MS Antispyware beta is now MS Defender beta 2.


You can read about it at the link below.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx or Here

Google has finally established a direct presence in Southeast Asia, through a new sales and operations office in Hong Kong. The move comes eight years after the U.S. company was founded in 1998.

The popular online search engine runs in more than 130 international domains and supports over 100 languages. Google went public in August 2004, where its shares rose by 18 percent after the first day of trading. At press time, its stock price was valued at US$365.49.
Google's network reaches 80 percent of the world's Internet population, or more than 427 million Web users, where half its search traffic originates from outside the United States.

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The First Max OS X Virus?


A Linux malware program, which is arguably really an attack on various applications, generated much discussion in security circles this past week. It's known by a variety of names, including Plupii.C, ShellBot.C and, to F-Secure, Mare.D.

It's a network worm that attacks known vulnerabilities in the Mambo content management system and PHP's XML-RPC library. It uses these vulnerabilities to download and execute an attack shell script which itself downloads and executes other components. The other components include several backdoors which await external commands.

Other reports indicate that systems compromised in this way are being controlled as part of a botnet, and that they are being used to attack other systems.

For more news, click here

Whether your PC is 3 years or 3 days old, it faces the same, sometimes scary security issues. Viruses want to attack your system the moment it goes online, spyware is piggybacking with your mail and trying to slide in along with online ads, Trojans lay in wait at every turn and Phish—perhaps the sneakiest attack of all—smile at you while trying to steal your identity.

There are ways out of this mess. These tips can show you what to do, help you better understand the threats and be ready with a plan of counter attack.

It's time to take back your computing life.

Click here for 80 Super Security Tips"

European Firefox use hits 20 per cent

One in five Europeans is currently using Mozilla's Firefox web browser, according to new research from French internet monitoring firm XiTi Monitor.

Finland leads the way with nearly 40 per cent of computer users choosing the open source browser, while the UK languishes near the bottom with just 11 per cent.

Germany and Slovenia are the only other countries with over 30 per cent market share for the Firefox browser.

Europe leads the world in the use of Firefox, with an average user rate of 20.11 per cent. Australasia is in second place at 18.6 per cent, followed by North America at 15.88 per cent.

Firefox is least popular in South America, where barely one in 20 people use the software.

The survey also found that Firefox users have been quick to upgrade following the recent release of version 1.5. Over 40 per cent now use the latest version since its release two months ago.

link

Attackers exploit Linux/OSX Firefox flaw

Attackers have developed code that exploits a recently patched flaw in the Firefox 1.5 browser.

The exploit could allow an attacker to take control of a Linux or OS X system running the browser.

The Mozilla Foundation has upgraded the severity rating for the flaw from 'moderate' to 'critical' and updated its security advisory about the bug.

Mozilla issued a security update last Thursday that repaired eight vulnerabilities. Most users have already upgraded to the latest version through the browser's auto-update feature.

The Thunderbird email application can also be affected, but only if users have changed the default settings to allow the execution of JavaScript.

here

Nyxem claimed up to 946,835 victims

Although the Nyxem.E worm caused very little actual damage, researchers estimate that the worm infected between 469,507 and 946,835 systems from 15 January to 1 February.

Nyxem.E was designed to overwrite several document types including Word and Excel files on an infected system on the third day of every month, beginning last Friday.

The worm spreads through spam email messages promising pornographic pictures.

The malware is considered rare because infected systems make a single call back to a website, providing the worm author and security researchers with information about its proliferation.

For more infos, click here

The latest worm outbreak has many names, and it's a nasty one. It's scheduled to pillage its victim systems on the third of the month.

Name: Blackworm
Affects: Windows XP/XP SP2/2000/2003/NT/ME/98/95

For the most part, there's nothing all that special about this worm, other than the destructive behavior, the time bomb, and the fact that it uses an HTTP-based counter to keep track of how many copies of itself are up and running on the Internet.

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Almost one year to the day that Bill Gates announced Internet Explorer 7 for XP SP2 at RSA 2005, Microsoft has released a second public beta for the new-and-improved Internet browser. Hoping to stop the increasing tide of disgruntled surfers switching to Mozilla Firefox and Opera 8, Microsoft has mirrored the look and feel of those other browsers while adding a few unique features to IE 7 for XP SP2 (mostly borrowing from what we've already seen in IE 7 for Windows Vista previews).

For the end user, know that not all Web sites will function properly using IE 7 for XP SP2 beta 2. And note that you must be running Windows XP SP2 in order to install this beta; all older versions of Windows are now limited to Internet Explorer 6.

For a look inside this new release,click here