Author Archives: John Barrett

Megaupload is down, a fake Megaupload website appears

Megaupload.com , the well known file-sharing website was taken down by authorities(read FBI) and its co-founder Kim Dotcom and several other members from the staff were charged for: Conspiracy to Commit Racketeering, Conspiracy to Commit Copyright Infringement, Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering, Criminal Copyright Infringement by distributing a Copyrighted Work Being Prepared for Commercial Distribution on a Computer Network & Aiding and Abetting of Criminal Copyright Infringement and Criminal Copyright Infringement by Electronic Means. The full indictment is here. The indictment was filed in The United States District Court for The Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division. Dotcom and three other members were arrested Thursday, January 19 in Auckland, New …

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Posted in Thoughts.

Wi-Fi routers security flaw allows uninvited guests

In December 2011 Stefan Viebhock published a report about a vulnerability discovered and analyzed by him in Wi-Fi Protected Setup(WPS) previously known as Wi-Fi Simple Config. Introduced by Wi-Fi Alliance in 2007 year, WPS allows users without an advanced knowledge about Wi-Fi router’s configurations to easily setup their home Wi-Fi networks, adding new devices or enabling the security. The user can add a new device in the wireless network either by pushing a button on both wireless router and new device(Push-Button-Connect) or by introducing a 8 characters PIN into the new device “connection wizard” interface. Simply said the PIN is functioning as the authentication method for registering a new device …

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Posted in Thoughts.

Your printer is spying on your network !?

Ang Cui, a researcher on embedded devices demonstrated at this year’s Chaos Communications Congress (28C3) that is possible to embed malware in a HP printer firmware using the RFU mechanism, a presentation of an extraordinary importance for any corporate or small networks since the printers are ubiquitous in any office . RFU stands for remote firmware update and is an important feature assuring the best performance and security for the printers, sort of update feature for your operating system or antivirus. Because the operating system in a printer is much simpler than Windows for example, it runs from a ROM(read-only memory) as a smart phone or let’s say electronic wash machine, …

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Windows 8 security improvements

Microsoft Windows was never meant to be an operating system dedicated to tech-savvy users, a proof of this is the lack of the processes details in the default Task Manager. We can see only the running processes including services and we have as options only to kill a certain process or to set its priority to the CPU. How many of you were able to kill a malicious process for example a computer trojan from Task Manager in the recent days? I bet nobody. That’s because the real computer trojans does not appear in the Task Manager with a name as trojan.exe allowing you to simply kill its process, instead the …

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Avira Antivirus Premium 2012 free license key giveaway

Perhaps you, my readers, are tired(bored) to read articles about complicated malware analysis and how to disinfect the computer manually which sometimes is a tough job, so I thought it is a good idea to offer you an easier solution to keep your computer protected from malware.  My idea is to reward my website visitors with a free 1 year  license key for Avira Antivirus Premium 2012 — the license will be bought by me. Avira Premium 2012 is an antivirus that I love for its simplicity, its low computer resources usage and effectiveness. Who visit the underground forums know aswell that bypassing it is a nightmare challenge for virus …

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Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus 2012 short review

As requested by one of the site’s visitor, today I have tested Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus 2012 (hereinafter referred to as WSAA) against the same bunch of malware as in the last article, to make a comparison between it and ByteHero Unknown-virus Detection Software (BDV). The main idea was to test the heuristic analysis capabilities of these products. With an installer of about 618 KB, WSAA seemed to be another revelation and when I received the trial installation key in a webpage containing also this warning: Fasten your seatbelt. You’re about to experience the fastest, most effective Internet security you’ve ever seen. my adrenaline level was raised to the sky. So after …

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Posted in AntiVirus reviews.

ByteHero Unknown-virus Detection Software (BDV) review

A few days ago when I was scanning a file on virustotal.com, I noticed a name less known to me: ByteHero. Googling a bit I found the official product website at: http://www.bytehero.com/english.asp. The software is developed in China by ByteHero Information Security Lab and is promoted as a first class dynamic and static heuristic analyzer. Because the main component of it is a heuristic detection engine, the software does not need a virus signatures database therefore there is no need to be updated very often like other antivirus software. Perhaps you will ask why I give so much attention to this heuristic detection engine. Because, I remember the times(just a few …

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Posted in AntiVirus reviews.