virus

There are four approaches to dealing with malware-infested Windows machines, and too many articles on the subject only consider the worst one. Here is a run-down on the pros/cons of each approach.

In today's podcast: Conficker.c activation passes quietly; HP testing Google's Android for laptops; and AMD to release very low power server chips.

The story on 60 Minutes about the Conficker worm missed the larger picture.

All Web surfers get their share of online ads, especially those that push anti-malware applications. While those ads tempt us to buy into those fears and purchase goods in order to keep our systems free of malware and/or other attacks, the software itself may be bogus. Andrew Brandt’s PC World article "How to Stop Operating-System Attacks" makes clear how we can protect ourselves – as well as our PCs and Macs - from falling victim to these tactics.

Look around at the past week and you'll see the big news is that the latest Windows malware a.k.a. Downadup is wreaking havoc around the globe. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I'm a Mac fan!

In Tuesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Apple tell Mac users that they should use anti-virus software. Not to mention the Slinky Kitteh...

MySpace malware attacks appear to be on the rise again. Are you prepared?

This pilot fish writes custom software for his company and supports its users at remote sites. So when a customer contacts him to say the software has suddenly stopped working and is returning an error message, fish is right on it.

Yes, NASA has confirmed that some laptops taken to the International Space Station were infected with an online-gaming password stealing virus. I guess the astronauts won't be playing WOW in space.

There's an e-mail virus outbreak, and IT director tells pilot fish to upgrade the antivirus software at once. But to complete the installation, fish needs to reboot the server -- which his boss won't allow.

Specialized hackers known as "SEO gods" can use search-engine optimization techniques to get their malware-riddled Web sites on the first page of Google results, in order to lure the unwary.

This virus is the virtual kind, but it'll make you uncomfortable, nonetheless. These researchers have determined that it is very possible, likely probable (eventually), that cities that have many Wi-Fi networks could have thousands of those networks virally infected in no time. It seems that this infection would spread rapidly amongst the closely connected networks by hopping easily from router to router.

It's time to roll out a new antivirus tool, so first this pilot fish sends an e-mail telling everyone that the software will put a new icon on their desktops: a circle with what looks like an eye in the middle.

This computer virus is unusually notorious. And talk about staying power - this spam-generating beast only just turned a year old and in that amount of time it has infected a million PCs the world over. Called Storm, this worm/Trojan/bot owes it success to its ability to mutate and seemingly with almost no limitations. Once infected, victim PCs can be controlled by others and go on to generate spam. Plenty of PCs are still being victimized.

[This week's Frankly Speaking -- now with links!]

I give up. You should too. It's time to stop trying to secure users' Web browsers, and instead just throw them away. We can't stop users from clicking on the wrong links or going to compromised Web sites. We can't eliminate drive-by worm infections or block zero-day rootkits.

But thanks to virtualization, we can flush them all away.

Look, right now a user's Web browser is a threat magnet. To display fancy Web sites, the browser can't just render HTML; it also has to run code, which may be designed to do nasty things to the PC underneath the browser. The browser also automatically downloads a wide variety of files, some of which can contain more malware. And as users spend even more time surfing Web 2.0, there will be even more chances to collect trouble.