Eye on Security: Windows Botnets and Other New Problems
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-03-21 10:49:24 UTC
- Modified: 2010-03-21 10:49:24 UTC
Summary: Assemblage of security news from recent days
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Spammers survive botnet shutdowns
Victims, typically users of Windows machines, often fall victim via booby-trapped e-mail messages or through websites that slip malware onto computers via software vulnerabilities.
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Don't trust that Web Address!
But, that comes with using Windows. What's more disturbing is that these malware-bearing messages are getting to be timelier and better written. It used to be that malware e-mail was badly written junk. You'd never mistake them for a legitimate message. The three messages I mentioned though all looked like they could have been real ones. I'm about as paranoid as it comes in computer security, but the basketball one almost tricked me.
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Bad BitDefender Update Clobbers Windows PCs
Users of the BitDefender antivirus software started flooding the company's support forums Saturday, apparently after a faulty antivirus update caused 64-bit Windows machines to stop working.
The company acknowledged the issue in a note explaining the problem, posted Saturday. "Due to a recent update it is possible that BitDefender detects several Windows and BitDefender files as infected with Trojan.FakeAlert.5," the company said.
The acknowledgement came after BitDefender users had logged hundreds of posts on the topic. Some complained of being unable to reboot their systems.
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Energizer battery rechargers still haunted by trojan backdoor
Microsoft labels the trojan as Arurizer.A and warns that it installs a backdoor on user machines that allows attackers to upload, download, and delete files at will, install additional malware and carry out other nefarious deeds.
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Naming and Shaming ‘Bad’ ISPs
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Panda discovers malware on HTC Magic phone
A Panda Security employee discovered three malware programs on a recently purchased HTC Magic phone when it was plugged it into a Windows computer.
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Malware Found on Another HTC Magic Smartphone
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Vodafone Spain supplies pre-Mariposa'd smartphone (again)
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Vodafone Spain admits 3,000 smartphones shipped with Mariposa
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Malware Infected Memory Cards of 3,000 Vodafone Mobiles
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How the butterfly botnet was broken
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Drudge Report, TechCrunch hit by ad malware
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Estonia Defense Minister: Cyberattacks Will Grow
Others at the conference agreed. A major cyberattack sponsored by terrorists or a state will happen within the next decade, predicted Jerry Archer, chief information security officer with Sallie Mae. "I think within the next five to 10 years we will have a cyberwar that will turn into a shooting war," he said, speaking during a panel discussion at the conference.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Slop Nihilism is Funded by Big Oil
- Eventually human civilisation will destroy itself
- Professor Eben Moglen Recovering From Open Heart Surgery
- From his public pages (this is not secret)
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- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 17, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, September 17, 2025
- Slopwatch: Fake Articles, Fake Text, Fake Images, Negative Slant on "Linux"
- Google News has lost its value; the signal-to-noise ratio has fallen off a cliff
- Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Relax-and-Recover on Proxmox and New Smolweb File Transfer Service
- Links for the day
- Fact: EFF Got Corrupted by Corporate Money. Microsoft Lunduke (Political Noise): The Issue With EFF is, It Kills Babies.
- Microsoft Lunduke - as usual - finds a way to make it about abortions
- Pacing Publication Up a Bit
- The news cycles have gotten rather light and slow
- Links 17/09/2025: Power Outages, Digital Controls, and Attacks on the Mainstream Media (by Insecure and Corrupt Dictators)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Flashing LineageOS and ROOPHLOCH
- Links for the day
- Links 17/09/2025: Long COVID Study, "Exposing Pegasus", and Chatbots Exposing Sensitive Data
- Links for the day
- Links 17/09/2025: Secret Settlement for Internet Archive and Google’s LLM Slop Summaries Attracting Lawsuits
- Links for the day
- The True Cost of 'Generative Models'
- Funded and promoted by the companies that profit from the waste
- 'Big Slop' Attacks Contemporary Information/Knowledge and Creative Works, 'Big Copyright' (Cartel) Attacks the Old
- Someone at IA will hopefully "blow the whistle" on what they actually agreed
- Why We Find It Difficult to Trust Rust
- A comparison between C/C++ and Rust
- Watching the OSI: Our Series Will Carry on Irrespective of the Chief's 'Resignation'
- the OSI isn't even the real guardian of the term "Open Source"
- Just What LibreOffice Needs? Another Language? (Rust)
- what's all this concern about memory safety?
- Many Microsoft Managers Are Leaving
- "Hey hi" chaff or chaff about "hey hi" cannot eternally distract from the difficulties inside the company
- There Are Red Hat (IBM) Layoffs, But Google News is Infested With Slopfarms
- It contributes a lot to misinformation and it encourages plagiarism
- Tomorrow, Microsoft's Tim Anderson's 'The Register MS' Offshoot Will Have Been Inactive for 2 Months (There's Also a Slop Problem)
- We've already caught The Register MS using LLM slop for articles
- Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Leaves Microsoft After Nearly 30 Years
- And not retiring
- Even Windows Users Are Having Problems With "Secure Boot"
- When it comes to security - Microsoft strives for the very opposite
- Another Competition Crime of Microsoft, Long Facilitated and Advocated by a Bad Actor, Who is Funded by a Third Party to Commit Extortion Against People Who Have Correctly and Repeatedly Warned About It for Over 13 Year
- We must always go back to the core issues
- 3 More Reasons to Replace Mozilla Firefox With LibreWolf
- Thankfully there are de-enshittified versions of Firefox
- USA Not a Place for Free Speech
- In America, as in the US, the attacks seem more enhanced or advanced these days
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, September 16, 2025
- Links 17/09/2025: Google Layoffs in "Hey Hi" (AI), Perplexity Hit With More "Hey Hi" (Plagiarism) Lawsuits
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Reclaiming Things in a Digital Age and Moon Phases in CGI
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: Google News is Slop, Google News is Plagiarism, Google News is Dying
- Google is off the rails
- Links 16/09/2025: "The Censorship Alarm Is Ringing in the Wrong Direction" and ASRock Does Microsoft E.E.E. on GNU/Linux
- Links for the day
- Serious "Breach of Confidentiality of Personal Data" in Europe's Second-Largest Institution, the EPO
- Yes, the same EPO that routinely uses "data protection" and "GDPR" as a pretext for hiding or covering up its corruption and white-collar crimes (it even uses that as an excuse for refusing to obey courts' orders)
- Adrienne Rockenhaus Says Her Husband Was Arrested for Running Tor and Denied Basic Rights in the United States
- the US seems to be getting "russified" in its approach towards Tor
- This is What Happens When Microsoft Canonical Lets Decisions on Ubuntu be Made by a Youngster From the British Army (Where He Did Mass Surveillance)
- "Is Ubuntu Compromised?"
- Back Doored Windows Giving GNU/Linux a Hard Time (Under the Guise of 'Security')
- Is this complication intentional? Most likely, yes
- Links 16/09/2025: Science, Security, and Conflicts
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 16/09/2025: Command-line Options in POSIX Shell and Introducing Acre 0.9
- Links for the day
- Microsoft 'Secure' Boot Versus Dual Boot With GNU/Linux
- they're meant to assume everything is OK
- Links 16/09/2025: While Oracle Pretends to be Rich It's Firing About 70 MySQL Workers, "Oracle's Revenge" (Faking Demand With "AI")
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Has Just Published a New Web Page About "Secure Boot Update Process" (Microsoft Also Admits Issues; PCs Can Stop Booting)
- Why was this page issued and published only hours ago?
- Microsoft Lunduke: I Spread Hate and Then I Receive Hate
- Cry us a river, Microsoft Lunduke
- "Use Wayland" Isn't a Bugfix for X (X11 is Still Necessary)
- They tell us X is "dead" and we must all be herded into Wayland ASAP
- "Disable Secure Boot and Fast Boot. Wipe and Start Over."
- At least they didn't say, buy a new computer...
- The Oracle Ponzi Scheme
- Oracle isn't doing well, but it's nowadays fashionable to say "clown" and "hey hi" to prop up one's stock, even based on nothing at all
- The New Head of OSI is an "Hey Hi" (AI) Obsessed Person
- when Bryant says "AI" that doesn't mean AI
- Taking Out the Battery, Opening Up Your Computer, Just Like a "Normie" Would
- At this stage, any person who still says "enable Secure Boot" is misguided or persuaded by companies that sell rootkits
- Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers and Slopfarms Still Infesting Google News (Fake 'Articles' About "Linux" Spreading FUD)
- searching for "Linux" today yields a lot of FUD
- "Governments, local authorities, schools and hospitals can lead by example by procuring only Free Software"
- Crossposted from Tux Machines
- Cindy Cohn Leaving the Electronic Frontier Foundation While Its Co-founder John Gilmore, Whom She Apparently Helped Oust, Will Celebrate 40 Years of the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
- EFF has been busy hoarding GAFAM money, whereas the latter is where all the real activism is done
- The Reach of Techrights Has Broadened
- We nowadays cover a broader range of issues
- "Google is Googlebombing KDE's Project Banana"
- So is Google googlebombing KDE's Project Banana? You decide.
- Complicating Things for No Actual Benefit, Just Added Risk and More Difficulties Adding GNU/Linux and BSDs
- Watch what it's like for people who wish to use BSDs
- Some Very Large IRC Networks Are Growing
- IRC will turn 38 next year
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 15, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, September 15, 2025
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- Links for the day