antivirus

Seemingly random names are embossed on the interior glass walls of the Avast offices and conference rooms in its Prague headquarters, and the June morning light illuminates them from behind. Written in black, these names and the orange-colored names of cities below them are, in fact, the forum nicknames of the people who use Avast and the cities they originate from. It appears there are Avast users on every continent, and that, said the company's CEO Vincent Steckler, is by design.

"Two-thirds of new users come from personal recommendations," he said. "Trying to get 35 million … Read more

PRAGUE--The city of Brno in the Czech Republic is a place people go to learn. Situated some 130 miles southeast of Prague, its 11 universities host approximately 80,000 students, many of whom are computer engineers. So it's no surprise that while AVG's corporate offices are headquartered back in Prague, Brno hosts the lifeblood of the company: the virus lab.

Although consumer computer security has grown tremendously in the past five years--with nearly all the major security suite makers including some form of community-based protection, URL verification, or phishing prevention to accompany more traditional tools like firewalls and … Read more

Significantly faster scanning speeds, advanced configuration options, better reporting tools and a spate of bug fixes arrive in Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.5, released yesterday by Panda Security.

Stating that many of the enhancements in the update were originally suggested by the program's users, Panda senior research adviser Pedro Bustamante said in a blog post that the changes made since version 1.4 tweak the program's interface and installation, as well as offer deeper improvements to performance and to the program's feature list.

The performance improvements ought to be noticeable quickly. These include faster scanning speeds and … Read more

Forget e-mail. Criminals are making old-fashioned phone calls and offering free security scans in order to gain access to people's computers, according to Microsoft.

To run the con, criminals pretend to be PC security experts from legitimate companies. They call their intended victims, warning of a risky security threat and offering to run a free security checkup. If the victims take the bait, the scammers gain access to their PCs and often capture passwords or financial information.

Among the 7,000 PC users that Microsoft polled in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Ireland, 15 percent on average … Read more

A new interface capstones changes that otherwise are under-the-hood improvements made by Panda Security to its 2012 suites, released today exclusively with CNET Download.com. There are four available to download: Panda Antivirus Pro 2012, Panda Internet Security 2012 for Netbooks, Panda Internet Security 2012, and Panda Global Protection 2012. Many of the features that Panda is touting as new were in fact soft-launched in last year's updates. Along with some decent gains in program benchmarks, the new and updated features include file encryption and shredding, remote access and control, system optimization, safe browsing, and silent mode.

The new … Read more

The MacDefender phishing malware for OS X has caused a bit of concern in the Mac community. People who inadvertently visit the false "Apple Security Center" Web site are downloading the installer for the scam software and installing it. This has previously required users to interact with the software installer and provide an admin password to install the package; however, as reported on by CNET editor Elinor Mills, a new variant installs the program under the current user's account and uses an install option that does not require an admin password.

Overall this new variant is not … Read more

A new version of rogue antivirus malware that targets the Macintosh operating system does not need victims to type in their administrator passwords to install and infect the machine, a security company said today.

The latest version of the malware has been overhauled to look like a native Mac OS X application and is using the application name MacGuard, according to an Intego blog post. But particularly concerning is the fact that unlike previous versions, which were dubbed Mac Defender, MacProtector, and MacSecurity, MacGuard installs itself without prompting for the admin password.

"If Safari's 'Open safe files after … Read more

The new MacDefender malware for OS X is scam software that is distributed as a Trojan horse to try to trick Mac users into installing it and then providing credit card and other personal information to the scammers. The program is not a virus, and runs just as you would install any utility, application, or system add-on. The only difference between this and legitimate programs is that this one was built to trick you into giving up personal information.

When the program was initially released, Apple did not immediately respond, and numerous Mac and technology Web sites covered how to … Read more

A new malware infection has apparently been spreading relatively rapidly among Mac users, and it's unclear both how pervasive the infection is and whether Apple is addressing the problem. What is known, however, is how to get rid of it.

What is it? Most often called MacDefender, but also known as MacProtector and MacSecurity, this bit of malware is a socially engineered threat of a type that's more familiar to Windows users. It often starts with a Web advertisement that suckers you into downloading a rogue antivirus program, which purports to protect you. In fact, once installed it … Read more