malware

Android has, justified or not, earned a reputation of being easily compromised by malware, especially when installing apps from third-party sources. On the desktop side, that has traditionally been Windows’ infamy. In an almost comical but also dangerous twist of fate, those two come together in the Andy Android emulator for Windows. According to reports, the makers of the emulator may or may not be responsible for installing a cryptocurrency (like bitcoin) miner disguised an always running “Updater.exe” program.

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The US Department of Homeland Security has issued a warning over a new type of malware out of North Korea. The DHS worked with the FBI to unearth and reveal the existence of a malware variant it says is known as "TYPEFRAME." Analysts with the two government agencies analyzed a total of 11 samples of the trojan, including infected Windows files.

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Today the folks behind Adobe software safety revealed a fix for a flaw for Flash. You might not use Flash actively - you might not even realize it's on your computer (desktop computer, that is,) but there it might very well be. Good news for Apple computer users is this bit of malware seems to be relegated to Windows. Maybe. Very likely, but not certainly.

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It's just been half a year since KRACK threatened almost any device that connects to Wi-Fi networks but now we may have something even more frightening. Or at least that's the sense of urgency and, to an extent, panic that security reports from Cisco and Symantec are giving off. Believed to be state-affiliated or, worse, state-sponsored, the modular VPNFilter malware has already infected around 500,000 routers, not just collecting data but even possibly rendering them completely useless at the push of a button.

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Today we're taking a peek at the so-called Android virus, and how one might destroy said malicious entity. Before we go any further, know this: if you stick to Google Play, chances are you're gonna be safe. Google's got a fairly good handle on the "virus" game at this point, and any app you've installed from Google Play is going to be remotely removed if it's found to be malicious. For everything else, there's a quick process.

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The Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities have definitely shaken the computing industry in general but the hardest hit has been Intel. Short of overhauling its chip design, all that the processor maker could do was to roll out patches to detect and stop potential in-memory malware. The price for that, however, is increased load for the CPU. Now Intel is proposing to offload that burden to a powerful yet often underutilized component of many Intel machines: its integrated graphics chip.

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Everyone wants to ride the PUBG train. Short for PlayerUnknown’s Battleground, the battle royale game is like that popular kid in school that everyone wants to be or, at the very least, be with. That seems to be true even for malware. A new type of ransomware has popped up blatantly calling itself PUBG Ransomware. Although it does hold your files hostage by encrypting them, it does also provide the key to restore them. Or you can just play PUBG for one hour.

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Once upon a time, viruses were the bane of the computing industry. They haven’t totally disappeared, they just evolved and took on different forms. Malware is now even spread through malicious links and some can even hold your files for ransom. Microsoft’s software and services still have the notoriety of being the target of such attempts and Redmond is taking a few steps to ensure the safety of its OneDrive and Office 365 users.

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Some unsuspecting Android users installed malware on their devices by downloading one of multiple compromised QR code apps. The revelation comes from SophosLabs' Naked Security, which recently reported that the infected apps had been downloaded more than 500,000 times before being removed from the Google Play Store.

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Piracy is a problem that has hounded the entertainment and software industry for decades and there doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel yet. Different people have different opinions on how to cut or at least curb it and tools have come and gone with mixed effectiveness. One software maker, however, may have gone a bit too far in its quest stop a pirate. Popular slight sim maker Flight Sim Labs admitted to shipping an installer that included a tool that, under very specific circumstances, would collect a specific user’s passwords stored on Google Chrome and send them back to the company.

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A new flaw in Telegram messaging - and quite possibly in other platforms as well - flips the text in a file share to mislead users. This flipped bit of text suggests that the user is being sent an image file, for example - but in reality, the file is anything but. In an example given this morning by the folks at Kaspersky Lab at Secure List, a user might send a PNG file, but when it's accessed, it becomes an executable javascript file - of the malicious sort.

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Governments originated from the need to not only govern but also protect citizens, though some will probably dispute how much that still applies today. It is with a bit of irony, then, that some government websites have become unwilling, not to mention unknowing, vehicles to actually harm their own citizens. It has just recently come to light that thousands of websites, including those run by US and UK governments, have become infected by cryptocurrency mining malware, causing anyone who visits those sites to generate money for still unidentified miscreants.

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