posts
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Eset Smart Security Suite beta – Mini Review
Landlord, one of our Geeks in Training has done a mini-review of Eset’s new Smart Security Suite now in beta. Smart Suite adds a firewall and anti-spam function to the NOD32 anti-virus scanner. I’ve just downloaded the new Eset Smart Security Beta to check it out,…
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Geeks gone bad?
GeekSquad, the well marketed, much advertised, but seldom recommended tech support team at BestBuy is no stranger to bad publicity. A GeekSquad agent was recently caught video taping a client in the shower. Prior to that they were sued for using unlicensed software by…
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Vista more secure than OSX?
Dino Dai Zovi, the New York-based security researcher who took home $10,000 in a highly-publicized MacBook Pro hijack on April 20, has stated in an interview that he thinks Vista is more secure than OSX. From your research on both platforms, is there a winner between Mac OS X…
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Vista weaknesses to be exposed
Respected security researcher Joanna Rutkowska promises to reveal new rootkit techniques for Vista, and ways to defeat it’s BitLocker drive encryption. On her blog she notes there will be a training session for “legitimate companies” during the Black Hat…
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Web attackers get better at hiding
Increasingly the actual code, often JavaScript, used to attack PCs is hidden in Flash animations or scrambled so that anyone who examines the source of a page can’t easily identify it, said Jose Nazario, a senior software engineer at Arbor Networks, in a presentation at…
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Rootkits becoming increasingly complex
Rootkits–malicious software that operates in a stealth fashion by hiding its files, processes and registry keys–have grown over the past five years from 27 components to 2,400, according to McAfee’s Rootkits Part 2: A Technical Primer (PDF). “The trend…
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Targeted e-mail attacks increasing
During March, MessageLabs intercepted 716 e-mail messages that were part of 249 targeted attacks aimed at 216 of its customers, the Gloucester, England-based provider of hosted e-mail filtering services said in a research report. Of the attacks, almost 200 consisted of a single…
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Pirates crack Vista at last
A genuine crack for Windows Vista has just been released by pirate group Pantheon, which allows a pirated, non-activated installation of Vista (Home Basic/Premium and Ultimate) to be properly activated and made fully-operational. Unlike cracks which have been floating around…
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Review: Six rootkit detectors protect your system
In October 2005, Windows expert Mark Russinovich broke the news about a truly underhanded copy-protection technology that had gone horribly wrong. Certain Sony Music CDs came with a program that silently loaded itself onto your PC when you inserted the disc into a CD-ROM drive.…
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$60 to keep crapware off of a Windows PC?
Earlier today Slashdot pointed me to a CBC article citing unnamed sources at Microsoft decrying the state of “craplets” on PCs. Just what are craplets? It’s a cute nickname for all of the software an OEM installs on your new Windows PC before it arrives on…