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eTrust identifies critical file as virus. A mistake at CA caused some trouble over the weekend, as its eTrust products started identifying part of the Windows local authentication system in Windows 2003 Server as infected with a virus called ‘lassrv.b’. Clean copies of lsass.exe , a popular target for viruses, were blocked by the software,…

Future phone privacy threatened. Reports this week highlighted the problem of spyware running on mobile phones, and the consequences this could have for privacy. A commercial application which, once installed on a smart phone, silently harvests SMS messages and forwards them on to a third party, has been labelled as spyware by F-Secure among others.…

The September issue of Virus Bulletin is now available for subscribers to download. The September 2006 issue of Virus Bulletin is now available for subscribers to browse online or download in PDF format. Just a few of the things this month’s issue has in store are: Respecting the testing : VB’s John Hawes comments on…

Round up of the month’s spammer penalties. Kicking off a round-up of some of the anti-spam penalties issued worldwide this month, the Chinese government has made an underwhelming impression with its first fine for spamming. Hesheng Zhihui Enterprise Management Consulting was fined a paltry 5,000 yuan renminbi (approx. £331) for sending ‘bulk emails containing advertisements…

Consumer Reports does it again. After having come in for a great deal of criticism in recent weeks over its AV testing methodology (see VB, September 2006, p.2 ), Consumer Reports has – amazingly – damaged its credibility further after having confirmed that, during its testing of anti-spyware applications, CR did not test against any…

Stolen details used to trick victims out of further info. Transaction details stolen as part of last weekend’s security breach of a shopping site run by US phone giant AT&T were later used to lure more targets into revealing more information, it has since emerged. The initial hack exposed personal data, including contact details, credit…

Near misses. In the recent Windows XP comparative review (see VB, June 2006, p.11 ), VB reported that VirusBuster failed to achieve the results required for a VB 100% award. After discussion with the developers, it was discovered that out-of-date virus identities had been provided with the product and that VB ‘s tester had failed…

Vulnerability still causing problems. There have been further reports of malware spreading using the MS06-040 vulnerability, announced and patched three weeks ago on Microsoft ‘s latest ‘Patch Tuesday’. Despite considerable activity involving the bug in the past few weeks, spikes of attacks are continuing, although not believed to be spreading widely. Though many reports state…

Quiz tests consumers’ ability to identify spam causing sites. Last month, McAfee invited web users to spot the undesirable website, in an eight-question quiz entitled: ‘Can you spot sites that cause spam?’ The quiz presents consumers with pairs of websites, providing a screenshot of the home page plus details of the privacy policy of each,…

Microsoft and Mozilla’s upcoming new versions to include safety measures. Pre-release versions of both Mozilla FireFox 2 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 have been unveiled, complete with built-in anti-phishing technology designed to help users spot bogus sites. Mozilla ‘s system uses a regularly updated blacklist of known phishing sites, and can collaborate with Google ‘s…