No More Ransom

Europol in collaboration with others have introduced a simple portal to provide all know antidotes to the common cryptoware out there:   https://www.nomoreransom.org/

Update 29-Jul-2016:

Victims of the Chimera ransomware were thrown a lifeline this week after a rival malware author appeared to leak the decryption keys online.

Kudos to competing hackers as well?!

AVG and WhatsApp hacked by Palestinian Hackers

It is always embarrassing when security companies get hacked! AVG joins that (not so) elite club. WhatsApp is pretty known to have security holes, so no news there.

Internet Security Threat Report 2013

A report by Symantec

The World of Financial Trojans

A symantec's report  on trojans - I am sure it will be super biased by the business of the creator

Malware Deep Dive

InfoWorld's report on malware analysis. As always some scary statistics - the accuracy of which is always doubtful, and biased coming from antivirus companies.

However, there is a good list of pointers for the newbies to stay safe from viruses.

Report is here

New York Times Hacked by China

Looks like Symantec became overly defensive here.

Update 20-Feb-2012:
NY times, engages  Mandiant (a security firm), who releases a report, that says majority of the hacks in China are state sponsored!! And of course the Govt of China refutes. Full report is here.

Update 22-May-2013:
Attacks are back with a slight modification.

Sophos antivirus Exploited

An antivirus with some very serious vulnerabilities, which can be exploited over a simple email.

Trend Micro AV breached & backdoored

A hacker claims to have breached and backdoored security and antivirus software firm Trend Micro due to 'pseudo-security' as well as SYKES which runs support services for Trend Micro. According to Pastebin and a dump for 'proof' of the breach, the hacker claims to still be in control of a backdoor into the security firm.

Full Story

Online Virus Analyser

A very good list of websites to trust when trying to clean your network of a malware infection.

Symantec's Data Leaked!!

This is story in the making, I am sure we will hear more about this.

04-Jan-2012:  Hackers claim to have stolen the source code of Symantec's Norton Antivirus. The hacker's post has been removed from pastebin, but here is the google cache. This group claimed that got this information from a hack of India's military computer network.

05-Jan-2012:  Out of all the places, Symantec decided to announce it on Facebook. Duh?

Here is another article with some more details.

On Wednesday, the group posted a Symantec description of how Norton Antivirus worked. Symantec said the 2,700-word document was a general description of the software from 12 years ago and didn't threaten security.
A day later, the group posted software code, which Symantec confirmed was for two enterprise security products from 2007 and 2008. One product is discontinued and the other has been extensively updated, Paden said, rendering the old code useless.

So, how did this Symantec document (even if it was old) get on the Military's computers? This is where the conspiracy starts. As per the leaked military documents:

"in exchange for the Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as "RINOA") have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices. The Indian government then "utilized backdoors provided by RINOA" to intercept internal emails of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a U.S. government body with a mandate to monitor, investigate and report to Congress on 'the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship' between the U.S. and China.

09-Jan-2012:  Apple and RIM both have given public statements denying backdoor access was provided.


18-Jan-2012:  Symantec finally admits they were hacked. Source code for Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton Utilities, Norton GoBack and pcAnywhere stolen!


26-Jan-2012:  Symantec recommends users to stop using pcAnywhere!


31-Jan-2012:  Symantec gives a go-ahead, and says the users can continue to use pcAnywhere. {Wonder if the problem has really been fixed, or is it only because it was too bad for the business to not say this}


07-Feb-2012:   Anonymous unsuccessfully try to extort $50,000 from Symantec, after which they released the hacked source-code on the internet. Email exchanges between the hacker and a Symantec employee is here.


8-Feb-2012:  Symantec expects more source code to be leaked!


09-Mar-2012:  Anonymous leaks more data, and also defaces " New York Ironworks" (a supplier of police equipment), in retaliation to the arrests made by the police

Which Antivirus To Use?

This is one question, that all security professionals get asked a lot. Goes without saying, any one person’s opinion may not be the statistically correct answer. To make matters even worse, (un)fortunately, there are a number of reports out there which probably, only Einstein and Bill Gates can read, decipher and really understand.

Here is one simple, to the point, straight forward report that I think answers this question bang on: Battle of the anti-virus