Eicar 2005 Malta

Walking at Spinola bay

Eicar 2005 conference Malta

The conference hotel

Outbreaks during conferences!

Will there be a launch of a new aggressive virus or worm during the EICAR conference that remains the question for the next days. During our observations for the last 3 years we always got some outbreaks during several anti-virus conferences like EICAR, Virus Bulletin and AVAR. The EICAR conference is nearly ready to start so lets see what we will get. At this moment I'm not thinking we will see a large outbreak as most of the attacks are a little bit under control these days but you'll never know.
Hopefully we don't get an attack inside like happened on WLAN IT conference in London just a week ago. Apparently the hackers created malicious WLAN hotspots with forged log-in web page, that tries to install malware on users computer that logs to the hotspot and tries to access web over it. While technically this kind of attack is rather simple to accomplish, it raises worrying implications on use of free wireless hotspots. As business travellers frequently use whatever connection is available, and carry quite important data in their laptops. The best way to protect yourself against such attack, is to have up to date operating system and browser, with Anti-Virus and firewall installed. Also it is important to have any critical connections done over VPN, and not to use unsecure connection for any service that requires user name and password. So if you are using open WLAN connection, do not log in to any service that requires user name and password and does not use SSL. If you really need to use such service, use VPN connection to your company office and route the connection from there. Or use some proxy service that provides SSL such as Anonymizer
Oh yes, keep your eyes open at this spot as I will report to this Blog straight from the EICAR conference in Malta with some pictures. You can find more about the conference at www.eicar.org .

Preparing for EICAR conference...

During my preparation for the EICAR conference, this year in Malta and starting within 2 weeks, a new Bagle and Sober variant appeared. Nothing more to report as every variant will be handled by your favourite product with new definitions. Oh yes, if you want to read more about the EICAR conference this year, please have a look at the EICAR website at http://www.eicar.org The programme is very strong this year. The conference is really recommended. And if you are a director of EICAR, like me, you always know what to do! I will keep you updated in this Blog with some pictures during the conference.

Eddy at Lannews Luxembourg today.

Picture of the conference room at the start of the presentation.

Moblog with PicoBlogger

Spammer Jeremy Jaynes Gets 9 Year Jail Sentence!

The man in question, Jeremy Jaynes was considered to be one of the top 10 spammers in the world when he was initially arrested. His charges include using the Internet to sell pornographic material and other services including a “FedEx refund processor". A lot of people were fooled by his mail campaigns leading to a wide spread fraud. The Belgian Broadcaster VRT Television( http://www.vrt.be ) did just an interview with me concerning this. It will be broadcasted during the 19 o'clock and late evening News today.

MMS Mobile Worm Hype!

I really advise you not to panic, following media reports of a virus which attempts to spread to cell phones via MMS (Multimedia Message Service). The Symbian/Mabir-A or SymbOS/Mabir worm runs on Nokia Series 60 phones running the Symbian operating system. However, despite excitable reports from some members of the media and security community the trojan does not appear to be 'spreading' in the wild. It is more hype than a real threat! I believe that the level of risk to mobile phone users is presently very low.

Eddy presenting at VB Conference 2005

I'm co-authoring together with David Harley a paper for the Virus Bulletin Conference 2005 in Dublin this year. The paper is a follow up of my project which is fully explained in the VB article "The End of Cybercrime" from August 2004. You can find this article at the bottom of my press page which is available at www.anti-malware.info/press.htm . I must say that the programme looks very good this year. You can find an abstract of the paper and the full programme at http://www.virusbtn.com/conference/vb2005/programme/index.xml

New articles from IDG Computerworld

You can find new articles from me about Spyware for IDG Computerworld and Network & Telecom on my press page at http://www.anti-malware.info/press.htm .

Defining Spyware is difficult!

Earlier this week, when anti-spyware vendor eTrust PestPatrol temporarily removed detections for eight adware applications marketed by Claria, the move caused many a raised eyebrow among anti-spyware advocates. This is one of the reasons why we have so much difference in spyware detection between all the anti-spyware products at this moment. It is definitely not so easy as everybody thinks. And believe me .. this will become a far more complex problem in the future. It's really not the same as the definition of viruses or worms which is very strict!