There are various ways of stopping malware. Antivirus works by watching for strange behavior or if a program matches a known signature. The problem with signature matches is that it's very easy for a program to change its signature so that it won't hit in the protection program's database. This is known as a polymorphic virus (self-changing). ( Read more... )

First, if you've upgraded to the latest iOS, v9, go to Settings/Cellular, and scroll all the way down. You'll see an option called Wi-Fi Assist. You'll probably want to turn it off. Last week I received a text that I was 3/4ths through my 10 gig monthly data plan, and I couldn't remember doing anything that could account for a huge spike in my ( Read more... )

A computer contains a CPU, the central processing unit that handles all of the calculations needed to run the operating system and whatever software that you're running. Lots of computers these days also have GPUs, graphics processing units that handle the high-res graphics that lots of modern games require ( Read more... )

Obviously computer viruses have matured in their attacks over the last 30-some years. It used to be that a virus could be examined and compared against a database of signatures to see if it would be allowed or not, but that's not enough these days. In the bad guy malware markets, they now have automated test servers that take your malware and ( Read more... )

The system is known as badBIOS, and it can spread from an infected computer to a clean computer with no network connection via the infected computer's speakers and microphone. Basically it's a reversion to modem technology where digital data was sent using audio coding, only in this case it's using frequencies above human hearing (I hesitate to ( Read more... )

The software was sold to the Turkish government. An American woman, who is active in protesting a Turkish organization that runs charter schools in the USA and around the world, received a spearphish email that was crafted for her and appeared to be from a Harvard prof who is also active against this group. Well, they misspelled Harvard, so she ( Read more... )

The defense contractor arm of Boeing is going to make a highly secure smart phone, based on the Android platform.

"Earlier this week, it was revealed that aerospace firm Boeing was working on a high security mobile device for the various intelligence departments. This device will most likely be released later this year, and at a lower price point ( Read more... )

Woohoo! It was discovered by a security researcher, Trevor Eckhart, and now the company that makes the rootkit, Carrier IQ, is trying to suppress his research ( Read more... )

The Air Force has a dedicated network security unit, and they found out about the virus problem by reading Wired's Danger Room.

Oops.

Why do I think that someone, or several someone's careers just hit a stone wall.http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/

It's not often that a news story gets an LOL out of me. Supposedly the network is air-gapped, meaning no direct connection to the internet, but other supposedly air-gapped networks run by the Department of Defense occasionally get hit by malware. One possible source might be infected USB memory sticks, it's hard to say. This particular malware ( Read more... )