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Thread: Spyware, Scumware, Malware

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    Spyware, Scumware, Malware

    There appears to be a new generation of insidious spy, scum and malware.

    They are blowing past all my defenses and im doing scans 3 times a day and still picking up many, far more than two weeks ago.

    My point keep your spyware software up to date and scan more often until they are able to start blocking the new stuff

    If you notice your browser running slowly or acting glitchy do a scan immediately. I recommend SUPERANTISPYWARE. They have a free version and a paid. I pay for a subscription 20 bucks yearly. You should have others along with that but thats a great start if you dont have any.

    I also use hitman pro another paid subscription. They do have a free trial
    Heres the link for SuperAntiSpyware

    http://www.superantispyware.com/download.html


    LETS GO BRANDON
    F Joe Biden

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    I use Superantispyware - the paid version on my desktop and free version on my laptop (because I don't need autoscan on it).

    I also use Malwarebytes premium- that seems to catch things other programs miss.
    ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ


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    Exclamation

    250M computers affected worldwide...

    Hack Brief: Dangerous ‘Fireball’ Adware Infects a Quarter Billion PCs
    6.02.17 - Fireball Adware: Unnecessary marketing ads are always annoying, especially when it infects as many as one in five networks in the world, and hides the capability to do far more serious damage to its victims, it’s an epidemic waiting to happen.
    Just when the world was catching a breather for WannaCry ransomware, another one has come knocking at the door. A new malware dubbed as Fireball has infected millions of computers globally. A Security Firm, Check Point has recently warned of the possibility of a massive outbreak. An adware called ‘Fireball’ may have infected over 250 million PCs around the world. It’s a malware designed to hijack browsers to change the default search engine, and track their web traffic on behalf of a Beijing-based digital marketing firm called Rafotech. Maya Horowitz, the head of Check Point research team, said: “A quarter-billion computers could very easily become victims of real malware, It installs a backdoor into all these computers that can be very, very easily exploited in the hands of the Chinese people behind this campaign.”


    Who’s effected from Fireball Adware?


    Check Point reported 250 million PC infection by looking at the Alexa traffic, but the security firms fears that the number is much bigger. There’s a possibility that they have missed some domains, and therefore undercounted. Based on analysis of its own network of clients, Check Point estimates that one in five corporate networks globally have at least one infection. But only a fraction of those victims, around 5.5 million PCs, are in the US. Far worse hit are countries like India and Brazil, with close to 25 million infected machines each.


    How serious is the Hack?


    Fireball installs plugins to boost the ad network for Rafotech’s bogus search engines, all this for generating ad revenue for the firm. That is not all; there is a possibility of greater wickedness as the malware can run any code on the infected device. It can lead to a wider harm as Rafotech could steal confidential information from the infected systems and install additional malware to run codes on the networks of big organizations. Check Point’s Horowitz warns: “Something behind this is fishy, and the intentions of the developers aren’t only to monetize on advertisements. We don’t know their plan, and if there really is one. But it looks like they want to have the opportunity to take it to the next level. And they can.”


    How to be Safe?


    The best option is to avoid such ads which are of no use and keep poping-up on your screen. But avoiding the ads is just not the only and best solution. Keeping your data encrypted and your original IP invisible is the best option. This can only be achieved with a VPN. A VPN provider that offer built-in ad blocker should be the first choice.


    https://www.onevpn.com/blog/dangerous-fireball-adware/

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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    I use Superantispyware - the paid version on my desktop and free version on my laptop (because I don't need autoscan on it).
    I have AntiMalware Premium also
    I also use Malwarebytes premium- that seems to catch things other programs miss.
    LETS GO BRANDON
    F Joe Biden

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    waltky (06-07-2017)

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    Angry

    North Korea's cyber wars...

    WannaCry cyberattack linked to N. Korea
    Saturday 17th June, 2017 - There's mounting evidence that North Korea was behind last month's WannaCry ransomware attack that hit hundreds of thousands of computers around the world. U.K. security services believe that Lazarus, a group that has been linked to the government of North Korea, was responsible, U.K. intelligence sources said.
    That appears to confirm the view of private cybersecurity experts who said last month it was "highly likely" that the attack was linked with the isolated state. The U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre declined to comment. The Washington Post reported Thursday that the U.S. National Security Agency had produced a similar internal assessment last week. The NSA assessment was based on an analysis of tactics, techniques and targets, the newspaper reported. It said the evidence points with "moderate confidence" to North Korea's spy agency. Private cybersecurity firms have reached similar conclusions about the software that infected computers in around 150 countries and crippled parts of Britain's National Health Service.


    Security researchers at Symantec said last month that the "tools and infrastructure used in the WannaCry ransomware attacks have strong links to Lazarus." "We have high probability that these two are absolutely connected," Vikram Thakur, the firm's security response technical director, said at the time. The ransomware, also called WannaCrypt, locks down files on an infected computer and asks its administrator to pay in order to regain control. The software was designed around a NSA hacking tool that was leaked online last year. The bug was able to spread quickly because many major companies and organizations rely on "legacy software," or old, outdated technology that no longer receives software updates.


    Cyberattack WannaCry possibly linked to North Korea code

    Yet Symantec also said the attackers had made some rookie mistakes. "The WannaCry attacks do not bear the hallmarks of a nation-state campaign," Thakur said. North Korea's cyber targets have shifted in recent years. In 2013, when South Korea's banks and broadcasters were attacked, the government blamed its neighbor to the north. In 2014, the U.S. government blamed North Korea for the the hack on Sony Pictures. Clues in both cases pointed to Lazarus. By late 2015, the Lazarus hackers had shifted their attention to the global financial system, according to researchers. The group has since been linked to attacks on banks in 18 countries, including a major theft from Bangladesh's central bank.

    http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/16/tech...A+CNN+-+World)

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    Cool

    Andromeda botnet malware system taken down by International Police Operation...


    International Police Operation Shuts Down 'Andromeda' Malware System
    December 05, 2017 — A joint operation involving Germany, the United States and Belarus has taken down a malware system known as "Andromeda" or "Gamarue" that infected more than 2 million computers globally, Europol said on Tuesday.
    Andromeda is best described as a "botnet," or group of computers that have been infected with a virus that allows hackers to control them remotely without the knowledge of their owners. The police operation, which involved help from Microsoft, was significant both for the number of infected computers and because Andromeda had been used over a number of years to distribute new viruses, said Europol spokesman Jan Op Gen Oorth. "Andromeda was one of the oldest malwares on the market," added the spokesman for Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency.


    A man stands in front of a picture displaying activities of a so-called "botnet" during a workshop on computer and cyber crimes hosted by the Hessian ministry of justice in frankfurt am Main, central Germany.



    Authorities in Belarus said they had arrested a man on suspicion of selling malicious software and also providing technical support services. It did not identify the suspect. Officers had seized equipment from his offices in Gomel, the second city in Berlaus, and he was cooperating with the investigation, the country's Investigative Committee said. Op Gen Oorth said the individual is suspected of being "a ringleader" of a criminal network surrounding Andromeda. German authorities, working with Microsoft, had taken control of the bulk of the network, so that information sent from infected computers was rerouted to safe police servers instead, a process known as "sinkholing."


    Information was sent to the sinkhole from more than 2 million unique internet addresses in the first 48 hours after the operation began on November 29, Europol said. Owners of infected computers are unlikely to even know or take action. More than 55 percent of computers found to be infected in a previous operation a year ago are still infected, Europol said. Information about the operation has been gradually released by Europol, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Belarus's Investigative Committee over the past two days.


    https://www.voanews.com/a/internatio...m/4150017.html
    Last edited by waltky; 12-05-2017 at 11:44 PM.

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    We can't really win this. I do keep my anti-virus and spyware running all the time. I've been lucky so far. Nothing too bad yet.

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    Malware Puts Virtually All Phones, Computers at Risk...

    Security Flaws Put Virtually All Phones, Computers at Risk, Researchers Say
    January 03, 2018 — Security researchers on Wednesday disclosed a set of security flaws that they said could let hackers steal sensitive information from nearly every modern computing device containing chips from Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and ARM Holdings.
    One of the bugs is specific to Intel but another affects laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, tablets and internet servers alike. Intel and ARM insisted that the issue was not a design flaw, but it will require users to download a patch and update their operating system to fix. "Phones, PCs — everything is going to have some impact, but it'll vary from product to product," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in an interview with CNBC Wednesday afternoon. Researchers with Alphabet Inc.'s Google Project Zero, in conjunction with academic and industry researchers from several countries, discovered two flaws. The first, called Meltdown, affects Intel chips and lets hackers bypass the hardware barrier between applications run by users and the computer's memory, potentially letting hackers read a computer's memory and steal passwords.



    Advanced Micro Devices offices are shown in Sunnyvale, Calif.


    The second, called Spectre, affects chips from Intel, AMD and ARM and lets hackers potentially trick otherwise error-free applications into giving up secret information. The researchers said Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. had patches ready for users for desktop computers affected by Meltdown. Microsoft declined to comment and Apple did not immediately return requests for comment. Daniel Gruss, one of the researchers at Graz University of Technology in Austria who discovered Meltdown, said in an interview with Reuters that the flaw was "probably one of the worst CPU bugs ever found."


    Specter a long-term issue


    Gruss said Meltdown was the more serious problem in the short term but could be decisively stopped with software patches. Specter, the broader bug that applies to nearly all computing devices, is harder for hackers to take advantage of but less easily patched and will be a bigger problem in the long term, he said. Speaking on CNBC, Intel's Krzanich said Google researchers told Intel of the flaws "a while ago" and that Intel had been testing fixes that device makers who use its chips will push out next week. Before the problems became public, Google on its blog said Intel and others planned to disclose the issues on January 9. The flaws were first reported by The Register, a tech publication. It also reported that the updates to fix the problems could cause Intel chips to operate 5 percent to 30 percent more slowly.



    The logo of Intel Corp. is set up at its assembly and test facility at Saigon High Tech Park, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.



    Intel denied that the patches would bog down computers based on Intel chips. "Intel has begun providing software and firmware updates to mitigate these exploits," Intel said in a statement. "Contrary to some reports, any performance impacts are workload-dependent, and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time." ARM spokesman Phil Hughes said that patches had already been shared with the companies' partners, which include many smartphone manufacturers. "This method only works if a certain type of malicious code is already running on a device and could at worst result in small pieces of data being accessed from privileged memory," Hughes said in an email. AMD chips are also affected by at least one variant of a set of security flaws but that can be patched with a software update. The company said it believes there "is near zero risk to AMD products at this time."


    Google's report

    See also:


    Apple to Issue Fix for iPhones, Macs at Risk From Chip Flaw
    January 04, 2018 - Apple Inc. will release a patch for the Safari web browser on its iPhones, iPads and Macs within days, it said Thursday, after major chipmakers disclosed flaws that leave nearly every modern computing device vulnerable to hackers.
    On Wednesday, Alphabet Inc.'s Google and other security researchers disclosed two major chip flaws, one called Meltdown affecting only Intel Corp. chips and one called Spectre affecting nearly all computer chips made in the last decade. The news sparked a sell-off in Intel's stock as investors tried to gauge the costs to the chipmaker.


    In a statement on its website, Apple said all Mac and iOS devices were affected by both Meltdown and Spectre. But the most recent operating system updates for Mac computers, Apple TVs, iPhones and iPads protect users against the Meltdown attack and do not slow down the devices, it added. Meltdown does not affect the Apple Watch.


    Macs and iOS devices are vulnerable to Spectre attacks through code that can run in web browsers. Apple said it would issue a patch to its Safari web browser for those devices "in the coming days."


    https://www.voanews.com/a/apple-issu...w/4193411.html

    Related:


    Businesses Delay Patch, Fear Fix Will Be Worse Than Chip Flaw
    January 05, 2018 - Chances that a fix to a major microchip security flaw may slow down or crash some computer systems are leading some businesses to hold off installing software patches, fearing the cure may be worse than the original problem.
    Researchers this week revealed security problems with chips from Intel Corp and many of its rivals, sending businesses, governments and consumers scrambling to understand the extent of the threat and the cost of fixes. Rather than rushing to put on patches, a costly and time-intensive endeavor for major systems, some businesses are testing the fix, leaving their machines vulnerable. "If you start applying patches across your whole fleet without doing proper testing, you could cause systems to crash, essentially putting all of your employees out of work," said Ben Johnson, co-founder of cyber-security startup Obsidian.


    Flaws not 'critical'


    Banks and other financial institutions spent much of the week studying the vulnerabilities, said Greg Temm, chief information risk officer with the Financial Services Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group that shares data on emerging cyber threats. The flaws affect virtually all computers and mobile devices, but are not considered "critical" because there is no evidence that hackers have figured out how to exploit them, said Temm, whose group works with many of the world's largest banks. "It's like getting a diagnosis of high blood pressure, but not having a cardiac arrest," Temm said. "We're taking it seriously, but it's not something that is killing us."


    Testing the patches


    Banks are testing the patches to see if they slow operations and, if so, what changes need to be made, Temm said. For instance, computers could be added to networks to make up for the lack of processor speed in individual machines, he added. Some popular antivirus software programs are incompatible with the software updates, causing desktop and laptop computers to freeze up and show a "blue screen of death," researcher Johnson said.



    The Microsoft logo in Los Angeles, California


    Antivirus software makers responded by rolling out fixes to make their products compatible with the updated operating systems, he said. In a blog posting Friday, Microsoft Corp said it would only offer security patches to Windows customers whose antivirus software suppliers had confirmed with Microsoft that the patch would not crash the customer's machine. "If you have not been offered the security update, you may be running incompatible antivirus software, and you should consult the software vendor," Microsoft advised in the blog post.


    Government agencies also are watching. The Ohio Attorney General's office is monitoring the situation, a spokesman said by email. "Intel continues to believe that the performance impact of these updates is highly workload-dependent and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time," the world's No. 1 chipmaker said on Thursday in a release.


    No significant patch impact

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