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damballa

Report: Aurora attack was tested last summer

The attacks on Google and others late last year weren't as sophisticated as initially believed and appear to have cropped up last summer, according to a report to be released Tuesday by security firm Damballa.

Damballa is just the latest company to analyze the attacks and offer an opinion. McAfee dubbed the attacks "Operation Aurora" and said they were highly complex and advanced.

"While 'Aurora' was a very damaging attack that breached some of the most sophisticated networks in the world, it is a 'garden variety' botnet and can be traced back to July 2009, when … Read more

New antivirus software looks at behaviors, not signatures

It could be argued that security vendors are losing the battle with online scammers whose programs sneak onto computers and drop malicious programs, opening the computers up to remote attacks and turning them into zombies in botnet armies.

The problem is that most computers today rely on antivirus software that blocks malware by checking the code in a file against a database of signatures of known viruses. With thousands of new viruses arriving each day, many of them encrypted in part or otherwise disguised with modification, the signature lists require frequent updates and many new viruses slip through undetected.

As … Read more