Saturday, June 13, 2009

What are the most dangerous search terms on the Internet? - CNN.com

Interesting article about a study that McAfee has done about which search results point to the most virus ridden web sites. Their (free) Site Advisor browser plug-in should protect you from this but only in as far as you are carefully watching which sites it rates as dangerous and only if you do not click on the dangerous links. Once you click you might be infected!

What most people are not aware of is the fact that no longer do viruses creep into your computer only if you download the wrong application or program but you can now also get infected with a computer virus by just visiting a web site. These web sites will insert cookies or some even applications into your browser that can monitor everything you do with the browser. Like for example visiting your online bank, entering your user name and password. Once they have collected this information, it is send to the central hacker website where they can use your password to get access to your bank account.

Protecting from all of this is very hard: even the best anti-virus (or anti-malware as they are called now) solutions are always running behind the facts. Nobody has a complete list of all the malware web sites and trying to keep up is almost impossible. All the anti virus companies will eventually find the virus on your system but they might only find it after it has done its nasty work.

All the (professional) anti-virus vendors use so called honey pots to detect and trap viruses. Honey pots are PCs that are connected to the Internet in several locations around the world and they have no protection whatsoever. This means that any time a virus contacts a honey pot the PC will become infected. Once the infection is detected, the virus is isolated (so it can't spread) and analysed by humans to see how it can be detected. Unfortunately some viruses have become so smart that they will only reveal themselves as malware when they are inside the corporate LAN of a specific (large) company. What this means is that the virus is completely undetectable anywhere else, so it will not be noticed by any of these so called honey pots.

BlueGem Security a company for which I am an advisor, has a bullet proof solution for the problem of malware stealing your private information. After you install the software from BlueGem all of your key strokes will be completely encrypted while you are visiting your online bank or any other site that requires you to type sensitive information like passwords. So even if you do have malware on your system or in your browser all the malware can see is the encrypted stuff which is useless to them. Trend Micro Internet Security Pro is the only total anti-malware solution that bundles BlueGem security, so it is the only one that can protect the PC (and thus its users) from all of the tricks that the malware plays these days. It even protects against the large company specific viruses that are undetectable, since it does not have to know what is good or bad, it simply keeps the key strokes encrypted and thus safe from any malware/virus/Trojan horse or phishing attack.

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