ESET Threat Blog

Yesterday’s announcement by the US Department of Justice that the operators of file-sharing site Megaupload had been indicted for operating a criminal enterprise that generated over $175 million by trafficking in over half a billion dollars of pirated copyrighted material has sent shockwaves across the Internet.  The accuracy of those figures may be questionable, but … Read More…

Parties concerned that SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act – as currently drafted - is likely to do more harm than good received indirect support from a slightly unexpected quarter. Declan McCullagh reports for CNET that Daniel E. Lundgren, chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security's Sub-Committee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies, has stated that:
An "unintended consequence" … Read More…

Following the recent landmark Newsbin2 ruling requiring ISP’s to take a more active role in policing pirate websites, UK ISP’s are working to speed the court ordered actions though to block pirated sites. The implementation details haven’t been finalized between the creative industries and ISP’s, but copyright-owners seem to be optimistic.
The goal is to produce … Read More…

Fighting modern day piracy is something of a paradox; in an open system that allows freedom (good), scoundrels are also free to skulk around doing nasty things (bad). Various efforts have been made to pounce on evildoers, but it’s a game of whack-a-mole. When one has been thwarted, others pop up as variations on the … Read More…

Ron Bowes, an online security consultant had a thought which he put down on paper so that all the “ingenious” people might be informed. The first and last name (and similar lists) of 100 million users on Facebook is not a remarkable discovery. There is no delight in owning anything unshared. The information “exposed” is … Read More…

I was dismayed at a recent article on a web site that calls itself the Airline News Resource. A young student, Mr. Toms Purgailis, from Latvia wrote an article about the future of IFE (In Flight Entertainment) in which he advocates the passengers on the airplanes using iPads and laptops and just sharing their movie … Read More…

Mac security firm Intego blogged about Apple’s decision to include an antimalware component in Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" and we agree that it is a good step, security-wise, to provide some basic protection against malware.  Apple has long mocked Microsoft, up to and including this 2006 advertisement which implied there were no viruses … Read More…

So far, Google’s response to my blog has been identical to the response you get from abuse@blogspot.com, except without the delayed and failed delivery notifications. Yes, I actually did get a delayed delivery notification from the email I sent to abuse@blogspot.com, and then later a delivery failure. I suspect that from Google’s perspective there is … Read More…

When it comes to software piracy, it is hard to find a more complicit, competent, and friendlier ally than Google, assuming you are a pirate. Google owns the popular blogging site “Blogspot.com”. If you want to know how to illegally gain access to software, blogspot is probably one of the premier resources on the internet … Read More…

And finally…
Don’t use cracked/pirated software! These are easy avenues for introducing malware into, or exploiting weaknesses in, a system. This also includes the illegal P2P (peer-to-peer) distribution of copyrighted audio and video files: some of these are counterfeited or modified so that they can be used directly in the malware distribution process.
Even if a utility … Read More…