Infosecurity (UK) - Trusteer detects rapid spread of new polymorphic Zeus trojan

Trusteer detects rapid spread of new polymorphic Zeus trojan

21 April 2010

Trusteer says it has detected a completely new version of the Zeus password stealing trojan that has been designed to steal online banking credentials.

The internet authentication, encryption and security specialist says that its Rapport browser security service, which is used by a number of major banks, has detected the Zeus trojan variant on around one in 3000 PCs monitored by the Rapport servers.

According to Trusteer, this is an unprecedented rate of distribution for new financial malware code.

The firm reports that Version 1.4 – also known as version 2 – of Zeus targets Firefox browsers and uses advanced polymorphic techniques to avoid anti-virus detection.

Read more...

What bankers won’t tell you about owning a home | The Coming Economic Depression 2010

Mortgage Definition: Death Grip
Note: the article below gives a slightly different definition, however, I prefer my translation -not that my school boy French has much going for it!
Mixed feelings on this article, after all, renting must be seen as a total loss, investment wise. Granted, borrowing is seldom a good idea, yet it is default thinking in most peoples minds.
Certainly, in business borrowing seems a no-brainer, you have to leverage with 'other-peoples-money' to get ahead. Nevertheless, one rule should be drummed into the mind, "Never borrow money to buy coal", where 'coal' is a metaphor for consumer items. If you eat it, burn it, use it (up), don't borrow to buy it. That's the rule. You can add to it, "Don't borrow on depreciating assets -ever". Sorry, but in my view, that includes a car. So, we come back to the home loan. In my view this is theoretically at least, arguable. On the face of it, I would like to say, 'Don't borrow to buy a home, either', but that seems a very hard ask, especially for folk without cash or other asset base adequate enough to liquidate and pay cash for the home. So, borrowing, at the best and most favorable rates seems the only option. Anyway, the article below is certainly food-for-thought.

What bankers won’t tell you about owning a home | The Coming Economic Depression 2010

BBC News - Porn virus publishes web history of victims on the net

Another nasty, straight from the Internet Criminal fraternity.
But again, the solution is simple: Don't visit doubtful sites, don't engage in degrading behaviour, don't give away personal information online... ever!
One way to avoid even the temptation is to set up OpenDNS from www.opendns.com and configure it to deny access from all machines on your IP address to offensive and insecure sites. That way, even if you or someone using your connection even accidentally finds themselves directing their browser towards a site in this category, it will be denied.

BBC News - Porn virus publishes web history of victims on the net

When Exactly Was The Resurrection?

The four Gospels make it clear that Jesus was crucified in conjunction with the Jewish Passover (Matthew 26:17-19; Mark 14:12-16; Luke 22:7-15; John 18:28,39; 19:14). The four Gospels also make it clear that Jesus was raised from the dead three days later, on the first day of the week (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2,9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1,19). Biblically speaking, then, Christ’s resurrection should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the Jewish Passover meal. However, this is not the case. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. This method of determining the date of Easter often results in Easter being before Passover and/or displaced far from Passover. Easter can potentially be observed anywhere between March 22 and April 25.

The Bible does not instruct Christians to set aside a day to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. At the same time, the resurrection is most assuredly worth celebrating (1 Corinthians chapter 15). Celebration of Christ’s resurrection, then, is a matter of Christian freedom. Christians are free to celebrate the day of Christ’s resurrection and are free to refrain from celebrating. Since it is a matter of Christian freedom and not a biblical command, it would seem that there is also freedom as to precisely when the celebration of Christ’s resurrection is observed. Just as with Christmas, the exact date is not important. It is the fact that Christ was resurrected that is important. Christians are free to follow the traditional dating system for Easter, thereby observing Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. At the same time, the lack of conjunction with Passover and the questionable (at best) motives for the method of scheduling Easter make it highly doubtful that Christ’s resurrection is being celebrated according to the biblical calendar.

For my part, my issue with Easter is the word itself. Easter. This does need some explanation as it is a derivation of the name of a pagan goddess called Ishtar. This particular goddess was worshipped by various groups. Ishtar was in fact the Assyrian and Babylonian counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate north-west Semitic goddess Astarte. She was a goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. In the Babylonian pantheon, she "was the divine personification of the planet Venus". Mostly she was associated with sexuality: her cult involved sacred prostitution; her holy city Uruk was called the "town of the sacred courtesans"; and she herself was the "courtesan of the gods". Not a very wholesome association for Christians, really. However, along with Christmas, we inherited these feasts or holydays (holy days). The ancient Catholic Church ‘converted’ these popular holydays to the Christian calendar and so they became part of the traditional Church calendar.

Should this worry us? Not necessarily. However, I do feel quite strongly that their origin ought to be common knowledge. That way we are not necessarily confused when all sorts of non Christian customs get mixed up in the things we do on these occasions. The egg, for example was and is still very much a symbol of fertility. Hence new birth, however, not the Biblical new birth of Christianity, but the cyclical new birth of the seasons, also often associated with reincarnation a totally non Christian belief system. The Bible teaches resurrection, something much more exciting then re incarnation. In Biblical resurrection we remain the same person, renewed and reborn into a much improved physical body. In reincarnation there is, at best, only a faint and fragmented memory of the past. In pure and early Buddhism, for example, reincarnation had no reflection of a past life at all. Later, the ‘science’ of reincarnation become very sophisticated and involved streams of ‘particles’ that have some very complicated relationships to the past lives of the life form reincarnated.

I have always liked to connect the Apostle Paul’s words with these sorts of things,
‘But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.’ Philippians 1: 18

As a result, many Christians simply exploit the opportunity these holydays give to preach the gospel as enthusiastically as possible and thereby ‘preach Christ’ and encourage all men everywhere to be saved. This we should do and that is the purpose of this article. The most important thing in the world is to know that you have eternal life. Eternal life is in Christ. The moment you receive Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour and surrender your life to Him asking Him to forgive you for anything and everything you have done that is in any way contrary to His will and plan for your life, you will receive the gift of eternal life. From that point on you can know that you will live forever. Further, when this body goes into the grave and dies, your inner being, the real ‘you’ will consciously and with full awareness, go into the presence of the Lord and will one day be resurrected from the grave and all your constituent elements will be reunited back into a physical body that will be immortal. That is the promise of the Bible. That is the promise of the death and resurrection of Christ that we celebrate during the holyday we call Easter.

If you’ve never made certain of eternal life, do it now by praying that prayer sincerely and He will keep his promise to you and give you the gift of eternal life.

Hacked On Facebook! Has It Happened To YOU Yet?

Have You Been Compromised on Facebook…Yet?

If you haven't yet, then you will be…unless you take action NOW!

Hacking attacks on Facebook are increasing with every tick of the clock, so here are some basic precautions you should be taking.

1. Check Your Password Strength…NOW! Your password is your first line of defense on Facebook. These are the rules: No pet names. By pet, I mean your pet cat, dog, budgerigar, hamster, spouse, boyfriend, next door neighbor, your worst enemy or any name at all. Make it loooooooooooooong and random: Better still, get yourself a password generator. There are excellent ones around. Here are a few. AnyPassword: www.anypassword.com, Steve Gibson’s Perfect Passwords can be harvested from https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm#top. These are generated each time the page loads which makes each one unique. Bookmark the page and return at random intervals to refresh your Router password and harvest any others you may need. Just be sure the utility your using them in can handle long passwords. Of course, you can shorten them if you wish, but that kind of limits their effectiveness. Steve Gibson advises that each ‘one is [a]completely random (maximum entropy) without any pattern, and the cryptographically-strong pseudo random number’. Further, the ‘page will only allow itself to be displayed over a snoop-proof and proxy-proof high-security SSL connection’. So, sorry guys ‘n’ gals, if your connection doesn’t qualify you need help fast to secure your router/connection to the Internet.
2. Secure your password: This means, keep your password itself secure! There’s no way you’re going to remember your specially created, super strong password, and type it in each time you need it when you log into Facebook etc. For that you’ll need a secure storage facility. Therefore, you need a vault, such as AnyPassword, I’ve already mentioned, which incidentally, has a built-in password generator that is great for most things. Or, another recommended one is Last Pass: http://tinyurl.com/yjz32ka. (This will download the file from Download.com.) Last Pass, like AnyPassword is freely available.
3. Guard Yourself Against ‘Youtube.xyx’: this site is a scam site. Note this in your memory now and check your browser address bar each time you type in the legitimate www.youtube.com address. What follows is an explanation of what happens when you accidentally access this site. It is usually initiated by a message from one of your friends saying that they found a video of you on Youtube or, they put one of you on Youtube, that features you, yourself, doing something crazy. Naturally you click on the link to see this video of you, yourself, and you see a page made up to look exactly like Youtube, only it isn’t. It’s a scam site. Next, you are assaulted by a pop-up advising you of a flash player error and that you need to click on the provided link to update your Flash player. Like a sheep to the slaughter you meekly, trustingly, mindlessly, click on the oh so readily available link and, “Whamo” you have just initiated the installation of some really nasty malicious software that begins to key log each key stroke you make from now on. Along with everything else it gathers, it will harvest your Facebook password and proceed to send the same fake message, you responded to, to a bunch of other poor suckers. So, be warned! If your reasonably sure you haven’t done anything to get yourself filmed on Facebook recently -then it is likely a phishing scam.
4. Those Pernicious Facebook Apps: You know the ones I mean. They are ubiquitous on Facebook nowadays. Everyone, it seems, is doing them. Wakey wakey, people. These apps are often the perfect way to harvest your Facebook password. All of them know so much about you already, and now they have access to all that other personal information available about you on your page. Some is hidden info, and includes access to your friends and all their details as well. The following demonstrates how they obtain your password. It will be either exactly like this, or in a manner very similar. You take a Pokemon quiz on Facebook to see what sort of person you are, or something similar. Then you finish the quiz and hit that submit button. Next, the instructions advise you that you must now log back in to Facebook, which you obligingly do. The only problem is, the log-in page is now not one belonging to the real Facebook and, just like that, they have your log-in and password. We must be fair to Facebook as they do try to purge these nasty apps but, by the law of averages, they can not protect you from them all. Some will get through and, the sad truth is that the legitimate ones make it easier for the illegitimate ones to bluff the unwary. That’s just the way it is, in this old naughty world.
5. The Moral -Don’t Share: Make it your golden rule, DON’T EVER, EVER SHARE YOUR PASSWORD WITH YOUR FRIENDS. EVER. Sorry, but that’s the rule. A Facebook friend may be a friend today, but you don’t know what tomorrow may bring. Also, when you share with one Facebook friend, they may share with another. You simply don’t know. Further, some ‘friends’ are not your friends. They are, in fact, your enemies and they will happily share all your secrets as ‘status updates’ on Facebook and then change the password so you are unable to get rid of it. The news is full of stories like these. I’ve read them, and maybe you have to. So, remember the old adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure”. Also, it’s sobering to realise that Facebook’s rules now do not allow for the removal of any site on Facebook –ever! That’s right. If you die, your Facebook site continues on and on and on. Granted, access is limited to certain people, like proven relatives etc, as a sort of obituary. But, the scary thought remains, it will remain in cyberspace until the Last Trumpet!

Be aware that these rules apply to all Social Networking sites. So, apply them now and practice them from now on, and my you enjoy your Facebook adventures without too many misadventures along the way.

The Most Important Thing in the World

If I had only a few minutes of life left and I had the opportunity of sharing with you - this is what I would like to say. The most important thing in life is to know what will happen when you die. Somebody has said that the two most certain things in life are...death and taxes! Well, we know what happens after tax...more tax! But what happens when we draw that last breath - well that's something else again.

The only person who ever spoke with absolute authority about death and what we can expect to follow, was Jesus Christ. His words have fascinated thinkers and philosophers throughout the ages. For example, he called himself by this startling title, "I am the resurrection and the life". He said that at the tomb of a man called Lazarus who, in a few moments, he was to raise from the dead after he had laid in the tomb for four days! You can read the story in the Bible. You will find it in John's gospel chapter eleven.

Then, some time later, he demonstrated this authority over death and life when he rose from the dead after having been in the tomb himself for three days.

Faced with the claims and sayings of Jesus Christ one must decide whether he was who he said he was, and whether he spoke the truth. Somebody has put it this way, Jesus Christ was either a liar, a lunatic, or who he claimed to be, the Son of God.

For me, he is who he said he was, the Son of the Living God. Therefore, I accept his words as being truthful and trustworthy. I believe him. As many of his hearers said of him, "No man has ever spoken like this man". (John 7: 46)

Here are some more of his sayings.

"He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever lives and believeth in me shall never die." John 11: 25 - 26 "I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly." John 10: 10 "I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am there you may be also." John 14: 3-4 “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” John 14: 6.

There are many more of these wonderful statements. All of them give hope, encouragement, courage and faith. You can "bet your life" upon them. They are totally true and utterly trustworthy.

As you read on you will find out, in five clear steps, more about God and what kind of person he truly is and some of the good things he has planned for your life. Along the way you will discover why many people never come to enjoy these for themselves. You will then find, explained as simply and clearly as I can, how you can be sure of The Most Important Thing In The World - Eternal Life. Finally, there are some keys to living abundantly in the now of your life.

Please click to continue... Steps to be sure of eternal life...

Battleplan: PC Invasion

Or, How all that Nastyware Invades Your Computer

Here 'tis –the shocking truth! Explained in a few simple steps:

In almost ALL cases –YOU are responsible!

• You, knowingly or unknowingly, installed something you shouldn't have from an untrustworthy source. This can include screensavers, toolbars or torrents (downloaded music, video, etc). You failed to check the format (that little extension after the period or dot in the name of the item) before you downloaded. Or you also failed to scan for viruses after it was downloaded and before you opened and/or ran it on your machine. Note: the second you click the executable file, Pandora is out of the box and the trouble starts. Sometimes you may not notice it immediately, it may have a delayed action, but sooner or later, you will notice that things are not as they ought to be.
  
• You failed to proceed cautiously when installing an otherwise very likely reputable application that bundles optional rubbish-ware along with the programme or application you want to install. (See 5 below for more on this one.)
  
• As in 1 above it can be software you installed sometime in the past and has either already been infecting your machine, or it starts its malicious action after the lapse of a certain amount of time. Further, it may arrive with other programmes that install themselves alongside an existing piece of software and, like a time bomb, explodes its previously hidden payload of malware without notice.
  
• You are not running an effective and legitimate Anti-Virus or Anti-Spyware application and, you are not taking time to allow it to run periodic full and in-depth scans of your machine to allow it to do its full job of detection and prevention. Sadly, there are more fake and extremely malicious anti spy and antivirus ware programmes out there trying to con you into giving them access to your machine than you can shake the proverbial stick at! Typically they promise the world as far as their ability to clean and protect your machine, but always along with multiple and dire warnings of how badly your machine is infected. Then, when you respond by clicking what appears to be the, 'button of deliverance', your troubles increase until any activity on your machine is pretty much impossible. Removing them can be a challenge even to experienced technicians, and can necessitate a full reinstall of the Operating System and all your other important applications.
  
• Otherwise Legitimate and Useful Software Manufactures 'Sell Out' to the Bad Guys: It seems hardly credible, but those who make good and useful software can be enticed into including these optional and often quite unwanted apps and making them difficult to notice and thereby easy to install along with their own. There is, of course, some sort of incentive. Remember, the price of liberty (freedom from infestation) is constant vigilance!
  
• Pop Ups etc: These are particularly effective at trapping PC users. You slavishly and obediently, like a sheep to the slaughter, clicked on the one of the many enticing and attractive pop-ups that followed a previous infection and exacerbated an already compromised position.
  

The Good News is, you have read this article and you are now armed with knowledge. You are forewarned and forearmed. You, from now on, will view with great skepticism:

1. The steps you are led through as you seek to download that enticing piece of software, music, move, file etc from the web. You will ponder the file and seek to find out a little bit more about its bona fides, its format, its origin and more.
   
2. The process of installing downloaded programmes and applications from the web. You will not simply click, 'OK', 'Next', 'Yes' etc without reading what you are saying 'Yes' and 'OK' to!
   
3. You will NOT click on Pop-ups at all, ever again, unless you know exactly what they are, what they will do, and where they may lead you. You will disable pop-ups so that your browser must ask you before allowing them to appear and distract you from what you are doing.
   
4. You will resolve to be less impulsive in your web activities and more reflective on where you point your browser and what sites you visit and say to yourself, "Do I really want some destructive nutter to have access to my expensive and so very useful computer that is so much fun in so many ways?" Do I want to have to pay my friendly computer tech all that money to fix what my own momentary lapse in concentration caused? (The answer to this is, of course, 'Yes', I do. I am only too glad to contribute to their retirement fund!' That being the case please ignore all you've just read and carry on regardless. My contact details are on my web site: www.jbc.gen.nz/pccare. Thank you very much.