The breach, which was not fully disclosed until January of this year, included the source code of Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security and Norton SystemWorks. These, however, have been changed significantly since the leak. Symantec pcAnywhere has had fewer revisions, and so remains vulnerable.

Remote control of a vulnerable computer is the main concern. A hacker with access to the source code could use it to launch unauthorized remote sessions against the software, resulting in potential data theft.

Symantec claims that it did not know at the time of the breach that source code had been taken. The issue came to public light only when a hacker group posted it to the web. It was then jumped on by Anonymous. One member publicly tweeted All your NU+PCAnywhere base are belong to us.

The solution? For now, the only guaranteed solution is to stop using the software entirely. A hotfix has been released, but Symantec is continuing to investigate and plans to release several more patches. Companies that can’t afford to disable pcAnywhere are advised to practice best security practices until all issues are resolved – a nice way of saying that they’ll simply have to be patient and wait.

Sources: PC World, Tom’s Guide

I have a subscription to Lookout’s Premium version ($2.99/month), but we’ll be looking at the free version, both via the Android interface and via the website. If you don’t have a solid device tracking solution installed on your Android smartphone, you owe it to yourself to read this post.

The Android App

That snippet you see above is one of the most important things Lookout offers. Whenever you install or update an app on your Android device, Lookout will scan it to make sure it doesn’t contain malware. As iOS fans like to remind us, malware is a very real problem on Android devices. Using Lookout can mitigate the risk, much like using an antivirus on your desktop computer.

Now, let’s look at the app itself:

You can clearly see what features Premium users get, and we’re not going to get into those. When you hit the + button next to each feature, it expands to show just a bit of status information:

Next, let’s look at some of the settings the app offers:

In addition to live scanning, Lookout scans the entire device on schedule. You can set the frequency (off, daily, or weekly), as well as the days and times you’d like it to scan on.

One other important setting you should know about:

This option lets you set Lookout as a Device Administrator. One of its side effects is that screen lock can’t easily be toggled on and off, which is the main reason why it’s not switched on for my phone.

That’s pretty much it for the app itself. The free version offers virus scanning and missing device functionality, which is a big deal but doesn’t expose much of an interface on the device. If you lose your device, you’re going to want to use the Lookout website, which is what we’ll look at right now.

The Web Interface

As you can see, the Web interface offers several tabs. The Security tab includes a summary of scans done on your device, and is basically a boring logfile. The Backup tab offers remote backup, but I consider the solution offered by Titanium Backup to be vastly superior to anything Lookout has to offer, so we won’t spend any time delving into that. But the Missing Device tab… that’s what we’re here for.

The Locate and Scream options are available for free. Let’s look at Scream first:

This option is handy if you misplace your phone somewhere in your apartment or office. You know it’s in there somewhere, but can’t find it, no matter how hard you look. “Why not just call it?” you ask. Good question! If it’s not on silent, you should go ahead and call it. But what if it’s in silent mode, or doesn’t even vibrate when you call? In those cases, you need Lookout’s Scream functionality.

When I tested Shout, it took its sweet time. It’s definitely not an instant feature, and I had to wait for several moments before my phone started sounding a siren and blinking the screen like crazy. If it were lost anywhere in hearing range, I am sure I would have heard it.

Locating A Lost Device

When you click the Locate button (and the Scream button, for that matter), Lookout sends an SMS to the device to initiate a connection:

If you’re using anything like SMS Popup, that SMS message will be displayed just like any other message. This means if someone actually stole your phone, they now know you are trying to locate it. That’s a potential downer, but it’s unavoidable, given how Lookout works.

After a few moments, Lookout displays your location on an embedded instance of Google Maps. I won’t share a screenshot (for obvious reasons), but it is remarkably accurate in my case, even indoors and without a GPS lock.

Final Thoughts

Getting infected with a nasty bit of malware can be a serious problem, and losing your device is no laughing matter. Lookout Security is a free and simple way to stay safer from such threats. Use it, or, if you prefer another antivirus/device tracking solution, tell me about it in the comments (don’t forget to say why!).

Such is the case for some owners of McAfee SaaS Endpoint Protection Suite. Some users of this security service recently began to notice that they were being treated as spammers. Email servers were blocking outgoing emails and users were having their IP address added to spam blacklists.

After some investigation, they found they were being treated as spammers because, well, they were. Their computer or computers had been turned into participants in spam networks.

This was possible not only in spite of, but because of, McAfee’s software. An unknown security flaw exists in the company’s Rumor Service, which is used to send updates to computers lacking a direct Internet connection. It allows the service to be hijacked, at which point it creates an open proxy on port 6515. Spammers can route spam through that open proxy to disguise the source IP address. This allows for spam to be sent from fresh, unblocked addresses – allowing the spam network’s continued operation.

McAfee has confirmed the problem and stated that a patch is due shortly. In the meantime, you can turn off the Rumor Service and block the port via your firewall by following instructions created by one of the exploit’s victims.

Source: CNET
Image Credit: Mr. HinkyDink’s UT Blog

There are a lot of things you can do to protect yourself. You can educate yourself on new potential threats, read on how to keep your computer secure, and what security software doesn’t protect, and obtain the best tools for the job, whether they are anti-virus programs or extensions.

Here, I’ll be taking a look at ClamWin, an open-source anti-virus program that’s been around for a while. Should you get it? Read on to find out.

Getting ClamWin

ClamWin is an anti-virus program based on the only open-source anti-virus solution in the market, Clam AV, which is a toolkit initially designed for UNIX.

As you can probably tell by the name, ClamWin is available as a download for Windows machines only. You can download the installer here, which is almost 40MB, or you can also try the portable app for anti-virus protection on the go.

If you’re wondering about which version to go with, I’m using the portable version 0.97.3 for this review. This latest release has improved bytecode signature matching, in addition to the reigning features that characterize this anti-virus – virus scanner, scanning scheduler, automatic virus database updates, and integration with Windows Explorer and Microsoft Outlook.

If you’re using the installer, be aware that the Ask toolbar might be offered during the installation. Make sure you read what the checkboxes are offering before you click Next. I didn’t see any such thing during the portable application “installation”.

Launching ClamWin

When you first launch ClamWin, you’ll likely need to download the built-in database of viruses.

Doing so will just take a few seconds if you’re connected to the Internet.

Once ClamWin has finished updating its Database, you can see the main window where you’ll have the options to set your preferences, update your virus definition database once again, scan programs currently running in memory and finally, scan specific files or directories.

Running Memory Scan

Selecting this option allows you to scan the programs that are currently running in memory. If you’re as paranoid as this author, t’s probably a good idea to update your virus definition database before running your scans.

Unless you’re running Photoshop, Mozilla Firefox, and many other resource hogs, this scan should be completed in a couple of minutes. Mine took just over 3 minutes and scanned 28 processes in memory.

Running File Or Directory Scan

In the main window, there will be a directory browser where you can select a whole drive (e.g. your C drive), specific folder or even a file to scan.

Depending on what you chose, this scan can obviously last a while. When I was running a scan for my D drive, ClamWin was also working really hard, using almost 109 MB of RAM. Not that it’s a bad sign, but it’s probably a good idea not to multi-task on your PC while you let a scan run through an entire disk drive. After a scan is finished, you can see the report right after, save it or access it in the main window menu.

If a virus is detected during the scan, there are three options you can choose from in the Preferences: Quarantine it, report it, or remove it.

If you’re particular about your scans, you can also filter files to be included or excluded from the scan in the Preferences. You can also limit a file size to scan or not, and also whether to extract files from zipped files in the Preferences window.

If you installed ClamWin instead of using the portable version, you’ll be able to schedule scans right in the Preferences window, increasing security for your PC.

If you’re using the portable version and wish to schedule scans, you could always use Windows Task Schedulerand clamscan.exe which should be under ClamWinPortable/App/clamwin/bin.

ClamWin shines for being an open-source anti-virus program with file and directory scanners, scanner scheduler, automatic downloads of virus databases and more. It does lack a real-time scanner, which could be a big con, but for basic protection and its price, it’s a great product to have on your PC security arsenal.

Have you used Clam AV or ClamWin? Share your experience in the comments section below!

One of these security suites, which contains almost every possibly security aspect you can think of, is Outpost Security Suite Pro 7.5 (Windows). This comprehensive security software by Agnitum aims to take over your computer’s security, and do it all. It’s an anti-virus and a firewall, offers web control (site and ad blocking), a file and folder lock feature and an anti-spam filter (for several email clients). And that’s not even half of it.

This week, we are giving away 25 licenses for Outpost Security Suite Pro 7.5. Read on to find out more about Outpost Security Suite and for your own chance to win a copy!

Installation

For such an expansive suite, Outpost Security Suite is fairly easy to install and configure. The installation itself includes only several things you need to decide about. The first one, as with a lot of other installations, is whether to go for Simple mode or Expert mode.

Expert mode will give you more control over the components you’re installing, so if there’s a component you already know you don’t need (for example, the anti-spam feature is not very helpful for people who use Gmail in their browsers), go for Expert mode and choose your components.

Before installation begins, you can choose whether you want to automatically download the latest update along with installation, or do it later.

After installation, you’ll get to set some configurations. For example, in “Rule Autocreation”, you can specify if you want Outpost to automatically create rules for you about applications it knows, or whether you wish to create all the rules yourself.

Outpost will then enter quite a lengthy “configuring” process, but you can do other things while it’s at it.

Setting Up Scans, Updates & Rules

After restarting your computer, Outpost will start popping up questions about several applications it’s not sure about. It might pop these a lot more if you did not choose to have some automatic rules set.

These warnings will alert you of anything from “trying to modify a critical object” and “requesting an outbound connection” to “attempting to submit a DNS request”. You can use the checkmark at the bottom to try to minimize the number of alerts you get when you first load the program.

This is your main control screen. From here you can have a glimpse at how everything’s going, or look at specific aspects. Click the “Setting” button to start changing some basic configurations.

To set up scheduled scans, go to Anti-Malware->Schedule and Profiles. Here you can define what each scan does, create new scan profiles, and schedule each of them as you wish.

Go to General->Update to schedule regular updates. You can also choose to run them manually.

Almost every feature is Outpost is configurable, and you can choose a different security level for each. Here you can see the e-mail scanner. You can choose one of the pre-set protection levels, and customize the scanner’s behavior.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with Outpost Security Suite Pro 7.5. A one-year license for 1 PC currently goes for $39.95, and is usually $64.95. We are giving away 25 copies of Outpost Security Suite! Here is how you can win one.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

Step 1: Fill in the giveaway form

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. Click here if you can’t view the form.

The giveaway code required to activate the form is available from our Facebook page.

Step 2: Share!

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to share the post. There are 2 options to choose from or you can do both!

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, January 20th. The winners will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

Interested in sponsoring a giveaway? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via the form at the of this page.

About ClamTk

ClamTk is available for most of the popular distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora, but is installable on all systems via compilation of the source code. In Ubuntu, you can install it by searching for “Clam” and installing the “Virus Scanner” or by running this in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install clamtk

In Fedora, you should be able to install it by searching for “clamtk” in the package manager or running in the terminal:

sudo yum install clamtk

Interface

Once it has been installed, go ahead and open it from your dash/menu/etc. You will now see the (very simple) main window of the application. There are a couple of different buttons to scan your home folder, a directory, or a file, or to exit the application. Below those buttons are a few checks made by the program to see if the latest version of the ClamAV engine, the latest GUI version, and the latest virus definitions are installed.

The virus definitions should be updated automatically through the scheduler (more on that later), while the engine version and GUI version are dependent on what is pushed to your distribution’s repositories. If any of the two are majorly out-of-date, you should notify the repository maintainers using the recommended method. Most distributions ask that you file a bug complaint or simply wait.

Menu Options

Aside from the very simplistic interface, some more advanced features are hidden within the menus. Under Scan, you’ll find a few more options for scanning, including quick and recursive scans. Under View, you can see the history of actions taken with the program, as well as clear that log. Under Quarantine, you can check the status of your quarantined items, restore or delete individual quarantined items, or simply empty the whole quarantine.

Under Advanced, you can schedule scans, run the antivirus wizard, submit a file for analysis, or tweak other preferences. The scheduler is an important feature as it makes staying virus-free easy and doesn’t require you to remember to run the scanner. It also makes up for the lack of real-time protection. With the scheduler, you can schedule scans of your home folder or entire computer, as well as virus definition updates.

The preferences include multiple scanning preferences, startup options, an option to whitelist directories so that they won’t be scanned, and proxy options so that you can get your virus definitions without any issues.

Finally, under Help, you can manually check for updates for the antivirus engine and the GUI, as well as look up information about the GUI itself.

Conclusion

ClamTk is an easy-to-use GUI for the ClamAV engine that should help you keep your Linux system virus free. However, more importantly, this easy tool will help you get rid of nasty viruses that may be on a separate hard drive or removable media. Don’t forget that as a rescue solution, you can boot up a Linux environment using a LiveCD and install ClamTk to combat the virus that may be plaguing your Windows machine.

What do you think of ClamTk? Is there any antivirus solution on Linux that is better? Let us know in the comments!

For starters, open source software is usually a good start, as anyone can see exactly how the program is written, and can therefore tell you how well it should work. The most popular open source antiviral tool, Clam AntiVirus (or ClamAV for short), is decent enough to be used on a regular basis.

About ClamAV

ClamAV used to be a pretty simple tool that did nothing more than scan files for viruses from the latest available definitions. Today however, the Windows version has been expanded. A new tool powered by ClamAV is recommended on their site for use on Windows machines. This new tool uses ClamAV and also adds real time protection and a new interface.

Linux users can still get regular ClamAV from their respective repositories, which is fine because you don’t really need anything more advanced on Linux as you do on Windows.

Download and Installation

To download and install Clam Antivirus for Windows, you’ll need to download the tool (known on the site as Immunet, as the Windows client seems to be a joint project) and install it as any other program. During the installation it’ll ask you whether you want the regular version or a trial of the paid version (which I find a little strange for a product based on open source software). However, keep going with the installation, and in no time at all you’ll be presented with the main window of the product.

The Interface

The main window, although slightly cluttered with some ads for the paid version, has a pretty clean design so that it’s easy to keep an overview of everything going on. You get some community links on the left, scanning options and other related information in the center, and a link to the settings and one to update the program on the right.

Scanning

Scanning is pretty straight forward. You can tell it to scan archived or packed files in the settings, and from there you run a Flash Scan (scans running processes), a custom scan, or a full scan. The mentioned rootkit scan is only available, again, in the paid product. Note that virus definitions are in the cloud and don’t have to be locally updated.

Settings

The settings are also quite interesting to go through, as it mentions multiple different engines that the program can use to scan files for viruses. This is especially useful if you’re not very trusting of cloud services and would rather disable those while keeping the local ClamAV engine enabled. There are also some settings where new programs are deemed safe or not before they are even installed or run.

Conclusion

ClamAV/Immunet is a great way to keep your computer safe from viruses. Not only that, but the site heavily advertises that it works well with most major antivirus solutions, so you can always run Immunet in addition to whatever software you currently have to protect yourself. In the end, you’ll be safe rather than sorry.

Since this is a fairly different program that uses the Clam Antivirus engine, in the future I’ll be writing another article of it’s Linux counterpart, which appears in its true form. Stay tuned for that.

What’s your opinion of ClamAV? Do you think it’s a handy tool or just another project that will never have a major impact in the antivirus community? Let us know in the comments!

Fortunately, there’s now one more trustworthy free mobile security app on the market. It comes from Avast!, a company that has managed to successfully spread its name by offering a robust free anti-virus solution for the PC.

Avast!’s entry into the Android market is not a surprise, as they leaked details of their upcoming app back in June. The features available are competitive with other free security solutions. There’s anti-virus protection, a web shield that warns users of URLs known to contain malware, anti-theft features including phone location and SIM card change notification, and a “stealth mode” that hides the security app from prying eyes.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of all is the firewall that is available to users who own a rooted phone. There are not a lot of firewall options for Android, so this feature sets the app apart from many competitors.

Avast!  Mobile Security is free, and there’s no paid version available. You’ll need a device with Android 2.1 or better to run it.

Source: Android Guys

However, let’s say that you did follow all those steps like a good person and you still ended up getting infected, as you probably noticed once an antivirus tool you never installed suddenly tells you your computer is about to self-destruct. Well, that’s just great. So how do you remove such a virus from your computer?

There’s hope and solutions on offer. So, read on.

Use Microsoft Safety Scanner

Microsoft offers a tool that can remove certain kinds of malicious software. That tool used to be the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, but recently Microsoft is offering the Microsoft Safety Scanner. This scanner is supposed to check your computer for any viruses, spyware, and other bad stuff and remove it.

There are plenty of other similar online scanners, but some may lead you to actually downloading more malware on your system rather than removing it. By using Microsoft’s tool, you can be sure that it genuinely wants to remove any malware from your system.

Install Antivirus Software

Although you probably should’ve had it installed before to make use of its real-time protection, it might be helpful to install an antivirus tool now to help remove the malware that is currently wreaking havoc on your system. An antivirus tool can also scan for any other files that have dormant viruses in them, waiting for you to activate them. There are plenty of free ones that are very effective, such as AVG, Microsoft Security Essentials, and Avast, just to name a few. These tools will hopefully be able to remove that pesky virus before it does too much harm.

Search the Internet For Possible Solutions

While it’s not recommended to use the internet when you know you’re infected with a virus (as the virus could potentially start sending out any information it’s finding on your system), you can use a clean system to go online and search for the virus that you may have (based on the symptoms your computer is experiencing) and how you can possibly remove it. With some luck, you might find a solution that has been tested and proven to work.

Reinstall Windows

Last but not least, if all else fails, reinstall Windows or move to any other operating system such as Linux. If the virus is really that pesky, it’s best to just help Windows destroy itself so that you can rebuild on the ashes. Before you begin with your reinstallation, don’t forget to backup your data. Please, scan all the files that you’re backing up so that you don’t accidentally save the virus you’re trying to get rid of and then reinfect yourself later. It’s a long and hard process and is therefore the ultimate last resort, but at least this method works every time.

Don’t Buy A New Computer!

I’ve come across enough people who think that if their computer gets infected with a virus, the world is going to end and they’ll need to dump the infected computer and buy a brand new one. This is absolutely not true, as the hardware is still perfectly in tact. Reinstalling Windows is like resetting the system, and gets rid of the virus in the process. There’s no need to go out and spend $400+ for a decent new computer just because you got infected with a virus.

Conclusion

Getting rid of a virus is sometimes easy and sometimes very tricky. Your level of success will vary depending on the bug you managed to catch. However, there is always one way or another to get rid of a virus. We just hope that it doesn’t have to be very destructive to your own data. Just remember, when it comes to viruses and protection, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

What’s the worst virus you’ve managed to catch? What other tips would you add to this article? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: AJC1

Whatever the reason may be, you might prefer to not have any antivirus software installed at all. In case you choose to go this route, here are some tips on keeping your computer virus-free without the protective software.

Safe Browsing Habits

The most important tip, no matter if you have anti-virus software or not, is to try to maintain safe browsing habits. It is impossible to get a virus without being on the Internet or reading data from some other source. This means to only visit websites directly instead of clicking on links (especially in emails), not downloading any files unless you’re 100% sure the source is safe, not surfing around for prolonged periods of time on sketchy websites, and so on.

If you’re not very good at determining what’s good or not, this might help. If it looks different from what you’re used to or get offered something that seems too good to be true, you’re probably a click away from getting a virus. These tips should be followed even if you do have anti-virus software as such products aren’t perfect, and some viruses, especially zero-day threats, can pass right through the anti-virus software without so much as a warning.

Updated Software

The next step is to make sure that all your software, especially your browser, is up to date. Newer versions will fix security bugs that may be present in older versions, and updates could also bring support for new security technologies. That way, it will be much harder for a hacker or virus to exploit a security hole to compromise your system.

In Windows, go to Windows Update in your Start menu to check for essential updates.  With a lot of software, there is normally a “check for updates” option in one of the menus.  Just click through the menus until you find it.

Online Tools

Another option you have is to use online tools to check if a file contains a virus. There are plenty of anti-virus websites that will check files for you. I recommend using this site as it automatically sends it to a much larger collection of sites and compiles the results of each test. This way, you’ll have a higher chance of finding a hidden threat or determining if you have a false positive.

Use Web Interface Security Features

Additionally, email providers such as Gmail and Yahoo scan any attachments in an email when you open it, so you should be able to trust the results of those scans. Note that the email providers only scan the attachments when you open the email in their web interface. Therefore, this feature won’t be of much help to you if you use an email client.

Security-Focused Browser Extensions

Another great idea is to use browser extensions, where possible, that have a focus on security. A top extension for Firefox would be NoScript. This extension helps block any website scripts that could potentially cause problems on your system. While it takes a while to tell it what’s good and what’s bad, it will help block any scripts that might break into a security hole. You can find more Firefox security extensions here. For Chrome, you could try SaferChrome.

Use Linux

Last but not least, it might be helpful to run Linux instead of Windows if you don’t depend on certain software. While the above tips are definitely worth your time, you can dramatically reduce your risk of getting infected by a virus if you use Linux over Windows. This is because roughly 90% of viruses are for Windows, and 9.95% of the remainder are made for Mac OS X. In combination with the above tips, you can virtually eliminate the threat of viruses and enjoy a safe computing experiences without worries.

Conclusion

While I do recommend using some kind of anti-virus software if you’re using Windows (as there are plenty of decent free alternatives), these tips should definitely help to reduce your overall chances of getting infected. Just be smart with what you’re doing, and you should be doing just fine.

What tips can you add? Is anti-virus software even really necessary? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: AJC1