ESET Threat Blog

Even visiting security-oriented websites can sometimes be risky. If you’ve visited the security blog zerosecurity.org this month and you’re also a user of ESET’s security products, you might have encountered an anti-virus alert such as this one:

The detection names may vary. Different variants of the following “generic families” were detected on the compromised websites on different … Read More…

Introduction
Mobile World Congress 2012 is almost upon us, and one of the most hotly-anticipated topics is the next generation of Microsoft’s smartphone operating system Windows Phone 8, which has been kept under wraps far more tightly than its PC counterpart, Windows 8.
While Microsoft was an early adopter in the creation of smartphones with Windows Mobile, … Read More…

[More research from our colleagues in Russia]
In the beginning of February we found a new modification of our “old friend” Win32/Rovnix (the dropper detected as Win32/Rovnix.B trojan), which is the first bootkit using VBR (Volume Boot Record) infection. An interesting fact is that Rovnix bootkit components were used in Win32/Carberp, the most widely spread banking … Read More…

ESET had quite a strong representation at Virus Bulletin this year in Barcelona, as David Harley mentioned in his post prior to the conference.
On the first day, Pierre-Marc Bureau presented his findings about the Kelihos botnet, David Harley and AVG’s Larry Bridwell discussed the usefulness and present state of AV testing, and to finish the … Read More…

On Saturday, another controversial report of a “government trojan” appeared. This time it is the German government that has been accused by the European hacker club Chaos Computer Club (CCC) of using “lawful interception” malware. Hence, “Bundestrojaner” (Federal Trojan), though that name is normally applied to the legal concept that allows German police to make … Read More…

With the publication last year of Aryeh Goretsky's paper “Twenty years before the mouse,” a personal perspective on  the history of viruses and malware so far, I took the opportunity to try something a little different for this blog by announcing it here in an article in an interview format.  
Since people seemed to like it, we … Read More…

Barely had I blogged at (ISC)2 about the Proudhonist contention that “(Intellectual) Property is Theft” than I came upon an article by Andrew Orlowski for The Register in which he uses a similar tag line (“Property is theft, man. So we're taking yours”). While both articles are concerned with breaches of copyright and IP abuse, … 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…

I picked up a post today at bleepingcomputer.com about the “botnet 4.0 undetectable virus“, Well, you can probably guess what I think about the idea of an undetectable virus, and if not (and you actually care what I think about anything!) you can check out my blog Undetectable Virus Plays a Cool Hand.
(Clue: the Chainmailcheck blog … Read More…

OK, I realize that it looks a little self-obsessed to keep writing about comment spam relating to your own blog.
Actually, while I did write about it recently, on that occasion it was for SC Magazine's Cybercrime Corner. And that was largely because I'm still chuckling at the concept of a comment spammer complaining about the … Read More…