Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Security Issues in The British Press, Vista and Vista 7 No Panacea



Summary: Security news from the British press and IDG (gathered in recent weeks), affecting all versions of Windows

THE MSBBC (mentioned in the previous post) continues calling a criminal "hacker", which deceives British readers.



Another report, specifically this one from The Inquirer (there are more such reports outside the UK), says that "[a] scary number of security suites fail on Windows Vista" and this potentially contradicts that story Microsoft had printed in IDG the other day.

Doomed from the start probably because they were tested on Windows Vista Business Edition SP2, the tests found a marked inability of some software to cope with heavy attacks. As opposed to Windows Vista's inability to cope, full stop. Virus Bulletin's crack squad also noted that false positive rates were very high, with legitimate files from Corel, Roxio and Adobe having been falsely identified as being infected.


Yesterday I went over to good friend of mine who has been stuck with Vista for a few years and hates it (I showed him KDE and GNOME, then set it up for his brother in law). Vista is in many ways a mess and the fonts are ugly on some screens (BSODs are an occasional problem too); Vista 7 is more of the same but somewhat improved. According to this new eWEEK readers survey, there are more GNU/Linux users there than Vista 7 users. No surprise.

Windows XP scored nearly 44 percent in a poll of which desktops eWEEK readers use to run their business. Microsoft’s Windows 7 came in behind Linux, while Vista languished with a handful of votes in the “other” category.


In other security news from this month, let's look at The Register (UK):

Hoax Facebook virus makes more trouble than a real virus

Blackhole your malware

Anti-virus defences even shakier than feared

A study by web intelligence firm Cyveillance found that, on average, vendors detect less than 19 per cent of malware attacks on the first day malware appears in the wild. Even after 30 days, detection rates improved to just 61.7 per cent, on average.


Waledac zombie attacks rise from the grave

However, over recent weeks, the botnet is making a comeback of sorts. Spammed messages containing malicious attachment harbouring Waladec agents and disguised as tax invoices or job offers and the like have begun appearing, Trend Micro warns.

The same run of spam messages is also being used to spread fake anti-virus and other scams unrelated to Waledac, and there's no sign that a new command and control structure, much less a fresh round of spamming, has begun.


Scotland Yard cuffs six in megaquid phish ring probe

Botnet that pwned 100,000 UK PCs taken out

Click fraud botnet unpicked

Cybercrooks use of botnets to make money by sending spam or launching denial of service attacks has become a well-understood business model.

But the controllers of networks of compromised PCs have other ways of turning an illicit profit, including using rogue traffic brokers to defraud reputable brands. Trend Micro's write-up of a click fraud scam sheds light onto this less well-known but highly lucrative cyberscam.


"Malware Reaches An All-Time High," claims this report.

McAfee found 6 million malicious files in the second quarter, compared to 4 million in the first quarter.


This was also covered by IDG, which published "Malware Call to Arms: Threat at All-Time High and Rising"

Going as far back as last month in IDG, we also have:

Atlanta Has Dubious Honor of Highest Malware Infection Rate

Natural Disasters and Global Warming Fuel the Malware Flames

After worm, Siemens says don't change passwords

Trusteer Finds 100,000 UK Computers Infected With Zeus

We wrote about Zeus in [1, 2, 3] and about Stuxnet/Siemens in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. "Stuxnet Industrial Worm Was Written Over a Year Ago," claims IDG.

A sophisticated worm designed to steal industrial secrets has been around for much longer than previously thought, according to security experts investigating the malicious software.

Called Stuxnet, the worm was unknown until mid-July, when it was identified by investigators with VirusBlockAda, a security vendor based in Minsk, Belarus. The worm is notable not only for its technical sophistication, but also for the fact that it targets the industrial control system computers designed to run factories and power plants.


From CNET: "Stuxnet could hijack power plants, refineries"

"For example, at an energy production plant, the attacker would be able to download the plans for how the physical machinery in the plant is operated and analyze them to see how they want to change how the plant operates, and then they could inject their own code into the machinery to change how it works," he said.

The Stuxnet worm propagates by exploiting a hole in all versions of Windows in the code that processes shortcut files ending in ".lnk." It infects machines via USB drives but can also be embedded in a Web site, remote network share, or Microsoft Word document, Microsoft said.

Microsoft issued an emergency patch for the Windows Shortcut hole last week, but just installing the patch is not enough to protect systems running the Siemens program because the malware is capable of hiding code in the system that could allow a remote attacker to interfere with plant operations without anyone at the company knowing, according to O'Murchu.


That's truly a national security issue. Watch this news from Japan: [via]

Computer criminal blows probation



Tokyo police said Wednesday they have arrested a 27-year-old man in Osaka on suspicion of using a computer virus to destroy stored data.


Unless or until Windows is removed, systems that affect many people's lives will continue to be at risk.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Even LKML Subjected to Slop/SPAM by Guardian Digital, Inc (linuxsecurity.com)
They're really awful
What Makes RMS Such an Attractive Target ('Discreditisation' Campaigns)
Don't be so easily fooled
The Biggest OEMs or Vendors of GNU/Linux Stopped Competing With Microsoft (Which Pays Them to Promote Windows, Too)
Where are the competition authorities (or regulators for that matter)?
Would You Trust a Liar?
Why lie about the authorship?
Sanctions Cause Fragmentation in Software
some Chinese Linux developers are already subjected to restrictions similar to Russians'
 
Links 07/11/2024: Political Angst and Laptop Issues
Links for the day
Links 06/11/2024: BPF in RFC 9669, More Facebook Fines for Privacy Abuses
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/11/2024: Political Shock and Hermaic Encouragement
Links for the day
Planet Debian Allows Politics (But It Depends on Your Opinions and Debian's Big Sponsors)
Planet Debian is OK with politics... as long as all your political opinions are the "correct" ones and you add cute animals
Let's Encrypt Falls to a New Low of Only 0.6% of Gemini Capsules Known to Lupa
In Gemini Protocol, certificates for encryption are required, but centralised Certificate Authorities (CAs) aren't needed
Computer-Generator Crap Flooding the Web, the Latest Example About "Linux"
Here's today's example
Links 06/11/2024: Election Disinformation and Legal Actions
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/11/2024: Stargazing and Death on Hallowe'en
Links for the day
Mass Layoffs at Mozilla Announced During US Elections
Maybe nobody will notice?
[Meme] Announcing "Results" Before Everyone Even "Played"
There is a "tech" angle to otherwise political news
US Polls Close in One Minute (Social Control Media Does Not Care, Will Not Wait)
US election results will be known in about 2 days
Concentration and Centralisation Versus Aggregation or Syndication
KDE has a history of burying old sites
Social Control Media, Even Hours Before Polls Have Closed
Has social control media controlled by CPC (TikTok) and the Trumpmobile guy (Musk's "X") done enough to convince people not to even vote (based on presumptive "results", presented a long time before all polls have closed)?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 05, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 05, 2024
Wayland Pains in Community-Led Distros of GNU/Linux
Few people and companies use Wayland; there's hardly any technical or practical reason to choose it
IBM Still Conflating Microsoft With 'Security'
As a meme
Web Failing With Slop, Even in 'Linux' Sites (LLM Spam)
Add SEO prompting to the mix and the Web becomes a pool of slop, not knowledge
[Meme] State of the World Wide Web and Online Journalism
Technically a failure (DRM) and cannot even get basic things right
Trump's signature policy, building a wall, copied from Irish-Australian student politician
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linus Torvalds' self-deprecating LKML CoC mail linked to Hitler's first writing: Gemlich letter
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] Turning 18 in One Day
just one more day
Birthday Tomorrow
Many cakes and drinks are ready; we're one day away now
The Internet is Failing to Protect Democratic Processes and Human Knowledge
Amplifying lies, rewarding plagiarists
Links 05/11/2024: Criminal Referrals Regarding Patent Trolls and Disinformation About the Election Process (Already)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/11/2024: 'App' Needed for Parking, NNCP, Gomphotherium
Links for the day
How Voting Does Not Work
You cannot vote from an "app"
Saving the Planet With Honesty, Transparency, and Sharing (Not Only of Computer Code)
GAFAM is destroying the only habitat humans and other animals have and it'll only get worse
Disinformation About Election Outcomes Even Before Any Election Outcomes (or Election/Voting!)
seeding doubt about election outcomes
Links 05/11/2024: Bluesky and Enshittification, Pugad Baboy, and Lots of Disinformation Flooding the Web
Links for the day
[Meme] Sweaty Under the Belly
"OK, my critics are 'spam'"
Microsoft Bribing Canonical (to Stop Competing) and Bribing Users to Shun the Competition
Canonical is worth shunning
[Meme] The 2024 'Info Bros'
And prehistoric googling
Computers Getting Worse (for the User) Over Time
This is like Windows-ism coming to "Linux" through the hardware
[Meme] How NOT to Vote
Another form of (mostly-unspoken-of) election interference
An LLM Inside a 'Search' Engine Means That Companies Tell You What They Want, Not What Web Pages to Visit
The future of 'googling' things might be as unreliable as using Social Control Media as a source of information
Google's Debt Has Increased and 'Cash on Hand' Fell by 22.27% This Past Year
These are the numbers that the corporate media intentionally leaves out
Against Outsourcing of Sites and E-mail
Software Freedom is great, but it is not enough if you let someone else do it 'for you'
Drew DeVault: People Talking About My Attack Site (Against the Founder of GNU/Linux) is "Spam"
"Spam on sr.ht mailing lists"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 04, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 04, 2024
There's a Reason Why Techrights is Turning 18 and Tux Machines Will Turn 20.5 Next Month
I started advocating GNU/Linux when I was a teenager
"Oppose the Fascist"
what the founder of GNU/Linux said
Techrights Has a Long History of Fighting to Expose 'Team Mono' or Microsofters Inside GNOME
Never downplay the malice of Microsoft and its operatives
Halloween, All Saints Day & Swiss citizenship
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 05/11/2024: Halloween Over, Intention and Implementation, Bookmark Syncing
Links for the day