A-Squared Emergency USB Stick – Portable Antivirus Kit

Paul

IT Security warfare is an interesting domain. It is a never ending race between the security software developers and malware writers. And since the security software always act after the development of the malware, they are always behind in this race.

But this fact poses a serious threat to the security of your system as a user. If you are not careful and regularly updating your antivirus applications, you might be late, and if the malware might get a chance to get the entry to your system, it can play havoc there.

Today’s Intelligent Malware…

Today’s malware are much more intelligent than their predecessors. They not only do the damage intended by their developers, but also make it difficult for security software to identify them. They try to disable your antivirus applications, they modify your system files so that you are not able to access the security software websites and forums, they hijack your browser homepages, they disable the update procedure of your security software and use all such tricks, which make their detection difficult.

What is the Solution?

In a such a situation, you need a security tool, which remains aloof from your system and can be used as and when required. A-Squared Emergency USB Stick is one such portable tool, which can be used in such a situation.
A-Squared Emergency USB Stick is a combination of two free security tools from the reputed security vendor EMSI. These tools are…

A-squared Free:

[ad]With a-squared Free you have got the powerful a-squared Scanner including graphical user interface. Search the infected PC for Trojans, Spyware, Adware, Worms, Dialers, Keyloggers and other malign programs.

a-squared Command line Scanner:

This scanner contains the same functionality as a-squared Free but without a graphical user interface. The command line tool is made for professional users and can be used perfectly for batch jobs

You can download this and save it in your USB Flash Drive. In some unfortunate instance, when the security software installed in your system is not able to detect any malware, and the malware damages your system files, then there are chances that this USB stick remains protected, because it may not have been inserted in your computer at the time when the malware has been doing its job.

Once you are aware about the presence of the malware, you can try to use this portable antivirus kit to clean your system. The command line tool coming with this portable antivirus toolkit is especially useful because many of the present day malware can potentially disable the GUI interface of the popular security software.

[Download A-Squared Emergency USB Stick]

[This is a Guest Post from Silki Garg, who enjoys writing about Internet and PC Security Issues. Check out her latest articles on ClamWin Portable Virus Remover and Windows Security Options Tool WinPatrol.]

Do you want a copy of SuperAntiSpyware software?

Paul

superantispyware1Bryce over at Technibble is giving away 10 licenses for this software and I couldn’t resist to talk about it here.  The Rules are simple and I will walk you through them one by one:

  1. Make a Comment on His post, anything just as long as it adds to the community.  No name calling, No harassing them, and try to not cuss.   I would appreciate it if you would reference back to this site so he knows who sent you to him.  You see I would love a lifetime Copy of this software my self. (Hint hint Bryce)

  2. Subscribe to his updates via Email — This one is really simple, just sign up to receive to his updates and you will be all set.   And your all set, for that one.

  3. Follow @Technibble and tweet:
    Just entered the SUPERAntiSpyware Pro License giveaway. http://bit.ly/tnsas You can win by following @Technibble and retweet. @Laforge129

If you do all three of these you can could win also.   The more you do the more chances you have to win.  I know people want to receive lifetime licenses for this product and I am one of them(Hint Hint).  Everyone who enters will be in the running to get a copy of these from Bryce.  He will pick the winners by email or twitter on July 3, 2009.  So you have all week to do this.   If you want to check the website out, here is the link.   I know if I get a copy, I will review this for my users and let them know how well this works.

Thank you Bryce, Good luck to all who enter.

Michael Jackson Malware on the Rise

Paul

In the last 24 hours the spammers and scammers have begun to distribute spam with the guise to:

    [ad]

  • Harvest Email Addresses —  This seems to used to ask users to respond to the email to get “top secret” information about how he died.  Security experts believe this is an attempt to verify email addresses for future spam attempts.   Although it isn’t wise to reply to people you don’t know about it at least has very little risk with your computer for the time being.

  • Fake Codecs and Hidden Trojans —  Seems this is the main thing they are doing right now to get personal computers on their networks.   So you should never visit a site you don’t know about without having an Anti-virus software and A firewall to better protect your system.

  • Extortion Ware — This one is very interesting, and According to Webroot.  You should avoid sites that you don’t know anything about.   With News of anything major you should keep with the trusted news sites.  This one looks to be the bad guy type.

These seem to be a common ploy with scammers and spammers who want to get money from you in one way or another.   I have been watching the Google searches and haven’t seen any malicious sites but I could of missed one here and there.

You should always have an [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Anti-virus and Firewall[/intlink] available to help protect your system from these types of attacks.   If you had some kind of protection to better protect your computer.  Remember no one can stop computer infections but you.

Spoof Spam from Skype users

Paul

I got a strange email from Skype:

Click to Enlarge Click to Enlarge

As you can tell this is spam but it got through my spam filters because the spammers are actually spoofing the email address.  Upon further inspection of the headers of the message I have found this came from a Black Hole IANA.org name server.   Then when I did some even more investigation on this, I found that they are seeing more and more of Email Spoofing for Skype. Which if you went to that URL (Websweetness.com) you will not like what you see.   IT is an Adult site but that is besides the point.  I am betting the spammers are trying to fool the spam filters to make sure this get through.  I talked about the [intlink id=”3566″ type=”post”]Skype Bots[/intlink] before and this seems to be another way they are using Skype for there spam campaigns.

Skype is getting to be used by almost everyone who has internet so this is a good bet that people will get even more spam from spammers who are trying to get around the spam filters.  Until Skype fixes this problem, you can go into Email settings and uncheck “Skype can contact me when someone adds me as a contact”.   Although I would like to prevent this totally until they add a way for me to only receive messages from people on my contacts through email this will always be problem until they do that.

Remember if this got through there are a number of things that could also get through such as A Phishing attempt, Scam, or even an Exploit link to have software installed on your system.  So I will always caution people in clicking links they don’t know where they go and not everything from friends are always going to safe.  I would recommend people download some good [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Anti-virus and Firewall[/intlink] software to better protect your system and make sure you surf the web a little more safer.

Insanity Run Rampant — Antivirus Pro System (scareware)

Paul

Some of you would want to ask me why I am calling this title an usual title. In fact it is quite simple, I have been at the hospital since early this morning. While I was there I had some intriguing things happen. I was watching a person cruise the internet while they were at work. This is someone who is supposed to answer the phones and such. Then I see this POP UP, this draws my attention. “You SYSTEM Has Spyware”. This was my first thought, Scareware. The Popup said it was for “Antivirus Pro System”.
antivirus-system-pro

Since this was a Hospital computer, I couldn’t get a real screen shot of this but there are plenty examples out there, just like that one above.  Anyways what worries me is how System Admins are allowing employees to surf the web while at work on company time.   It also makes for a bad experience with their family.  It also concerns me about the fact that while that computer is infected some of the patients records could be leaked online.

[ad]If you have this Scareware program, Here is a good explanation on how to remove it.   Hospitals have a duty to protect peoples privacy.   Although I seriously this system had patient records it was being used to keep track of who was in surgery and where they were.

Hospitals should prevent their employees from using the internet and preventing patients or their family’s from using the internet.   While I was there I couldn’t do much but check my email and Maybe watch Twitter using Tweetdeck.   That was how bad the bandwidth was there.  According to some nurses they have a T1 Line.   So you know people are watching movies or other things through the internet.   I also heard from a doctor that people were streaming who were supposed to be at work.

That has been my day,  and am I tired.

I would also suggest people have a f[intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]ree anti-virus software and a Good free Firewall[/intlink] to help prevent this type of scareware in the future.  Remember your the End User and that means only you can prevent this from happening in the first place.  Never go to suspicious sites or URLS that you don’t know where they go.   If you can prevent these types of attacks then you are much better off.