Two new problems to watch out for.

The first is OddJob, a new trojan horse program, that prevents you from seeing that have not logged out of your banks website.
Once OddJob detects that you have clicked on the "log out" or "exit" link, it intercepts and negates that command while sending an image to your browser that looks like you successfully logged out.

Once you have left the website, OddJob can then transfer money out of your account without you knowing it.

The second thing is more of an advancement than an object, carberp malware checks for antivirus before infecting. Carberps creators are submitting it to virus-analysis websites and improving whichever parts are bad.
So if it is effective at removing, say, AVG antivirus, it will infect computers using that program.

Anti-virus for Android Phones

As a follow up to my post on a data-stealing Trojan Horse on Android phones, I have seen that AVG has an antivirus program for Android phones.

Now your Android phone can be every bit as safe as your home PC. Just make sure to keep that antivirus updated!

They're At It Again

Every once in a while, you see a TV ad for a website that promises to "speed up" or "clean out" your PC via a website.

Sometimes it's MaxMySpeed, or CleanUpMyPC or something similar. It all looks so slick and so polished and it has such realistic testimonials from such real-looking people, how is the lay-person supposed to know that its all a scam?

How is it a scam? If you are having virus issues, one of the first symptoms is a lack of internet connectivity.
So, if you cant get to their website, how can they clean up your computer? Simple. They can't.

And they know it. And they know you dont know it.

Just think about it for a second, these TV ads sound like a miracle cure for computer stresses; if they really worked, wouldnt you be hearing about from other places?

If it sounds to good to be true, can it be true?

Dont fall for a TV ad scam; if you have computer troubles, call a repairman or a repair shop.
They'll know what to do.

Trojan Horse on Android Phones

Security guru Bruce Schneier has posted an article on his website about a new Trojan Horse program that runs on Android-based mobile phones.

Read it here.

The article talks about how a malicious program can fool the user into granting permission for the app to search the phone for stored credit card information and relay it back to the apps creator.

Top Troubleshooting Tools for your PC

PC World has a great article on downloadable programs that can be used to diagnose problems on your PC.

Read it here.

Will Denial of Service Attacks be the Future?

Over at PC World, Arbor Networks thinks so. The article lays out several reasons why Denial of Service attacks wont go away any time soon.

Read it here.

But, I hear you asking, what in the world is a denial of service(aka DOS or DDOS) attack?

This is what it is: If you could get ten or a hundred thousand computers to all ask for the same web page (like cnn.com or amazon.com) at the same instant, the computers that contain that one web page (called 'servers') would overload and reset (the technical term is 'fail-over') and while the servers are resetting themselves, the web page is not available (404: page not found).

While this may sound complicated, think of it this way: When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and everyone was trying to reach their friends and family in New Orleans, the phone system overloaded and callers got the "all circuits are busy" message.
Because everybody wanted to call New Orleans at the same time, nobody got through. This is an accidental denial of service.
When computers do the same thing, it is an intentional denial of service.

Oh, and the second D in DDOS stands for 'distributed', meaning widespread.