Techs-on-Call Computer Blog

A company called Surfright has just released a study from users who visit their website to remove malicous software, or malware. Even up to date antivirus definitions. One quote from the study from cyvelliance.com says that "Even the most popular AV solutions detect less than half of the latest malware threats." VB100, a company that tests antivirus products, says "A few renowned anti virus programs do not pass the VB100 test."

All this confirmed what I already knew: Your antivirus program won't protect you from the biggest threat today, malware. From personal experience, the malware I see the most is fake antivirus programs. I see this a lot because it is profitable. Of course, fake antivirus programs are easy to remove. The idea behind fake antivirus programs is to make as much money as you can as fast you can; burying itself deep is too much work. Also from my experience, malware in Windows Vista is more likely to be confined to a specific user. What this means is that if a computer has more than one sign in name, it is more than likely to be limited to one of those users with the other user unaffected. Windows XP is more likely to have every user affected.

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This is from McAfee labs about a new technique computer viruses are using. This one embeds itself in a help file. I've seen viruses in executable files (.exe) and in library files (.dll). Now viruses have another place to hide: help files.

A computer virus is a bit of code that is embedded into a file and when that file is executed, the virus executes some code and often spreads itself. In this case, once the infected help file is viewed, the virus installs some malicious program. The malicious program is just an encoded file with a file extension of .hlp to make it look like a help file. The purpose of this is to foil anti-malware programs.

All of this just illustrates the point that malicious software will always change tactics to stay two steps ahead of the cleanup programs. Fortunately for you, the motivation behind most malware is profit. This means that most malware is not this complex because that is too much work. These cyber-criminals want as much as they can as fast as they can. Complex malware like this take a long time. Still, never assume you are safe. I've said it before in other blog posts, not even Macs are safe. About 80% of the malware I see is a simple scam, the fake antivirus stuff. And that is relatively easy (for me anyway) to remove. Just always be alert. Being alert can foil most of the cyber attacks.

If you like more information on this new virus tactic, McAfee has a blog entry about it: Be careful on help file.

Every year, Apple comes out with a new product in which they desperate, but unsuccessfully, try to keep under wraps so that Steve Jobs can make a public announcement. (Yes, Apple does have some employees whose sole purpose is to find people who leak unreleased products.) Sometimes the announcement is an upgrade to an existing line. This year, it is the iPad.

What is the iPad? Nothing more than an overglorified iPod Touch. At least the 1st generation of the iPad is. It uses the same operating system as the iPhone and iPod Touch, meaning it supports the same apps as these do. What a nice way to sell an app twice! It has built-in Wi-Fi and supports the new 802.11n standard. For an extra fee, you can get one that supports AT&T or T-Mobile 3G cellular internet with AT&T selling them in the stores at a subsidized price if you subscribe to an AT&T data plan. This brings up an interesting point.

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You can't help but notice the commercials. "We have more 3G!" "Our 3G is better!" "We have 4G!" What does it all mean? Why should you care? What benefit is ther to you?

We'll start by asking why you should care. Unless you need the internet on your phone or on the road, you shouldn't care at all. For the majority of cell phone users out there, 3G is useless. 3G means, more or less, a faster internet speed through the cell phone towers. This will be discussed in more detail below. If you use the phone only to send and receive calls, text messaging, or email, then 3G has no benefit.

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Here is an easy fix. After performing an in-place upgrade (repair installation) of a Windows XP damaged by a virus, the user had this error. There was a red circle with an X in the middle by the clock.  Double-clicking on the red circle X brings up an error that starts with "You have exceeded your profile storage space". There were some more information. The pop-up window then proceeded to list a bunch of file in the My Documents folder.

The fix is very easy. Open the registry editor (Windows Key + r -> regedit) and browse to the hive HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ System. Then change the registry key EnableProfileQuota to 0. The problem should immediately disappear.

This is a feature for workplace computers which are managed by a central server. This is not a feature for home users. In this case, it appears some malware made the change just to make life more annoying and thus making removal more difficult.