Sometimes we harbor virus on our computers (PC) without knowing that they really are there. If we do know how these viruses behave, and the main feature and effect on our systems, we will not that there are a whole lots of them on our system and we thereby give them space to operate to their fullest until a lot of unrecoverable damage has been done to our system. This article will help you to detect virus, worms, spywares and malwares without anti virus and anti spyware software.

How to Detect Viral Infection of Your PC (Computer)

Wondering how to find out if your computer has a virus? Some of this virus might even appear invisible that our anti-virus can never detect them and we will generally believe that our system is virus free without knowing that our system is the home ground of well-groomed virus that deals with people’s files. So as to avoid this and even detect the status of virus on our system even without the help of anti-virus, I will like to talk about some things to take note of so that we can detect the presence of virus on our system.

Programs take too long to Load

Part of the things that virus does once it have the avenue to enter the system is to go and attack the files that once opened, they will have the avenue to spread to other file. The reason for this is that those file will always need some other file to enable them run easily and smoothly and those file needed are hidden on the system. But once they have the opportunity to attack those files, it will aid them in spreading to other hidden files that are on the system.

As tis is been done, it will make it hard for anti-virus to detect them and if they eventually detected, the anti-virus that did not have the capacity of healing them will not be able to deleted those files because some of those hidden files are important operating system files that must be deleted because they aid in the smooth running of the O.S.

Once these files are deleted, you will discover that the system will complain of missing important O.S files and therefore will not be able to boot. Once the anti-virus have attack this programs, you will then discover that whenever you run those programs that run easily, they will be taking long before they will run. Once you see this, note that virus are already having their way on your system.

Accessing Disk Takes a long Time

Usually, the data disk that we sometimes want to install on our system contains executable files that always need the permission to access O.S files so that they can register the program which they represent into the folder that contains other programs. This folder is one of the major file that virus always look to attack because it takes them closer to the O.S files.

Check Out This List of Top 6 Best Antivirus Protection Program of 2011

Now, once this software are inserted into the CD/DVD drive on our system, and the presence of those executive files have been detected by the virus, the y will now attack that file with all they’ve got that is why access the disk during their attack makes the dis takes longer time before it can be accessed.

*Note: This only applies to a situation whereby the disk you want to read is a clean one. That is, it hasn’t scratched.

Files Disappear and File with Strange Name Appear

After your files have been successfully attacked by virus, as a result of the virus destroying your files, the files will one after the other begins to disappear. You might even be making use of that particular file and then you suddenly discover that the file will just change from what it used to be to something you have never seen before. Once you see this, know fully well that there is virus on your system.

Executable Files Change in Size

Once the virus has the access to attack the executable files on our system (mostly those people that like storing software on their system) you will discover that they will change in size and either the size increase abnormally or it reduce. This is because the main file that is very important for this executable file has been taken over by the virus. Once this is done, the virus then has all authority to alter the size of these files.

If this situation has not gotten out of hands, you can easily use a good anti-virus to scan your system and once the anti-virus have discovered the virus, you can ask the anti-virus to repair those files. But in a situation whereby important O.S file has been tampered with (that is the out of hand situation), the only and best solution is to reload (reinstall) the operating system.

Guest Author: Odesanya Taiwo is a tech writer and a tech blogger who writes for a technology blog, techatlast. He also spends time to provide latest news for thenewsofthepeople, a news website.

Google redirect virus is a browser hijacker that causes redirection to infected websites while you are simply browsing the Internet. Basically, after you type in a specific word or phrase into Google search engine and click Enter, you get redirected to some advertisements, p0rn-related websites, etc.

It can also completely block certain websites. This activity is not only annoying but it can also infect your system with some spyware infections which later on may reveal your private information, including passwords or credit card details.

If you are an experienced computer user you may fix this problem by entering the registry. However, if you are not sure which files to remove or change do not mess with it. These files can have random names so it is difficult to track them.

The easiest way to fix Google redirect virus is by scanning your system with a reliable antispyware program. if it doesn’t work, you can try these easy steps:

1. Check your hosts files for malicious entries. If you see more IPs, you should delete them.

2. Go to Control Panel -> Network Connections, right-click on your Local Area Connection icon and choose Properties. Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click Properties. Select “Obtain an IP address automatically” and “Obtain DNS server address automatically”. Save the changes.

3. Check you proxy settings on Internet Explorer. Launch it and go to Tools -> Internet options, Connections tab and click LAN Settings. Unselect all checkboxes and click OK.

4. If you use Mozilla Firefox, check you proxy settings there too. Go to Tools -> Options, click Advanced and open Network tab. Go to Settings, select “No proxy” and click OK.

5. Check Internet Explorer add-ons. Go to Tools -> Add-ons. Disable all add-ons that you cannot verify. You can reinstall good ones later.

If nothing works, it’s very likely that it’s a tdss rootkit. In this case and generally, the easiest way to fix Google redirect virus is by using a reliable antispyware program: Malwarebytes, Spyware Doctor, Superantispyware, Hitman Pro, etc. And here is a list of top 6 Best Antivirus Protection Program of 2011.

Guest Author: This is a guest article by Renata who is blogging for 2-viruses.com covering the main security issues there and writing tutorials on how to remove newest malware infections. Renata follows the latest news of computer security industry and alerts visitors of 2-viruses.com about latest vulnerabilities and parasites.

There are over 200,000 applications on the Android App Store/Market today – up from 50,000 a year ago while the store was launched – but the huge growth in the platform has brought with it a rise in malicious apps designed to steal user data.

Unfortunately, this issue highlights the flaws in Google’s open store approach compared to the tightly controlled nature of Apple’s iTunes App Store.

Over the past few months, Android users have been victims of threats ranging from various levels of intensity. What began first as a threat tool for desktop users has now furthered onto the mobile users.

Keeping this view in mind, a host of anti-virus applications have been released in a last ditch. For instance, this week security firm Webroot released its Webroot Mobile Security for Android software, which is available on the Android Market. There is a free and paid version.

Even Google has been trying to be proactive to fight such malware attacks, but often the outcome has been far from desirable. One instance would be the attacks that a malicious app called DroidDream began doing rounds. Although Google did intervene but most of the damage had been done already.

In another instance, on Wednesday, Google removed multiple applications from its official Android Market application store that contained malware.

Google’s move came after AegisLab, a security firm based in Taiwan, released a security alert warning that applications including iBook, iCartoon, iGuide, iCalendar, Sea Ball, LoveBaby, and 3D Cube Horror Terrible — all published by “zsone”–contained code designed to quietly send SMS messages to premium telephone numbers in China, resulting in either a one-time charge or an ongoing subscription.

At least 11 Android apps contain malware that is rigged to automatically send text messages from your Google Android smartphone to phone numbers in China. Moreover, 17% of all reported smartphone infections “were due to SMS Trojans that sent SMS messages to premium-rate numbers, often at irretrievable cost to the user or enterprise.“

However, even though alarming the four-fold increase in malware targeting Android isn’t unexpected. “You don’t have to be extraordinarily smart to write mobile malware these days because most devices don’t have any security tools to stop the malware,” said Dan Hoffman, chief mobile security evangelist at Juniper Networks.

Asked whether the reported rise in Android malware meant anti-virus programs for the platform were desirable or necessary, a Google spokeswoman did not directly answer the question.

“We are committed to providing a secure Android Market experience for consumers,” the spokeswoman said.

In the meantime, watch where you procure mobile device applications, and especially beware third-party application stores, for example in China, where access to the official Android Market remains blocked. In particular, criminals often hide malware in clones of well-known applications, and especially Android games.

Basically, the “MAC Defender” rogueware tries to download automatically on Mac computers, then includes itself in the list of programs that will load on startup. However, MacScan and VirusBarrier users are being warned about this fake antivirus when it tries to download and install silently.

Mac Defender Fake Antivirus: Mode of Infection

Users are being targeted as they search Google Images. The bogus MacDefender application gets automatically downloaded as a web searcher browses apparently harmless images using Google Images. Moreover, the malware campaign is targeting users of Apple’s Safari browser, displaying warnings that the user’s computer has been infected with viruses that only the unofficial MacDefender application can remove.

This application is very well designed, and looks professional. There are a number of different screens, and the grammar and spelling are correct, the buttons are attractive, and the overall look and feel of the program give it a professional look. It will occasionally display alerts, telling users that viruses are found.

And this rogueware spreading so easily because Safari, the default browser in Mac OS, can be set to automatically open trusted software! Thus users are getting infected without even a hint of what’s happening until the malicious app demands payment for “non-existent protection” that it claims to provide.

Fake “MAC Defender” Antivirus App Scams Users for Money, Credit Card Numbers

Once downloaded silently, the Mac Defender rouge anti-virus program will “detect” nonexistent threats as being present on the user’s system in an effort to persuade them to hand over their credit card information and purchase a “subscription” to the program. If that doesn’t do enough to convince the user to buy the fake anti-virus program, it will start popping up pornographic websites to create an actual problem on the system.

The scam here is to charge users for a program that doesn’t do anything; the virus warnings presented are bogus, and after paying, they no longer display, so users think the program has done something useful. It is also possible that these credit card numbers, given via an unsecure web page, could be used for other purposes.

Mac Defender Fake Antivirus Removal Instructions

Method One:

1. Open Activity Monitor from the Utilities folder. Make sure the drop-down menu is set to “all processes.”

2. Use the search field in Activity Monitor to search for MacDefender.

3. Click on the MacDefender process. Click the “Quit Process” button. Click “Force Quit.”

4. Drag the MacDefender program (installed in the Applications folder by default) to the Trash. Empty the Trash.

5. Remove MacDefender from the Login Items for your Account in the OS X System Preferences (if it exists).

Method Two (For Advanced Users):

1. Open the Terminal application from the Utilities folder.

2. Type the following command in the terminal (without quotes) and hit the return key: ‘ps -ax | grep -i MacDefender’

3. Note the process ID associated with the MacDefender program (the first digits listed in the result).

4. Type the following command in the terminal (without quotes, and substituting the process ID noted above for XXXX) and hit the return key: ‘kill XXXX’

At this time the MAC Defender program will no longer be running. Continue with steps 4 and 5 from Method One for removal.

Method Three (For MacScan users):

MacScan users can identify the new malware by running a spyware scan with the latest spyware definitions update, which was release May 2nd, 2011. A 30-day demo of MacScan can be downloaded from SecureMac at http://macscan.securemac.com.

Mac Defender Rogue Antivirus Protection Tips

To ensure you do not automatically download the fake antivirus, just uncheck the following: Safari > Preferences > General > uncheck “Open ‘safe’ files after downloading.” That’s it.

If you are a Mac user and have been infected by this fake antivirus, let us know if the above removal tips helped. Also make sure to check these Top 6 Best Antivirus Protection Program of 2011.

Every computer needs a firewall, especially ones that are used at work. For a big company, there is a more serious threat of someone from outside accessing information or giving your whole network a virus. Companies can use the firewall to control how the network is used by, for example, only allowing or blocking certain computers to access their web servers. Many companies use a thin client so they can control what content is pre-loaded and can be installed onto a work machine alongside their firewall.

How A Firewall Works To Keep Your System (PC) Safe?

There are several different types of firewalls and they each work a little bit differently:

Packet Filtering – This is a system where data enters the system through chunks or packets. The loose stuff that’s not connected (which is often the malware trailing along) is tossed out.

Proxy Service – With proxy service, the firewall gets the data from the internet and then sends it to the system that’s requesting it.

Stateful Inspection – This is a new style of firewall where it analyzes the packets of data by checking it against a database of known malware.

Your firewall also analyzes the data that comes from your computer to the net. It looks for similar patterns of data. When it receives data that doesn’t fit into these patterns, it keeps it out.

It protects your computer from all kinds of bad stuff. It’s a long list that includes viruses, spam, remote login, programs that contain hidden bugs (application backdoors), e-mail bombs, source routing, SMTP session hijacking and much more.

How To Get The Best Firewall For Your Computer?

There are two ways to go if you want to get a firewall. You can either download a free one from an open source community, or pay for a licensed program. Of course, the paid ones are better, but a free one will block lots of nasty stuff. The main thing you miss with a free one is the customer support and upgrades.

Here is a List of Top 6 Best Antivirus Protection (2011) Software

A great free firewall program is Comodo Internet Security. It’s known as one of the hardest working firewalls out there and was named as PC Magazine Online’s Editor’s Choice. The most popular paid firewall programs are Zone Alarm Pro 2010 and Outpost Firewall. Both have lots of handy features and are easy to use.

Guest Author: This is a guest article by Steven Papas who is the owner of VeryBestSoftware.net where one can find reviews for known Internet Security and Parental Control software as well as the Norton 360 5.0 coupon and Acronis coupons.

Norton AntiVirus 2011

Norton AntiVirus software has received many awards and is famous for being the best antivirus application among PC users. Norton 2011 offers variety of products that differ in their abilities and pricing: Norton Internet Security 2011 includes the Norton Antivirus 2011 and offers additional protection layer against Internet threats. Norton 360 4.0 is Nortons All-in-one solution and it has all Norton products embedded into it. It is available for about $40 for a year’s protection.

AVG Antivirus 2011

AVG anti virus is believed to be the best antivirus for Windows XP or Mac. One of the main features AVG are proud about is their advanced ability to protect you from identity theft. Nowadays when virus, ad spyware programs and all kind of other malware are trying to steal your personal information in numerous methods, protecting from identity theft is a great challenge, a challenge that AVG claim they do best. A year’s protection on one PC is available for about $35.

BitDefender Antivirus 2011

The demo version of BitDefender is one of the best free antivirus (2011) applications available. The best feature of this antivirus software is the ‘Performance Optimizer’ which helps the user in knowing which all running apps are slowing down the system. BitDefender Internet Security 2011 is more than an Antivirus, it offers a vast range of protection modules, which makes it a powerful all-in-one protection suite.

It also includes ‘Smarthelp’ which lets the user create customized warnings and suggestions for satisfactory performance. You may have to be pay around $60 for a one-year pack that can run on one system.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011

If you are thinking about the best antivirus for netbook, this is a suitable option. This antivirus tool is a very good choice for PC “regular users” that don’t want to get into any technicalities. Kaspersky 2011 version has a very easy to use interface integrated with a very powerful defense ability. And yes, Kaspersky has a Mac version as well.

Kaspersky claim that their Internet Security 2011 solution has everything that you need to stay safe and secure while you’re surfing the web (“Download what ever you wish, Kaspersky will make sure its safe”). This application is available for an affordable $40.

Trend Micro Antivirus 2011

Trend Micro™ 2011 is going to be a very exciting release offering advanced cloud technology to automatically stop viruses and spyware. However, although some of its defense functions are quite impressive TrendMicro Antivirus has a low ability to identify and block spyware programs.

ESET Nod32 Antivirus 4

Users searching for a reliable and easy antivirus software can go in for the ESET Nod32 Antivirus 4. It incorporates ‘heuristic technology’ which helps in detection of new computer viruses, and the ‘ThreatSense’ feature that renders protection from malware. Nod32 2011 has improved some of their already existing advantages such as very low resource usage and an effective yet simple user interface. Eset Nod32 2011 Antivirus is one of the most popular Antivirus programs in Europe and USA. The approximate price of this product is believed to be $40. It is also available for a 30-day trial.

These are some of the best antivirus (2011) applications that you can go in for. What do you think about this list of top 10 antivirus 2011? Are you using any of these antivirus software? Would you like to share your views and reviews with our users? Choose wisely and keep your system safe!

This nasty worm on Twitter preys on users who click on a shortened link that takes them to a fake anti-virus site for “Security Shield” software. Once there, the aim is to get users to download what is billed as anti-virus protection, but is really malicious code.

Affected (Infected) users might notice mysterious tweets that they did not write showing up on their feeds, many of which include goo.gl links that end with “m28sx.html.“

“If you make the mistake of clicking on one of the malicious goo.gl links you are ultimately taken to a website which attempts to scare you into believing that you have a virus problem on your computer,” writes Sophos’ Graham Clueley on the security software company’s blog.  “You are then frightened into installing malicious code on your PC, and asked to pay money to disinfect your systems.”

Attacks hiding behind shortened URLs are not new, and are also not technically challenging to execute. By their very nature, URL shortening services like goo.gl and bit.ly take cumbersome, long URLs and condense them down to a nice, short alias that can be used in its place. The concept makes it much easier to send some exceptionally long links, and is a necessity for a site like Twitter which caps messages at 140 characters.

Adam Wosotowsky, principal researcher at McAfee Labs, explains, the Twitter attack “is not new, and is fairly simple to execute.” “The attack is most likely a Trojan that began by Twitter phishing, possibly by a social media worm like Koobface,” he said in a statement.

“Shortened URL sites are not 100 percent malicious, so blocking the domain completely can cause false positives, which is something researchers try and avoid. Goo.gl is an example of a site associated with Google, so blocking the domain may be frowned upon by Google, allowing the spammer to continually abuse the site.“, Adam adds.

To avoid falling victim to Trojans, drive-by downloads, and other malicious attacks hiding behind innocent-looking shortened URLs, try using a tool like Tweetdeck that offers an option to reveal the full-length link behind the shortened URL before visiting it.

In short: For now, avoid clicking on that shortened link if it shows up in your Twitter feed. If you click on a link and find yourself unexpectedly on a page that resembles the Twitter login page, don’t give up your username and password! Just type in Twitter.com into your browser bar and log in directly from the Twitter homepage.

Symantec reported that search engine results p0is0ned with links to fake antivirus software have been a constant problem for Internet users. However, it is an effective way for cyber attackers to infect users’ machines. According to Symantec’s Report on Rogue Security Software, the culprits of these “t0xic” search results are typically scam perpetrators who use a range of black hat search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to p0is0n search engine results and increase the ranking of their scam websites on search engine indexes.

A rogue security software program is a misleading application that pretends to be legitimate security software, but provides the user with little or no protection. In some cases, it actually facilitates the installation of malicious code that it claims to protect against.

Symantec has observed search results constantly and generated statistics on the top search trends every hour and determined how many were malicious (within the first 70 Google search results).

Among the key findings identified between March to April 2010, on Google search results include the following:

- On average at any given hour, 3 out of the top 10 search trends contained at least one malicious URL within the first 70 results;

- On average, 15 links out of the first 70 results were malicious for search terms that were found to be p0is0ned (had at least one malicious URL);

- On average on any given day, 7.3% of links are malicious in the top 70 results for top search terms (see Figure 1);

- The most p0is0ned search term resulted in 68% of links leading to malicious pages in the first 70 results;

- Almost all of the malicious URLs redirect to a fake antivirus page.

It is apparent that attackers continue to be effective at p0is0ning search results. They have an automated infrastructure that is able to automatically collect the latest, most popular search trends and p0is0n the results, the company said.

Symantec advises internet users (most of whom use Google on a daily basis), to be careful when clicking on search result links, especially when searching for hot search topics. Symantec also advised to follow its Twitter feed to find out the latest news on Internet threats.

Computer Threats – Interesting Facts

- In year 2002, only 20,000 Computer viruses, worms and trojans were found active. Since then, 2.6 million malicious code threats have been detected till date.

- 23% of all malicious activity was US based, the average cost of a data breach was $6.7 million and 27% of data breaches occured in the education sector.

- 76% of all phishing scams target the financial industry and only 24% target ISP, retails, internet government and online gaming industry.

- Credit card info accounts for 32% of all stolen information that was sold. Bank account credentials represent another 19% of sold information.

- Symantec is the largest developer of computer security software – they track over 32,000 vulnerabilities, spanning 72,000 technologies and 11,000 vendors. They process 8 billion phishing and spam emails per day.

- 13% of bot infected machines are in China, making it the most infected country. 4% are in Buenos Aires, the most infected city.

If you want more such exciting yet alarming facts about Computer threats then we suggest you to take a look at this infographic:

Via: Online Schools

If the sheer amount of exploits in Adobe’s products over the last year haven’t scared you off yet, then maybe a PDF attack (that doesn’t require an exploit or JavaScript to run) will. Here’s a proof of concept video for your viewing pleasure:

Jeremy Conway, product manager at NitroSecurity, created this proof of concept for an attack in which malicious code is injected into a file on a computer as part of an incremental update, but which could be used to inject malicious code into any or all PDF files on a computer. So looks like a new generation of PDF Worms are coming soon.

The attack requires the user of the computer to allow the code to be executed by agreeing to it via a dialog box. However, the attacker could at least partially control the content of the dialog box that appears to prompt the user to launch the executable and thus use social engineering to entice the computer user to agree to execute the malware, said Conway.

Worse, another growing competitor to Adobe: Foxit PDF, does not even warn the user that code is about to be invoked.  It just quietly lets the code run without any user interaction!

Turning off JavaScript would not prevent the attack. It also does not require that the attacker exploit a vulnerability in the PDF reader itself. The PDF reader incremental update capability “can be used as an infection vector,” said Conway. The attack “does not exploit a vulnerability. No crazy Zero-Day (exploit) is needed to make this work.“

Another PDF security specialist Didier Stevens has developed a PDF document which is capable of infecting a PC – without exploiting a specific vulnerability. The demo exploit works both in Adobe Reader and in Foxit. Stevens says he used the “Launch Actions/Launch File” option, which can even start scripts and EXE files that are embedded in the PDF document. This option is part of the PDF specification.

Stevens intends to keep his PDF document with the embedded code under wraps until the vendors respond. However, he has provided a document (direct download) which launches the command prompt when the PDF file is opened. When tested by the TechChunks Security team, this worked under Windows 7 with the current versions of Adobe Reader and Foxit. In principle, this concept is also said to be suitable for starting an FTP transfer to download and start a trojan.

The authors are not releasing the method, but I can tell you that once the concept is released, which it has been, someone on the wrong side will figure it out soon enough. Adobe, Foxit and other PDF reader providers need to look into this ASAP and  release a patch quickly.