ESET Threat Blog

It was back in the 1990s when someone told me that operating systems like Windows NT were getting so safe that AV would soon be out of business. And I hear on a regular basis that AV is so ineffective it's not worth having. Because I get some of my income from the anti-virus industry, … Read More…

Some readers will know that I often contribute articles to SC Magazine's Cybercrime Corner. Here are a couple that have gone up today.

Social engineering and social media starts from Symantec's transient false positive detection of Facebook as a malicious site, and goes on to consider a more serious side to the event, in the light of … Read More…

Security companies in general and, unfortunately, anti-malware companies in particular, are often accused of ‘hyping’ threats because of a perceived self-interest. However, in the main, legitimate vendors and researchers like those at ESET typically try to resist overhyping or playing up threats where possible, in favor of more balanced discussion that can help customers take … Read More…

It is generally well-understood that antimalware programs—the software which detects computer viruses, worms, trojan horses and other threats to your system—work by scanning files using signatures they already have. A signature could be as simple as a string[i] (like using the "find" command in your word processor to locate a particular piece of text) or as … Read More…

There have been recent reports that University of Toronto researchers have been observing the workings of a cyber-espionage botnet. This botnet, called the "Shadow Network", appears to be a network that targeted government, business and academic computers at the United Nations and the Embassy of Pakistan in the US, among others including the Office of … Read More…

[Part 8 of an occasional series, updating a blog series I ran in early 2009 to reflect changes in the threat landscape. This series will also be available shortly as a white paper.]
Anti-Virus isn’t Total Security
Don’t expect antivirus alone to protect you from everything.
Use additional measures such as a personal firewall, antispam and anti-phishing toolbars, but … Read More…