AVStrike Antivirus Blog

Latest From AVstrike Blog

Cyber Threat And Hacking: A Bigger Concern For Small Business Owners

Cyber security: the most debated topic in the world is a matter of concern today. In the present times, most of daily business is conducted over the World Wide Web and small and medium sized firms mainly face challenges in terms of keeping their information safe and secure. By now, regardless of your business size, nobody is kept immune from cyber breach risks and dangers. Having no protection means inviting vulnerabilities to your system and letting go off your important data in the hands of online thieves.

Do Hackers Really Target Small Firms

Big companies such as Home Depot, Target and Sony became the talk of town by becoming the victim of hackers. With big organizations, small businesses are targets too. A recent survey by the National Small Business Association revealed that nearly half of all small businesses are targeted by attackers.

Do Not Consider Yourself To Be Safe. If you think your business is too small to get attracted by hackers, then think again. The 2012 Data Breach Investigations Study by Verizon showed 855 data breaches wherein 71 percent happened in firms with less than 100 employees. The 2013 report of Verizon showed increasing record numbers on small business. Nearly one in five small businesses are victimized by cyber criminals every year. As per the National Cyber Security Alliance, 60% firms lose their business within six months after the threat.

Why Small Businesses Are Targeted By Online Attackers?

Online scammers are a big time favorite of small firms. Reason is that most of them do not have security approach in place, own a security expert on staff or policies restraining the online activities of their employees. This makes them vulnerable to hackers.

How to Secure Your Business?

There are ample of security solutions that can strengthen your network system. Here are some of the few options small business owners should consider.

Get Expert’s Advise

The first and the foremost thing is taking the advice of an expert. This necessarily does not mean you should hire a full-time IT professional. Such services can be outsourced which works best for small industries.

Install Anti- Malware Software

Use anti-malware or antivirus solutions. This is really simple, however, most of the firms don’t even consider such basic services. Make sure you use good software. To add on, ensure to add firewalls to your defenses which is most likely to block unsolicited access attempts.

Secure Your Wi-Fi

Unsecured wireless networks is the access point for attackers. Make sure that your router is password protected.

Get Insured

Unfortunately, no system is 100% hacker proof. However, it would be best to buy insurance. Many of the premiums could be as low as $1,000 a year for $1 million in coverage which features the efficiency to cover losses caused during an attack.

Encrypt Your Data

Encryption is the best tool to consider if in case your information is stolen. For instance, if you lose your USB thumb drive or your hard drive is stolen, your data cannot be read if it is encrypted.

Implement the above simple solutions and prevent the hackers to sniff your data.

05:05

best antivirus software computer malware programs jailbreaking malware programs

Jailbreaking! The Hacking Thing has Now Become A Thing Of The Past

Smartphones today have become as powerful as your desktop or laptop; however, it also comes in with much difficulty. The walled garden of the official app store permits you to install limited apps and this is where jailbreaking comes into the picture.

Your smartphone limits all your freedom as iOS limits third party applications and Android too restricts them by default. With the help of several creative hacks, you would be fortunate to eliminate such restrictions. Jailbreaking opens a world of exciting apps that Android, Apple and their network providers do not permit. It is a formula to break or hack Apple's restrictions over an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. It lets users to access hidden or new settings by means of unofficial apps. Jailbreaking is something that proves to be helpful for both the developers and power users.

More often, phone jailbreaking opens door to several problems which cannot be easily handled by the user. As per security from Sophos, the explosion in smartphone malware followed the same path similar to the explosion of PC malware, however, the speed ranks up. In just 18 months, malware infection in smartphones reached higher levels than the PC’s in over 15 years.

There are various kinds of phone malware which comprises of iOS-centric malware which enquires for your Apple ID and password, SMS Trojans that message at premium charges without your knowledge as well as the Android apps that utilize root access for the purpose to install malicious code. When you prevent the walled garden of apps provided by Apple or Google to keep you protected against the malware, you welcome more dangers and vulnerabilities.

A few reasons are available why mobile malware speeds up its steady rise. This is because the third-party app stores imitate click-and-install process of Google play or iTunes, ignoring what such apps actually do. The malware developers or hackers usually hide the malevolent code inside the innocuous apps. As you install the apps, the bad guys gain complete access to your device. By unrooting your phone, you remove the chances of random malware dangers.

If you unwrap the protective layer on iPhone, the innards can be exposed to multifarious malevolent threats. By rooting an Android device opens up the Pandora box, however, this practice is more wide-spread. In countries like China and Russia where the presence of the official Google is sparse, the market is overloaded with pre-rooted devices which are usually customized to come loaded with third-party stores. Undoubtedly, it is a hotbed for Android malware experimentation wherein the results spread to various devices worldwide.

To handle the issues as well as to prevent the access of the malicious codes, Google works with security developers and firms to design antivirus programs. However, it is not capable of protecting you from everything.

The question still persists whether the typical users really require to jailbreak their smartphones anymore. Formerly, iPhone, Pre-iOS 8 users were not able to use third-party keyboards without cracking the operating system. Users also used to jailbreak even for simple pleasures such as quick settings folders or menu. But now, iOS has accommodate much more apps and it has grown up to fulfill everyone’s desires. And this is where jailbreaking has become a thing of the past.

With so many apps on your smartphone now, jailbreaking path is diminishing and things are getting better.

01:44

best antivirus software best free antivirus free virus removal program

A New Powerful Computer Virus ‘Goner’ Causing Havoc Worldwide

The very week seemed to bring online disaster a step closer. Another email virus- Goner is becoming a big hit in the eyes of the computer users after Love Bug. This powerful computer virus causing a huge havoc with the email systems worldwide.

As described by experts, Goner is spreading fast throughout the internet, affecting computer users across the world. Businesses are warned about this latest emerging threat and have been informed that they could expect a flood of e-mail viruses in the wake of this cutting-edge innovation.

Experts stated that Goner is one of the most infectious viruses after Love Bug. It seized computer systems worldwide in just a matter of hours on 4th December, overcrowding the email systems and destroying unprotected devices. Undoubtedly, it smashed several business organizations. However, it is easy to spot and deleting the email prevents your computer from getting infected.

The Goner email virus comes with a subject line ‘Hi’ and the body text reads “How are you? When I saw this screen saver, I immediately thought about you. I am in a harry (sic), I promise you will love it." Its attachment pretends as a screen saver and is labelled as "gone.scr". As soon as the user double clicks the attachment, the septic email spreads to all the contacts in a Microsoft Outlook address book.

How the virus do that? Actually referred to as worm, this virus hunts for and removes firewall and antivirus protection with users of internet chat application ICQ and Microsoft Outlook. Thereafter, the vulnerability sends itself to users in their address book, circulating the disease all across the world in just minutes. It is actually designed to detect and remove the antivirus program from the computers it infects. It also destroys personal firewall software, leaving your computer open to hacking.

Several antivirus companies have come up with updates to block Goner, however, users can also secure themselves by just hitting the delete button. According to experts, Goner was believed to be created in Europe. Amongst the 17 most affected countries, the UK , the US and France are considered to be the worst hit so far.

Despite being the most virulent email virus, Goner, as per its ranking is not particularly innovative.

• The threat made no effort to camouflage itself by means of email-subject headers or random file names.
• It was written in compiled Visual Basic and did not include much programming skill.
• It feature the ability to spread quickly as it emailed copies of itself to each contact in the Outlook address books of the compromised devices. The copies were directed via the IRQ and IRC Internet Discussion Channels.

In order to protect computers from getting infected, users can reinstall the antivirus program and can even install new software. Ensure that you do not install while the virus is still running as it can eliminate the protection suite as you try to install it. The only way to get out of the problem is to visit the website of your antivirus supplier and follow their guidelines or instructions.

Goner is becoming havoc for users and it is expanding at an incredible rate. As the virus attacks are reaching peaks, it’s a good solution to turn to the antivirus vendors and review their antivirus policies.

00:41

computer malware programs free virus removal malware programs

Fanny- A Superworm That Preceded Stuxnet with Its Cloaking Techniques

The Stuxnet computer worm- a serious threat that disrupted the Iranian nuclear program was headed by another significant yet sophisticated malware program that is somewhat similar and uses the same exploits like the previous one. It gets access into the computers isolated from the internet via USB thumb drives. This USB worm is referred to as Fanny and is considered to be a part of a malware tool set bought in use by the cyber espionage group which has been dubbed ‘Equation’ by the researchers from Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab. In a detailed report published by Kaspersky considers Equation as the most advanced group of attackers up to date and is also described as “The Death Star of Malware Galaxy.” Its activity dates back to 2001 and even 1996. Though the firm stopped the group from directly linking to the U.S. National Security Agency, however, there lie certain substantial details pointing such links.

When talking about Fanny, it is a computer worm that spreads with the help of USB thumb drives. It focuses the mapping air-gapped computer networks- network of systems which are secluded from the internet.

There are certain things that make Fanny outstanding and notable. It used the similar LNK exploit as Stuxnet used to spread. Microsoft fixed the LNK vulnerability in 2010 soon after Stuxnet was revealed; however, Fanny used it since 2008. The first identified variant of Stuxnet spans from 2009. Furthermore, Fanny worm exploited a second vulnerability in Windows as well which was termed as zero day.

Researchers stated that the developers of both Stuxnet and Fanny follow various coding guidelines which include the usage of unique numbers. The fact that both the computer worms used similar zero day exploits, in the same manner and also at the same time signifies that the developers of the worms are either the same individuals or they might be working together.

How Fanny Worm Spreads to Computers

Fanny- the computer malware program develops a secret storage area on the USB drives formatted with the FAT32 or FAT16 file system. The program does this by making use of an undocumented combination of file system flags in order to build a 1MB container which is overlooked by the standard FAT drivers used by Windows and some other operating systems. The hidden storage area is ignored by such systems because it appears like a corrupt data block, however, Fanny feature sits own modified FAT driver that permits it to read and write data in the 1 MB container. It does this to mass information and files like the Service Pack numbers, OS versions, user names, company names, computer names as well as the running procedures of the computers which are infected.

If the USB drive is used later to damage a system with internet access, the malware program would upload the information from the hidden container to the hackers. Moreover, the special storage area developed by them can also be used to save commands which would be implemented on the air-gapped systems when the USB stick is plugged into them again.

Fanny features a rootkit constituent that is capable to hide files in Windows Explorer and also makes use of unusual start-up registry entries. By using this technique, it is able to remain unnoticed for long. The attackers are familiar with the fact that if in case the malware gets exposed despite of the clever methods, it would become a topic of annoyance for the malware analysts. For this reason, they moved to a deception method which comprises hiding in a plain sight. This means a copy of one of its constituents is developed by Fanny to the Windows system32 directory- a collective place wherein malware is stored. Furthermore, it also generates a start-up registry in an anticipated site which is used by some other malware programs.

This permitted it to trick as a run-of-the-mill worm and enlarged the chances that whosoever found it has the right to erase it without thinking much. Surprisingly, it worked! The antivirus products of Kaspersky also detected Fanny worm in 2010.

According to reports by Kaspersky, over 11,000 Fanny targets are found in countries including Indonesia, Pakistan, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, Cambodia, Malaysia and Nigeria. Moreover, since 2008, the number is likely to increase.

By far, Pakistan accounts for the highest number of Fanny infections; approximately, it can be said 60 percent of the total. The countries including Iran and Russia are considered to be the main targets of the Equation group.

The researchers at Kaspersky also stated that some other malware programs listed in the Equation group’s toolset have been used to infect several Iranian industrial automation companies that were the first victim of Stuxnet.