ESET Threat Blog

So someone is attacking you, maybe with a flood of traffic as a noisy backdrop to distract you while the bad guy slips in undetected. So how do you stop the hacker amidst the noise, fast enough to act to stop the attack? That was the subject of many vendors and conversations at RSA – … Read More…

Day two of the show, and we ask vendors and participants what the pain points are for Small and Medium Businesses (SMB), especially in the category from 25 to 250 member organizations, even narrowing that to 100 employees or less. It seems this sector is largely missed by the large vendors on the show floor … Read More…

Sadly, having signed up some time ago (see Conferencing in the Metaverse) for the SC Virtual Summit taking place today, I'm too tied up with other things to actually attend.
The summit offers "live webcasts, videos and exhibitors all in a virtual world…" On entering the virtual exhibition hall, visitors can view live videos, download white papers and … Read More…

[Updated. Twice. ]
'Tis the season to get ready for the autumn round of security conferences. For me, it starts at the beginning of September with a small but perfectly formed Forensics conference at Canterbury Christ Church University, in the UK, where I'll be presenting on "Man, Myth, Malware and Multiscanning" – a presentation I'm … Read More…

[Update: that article "IMF and the weakest link" is now up on SC Magazine's Cybercrime Corner.]
In a recent article for SC Magazine (I'll post the link here when it gets posted) on the International Monetary Fund security breach, I focused on the implications of technological versus psychosocial threats and countermeasures. Not, of course, the first time I've … Read More…

My latest blog for SC Magazine's Cybercrime Corner looked at the recent APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) attack on RSA, in the light of Uri Rivner's blog on the implementation of the attack. 
Unfortunately, the exact nature of the target and damage remains somewhat obscure, so while I certainly consider Rivner's blog worth reading, I also found myself clarifying … Read More…

The February ThreatSense Report is now available from the ESET Threat Center. As well as the top ten threats reported globally by our ThreatSense.Net telemetry, it includes feature articles from Josep Albors and Urban Schrott, as well as some shorter news items:

From Russia with spam (Josep Albors)
Misplaced trust in trustworthy names? (Urban Schrott)
Nothing exceeds like … Read More…

SC Magazine's Dan Raywood reports that "To be completely patched requires an average of between 51 and 86 actions per year", quoting findings by Secunia that " in order for the typical home user to stay fully patched, an average of 75 patches from 22 different vendors need to be installed, requiring the user to … Read More…

There was an AMTSO (Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization) panel session here at RSA, where Larry Bridwell, Righard Zwienenberg, Andreas Marx, Roel Schouwenberg and Neil Rubenking talked about AMTSO and what it does (and what it hopes to do). And I added to my list of qualifications for being involved with the organization: current vendor representative, … Read More…

Greetings, friends and fiends.
I've been uncharacteristically quiet for the past couple of weeks, due to the AMTSO workshop last week in Santa Clara. There was, as usual, some lively discussion: though no papers were approved at the meeting, some are close enough to finished to be voted on shortly. (See also the AMTSO blog for … Read More…