Techs-on-Call Computer Blog Keeping you informed about the world of computer issues

A New Trick By Fake Antivirus Creators

Whenever criminals can make quick easy money, they won't give that up without a fight. They are clever and are always looking for new ways to deliver their malware. The newest trick is to mimick how each browser warns you of bad pages. Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer each give a warning when you visit a website that has been reportedly used to deliever malware. The new trick is determine what browser you are using (which is very easy) and deliver a warning page that looks very similar to the real one. The fake warning page in Firefox has a spelling error, but easy money has a way of quickly fixing such problems.

In each, the goal is to scare you into manually installing their fake antivirus program. This week, the fake antivirus program is called Win7 AV. And Win7 AV even has its own website that is an almost exact copy of Microsoft's security essentials website. If you think something is legitimate, you are more likely to let your guard down. For screenshots of this new trick, Microsoft has posted a blog entry about this.

Be on the lookout for such scams. Before installing any unknown software, use a search engine and search for, for example, "win7 av review". If most of the search results are about something bad, don't install the program. Please remember that the top few search engine results may be bogus as the authors of the malware use different tactics to make the software appear legit.

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 6:10 PM - Categories: Malware | News | Security

Windows 7 Family Pack Returns

Good news for anybody who is thinking about upgrading to Windows 7, Microsoft announced that the Windows 7 family pack returns on October 3. The family pack allows you to upgrade 3 of your Windows Vista or Windows XP computers to Windows 7 Home Premium. (Please note, however, that Techs-on-Call does not recommend upgrading Windows XP computers to Windows 7.) The cost for 3 upgrade licenses is $149.99. Consider that one upgrade version costs $99.99 retail, this is a good deal if you have 2 or 3 computers. This is a limited time offer. If you are thinking about upgrading your computers to Windows 7, this is a great deal.

Because of this, Techs-on-Call is offering another Windows 7 deal. Techs-on-Call will upgrade 2 computers from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium for $300 and 3 computers from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium for $350. This is in addition to our current Windows 7 special running until the end of the year where we will upgrade Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium for $200.

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 9:30 AM - Categories: News

Overview of the Various Audio and Video Standards

Without a doubt, there are many and various different audio and video standards out there. Some are for computers and some are for consumer electronics. This blog entry is a brief and simple overview of some standards currently used or recently used. It will not provide an in-depth and technical explination. The purpose is to inform you of the various standards. A future blog post will explain how to put your video files, even HD video files, onto your iPad and this blog entry will be required if you do not know about the various standard. (Expect this blog post to posted mid September.)

First, there is one definition you should know. It will be used quite often in this blog entry. A codec, which is short for coder/decoder, is a way of audio or video so that it can be easily shared. They can be divided into two groups: lossless and lossy. A lossless codec is one that does not discard any of the source material when capturing the original source. A lossy codec does discard some of the source material. Lossless codecs cannot compress the source material well, which makes it harder to use. Lossy codecs do compress better, so the key is to compress just enough so that the output is close to the original. As time goes on, lossy codecs have become more efficient, meaning they can compress the source much more and achieve the same level of quality. Because the destination is much smaller, lossy codecs are usually used.

To limit file sharing, some formats support Digital Rights Management, or DRM for short. This is just a controversial system that monitors and tracks how many devices a particular file is being used on. When a file has DRM, it is only activated when the file is used.

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Posted by Wade Burchette at 5:00 PM - Categories: Audio/Video

Intel Purchases McAfee

Intel announced today (August 19, 2010) that they are purchasing McAfee, which produces antivirus software, for $7.68 billion pending FTC approval. On the surface, these seems like a strange combination. Why would Intel want to purchase an antivirus software vendor? However, if you examine deeper it does make sense.

Computer security is a critical issue. Hackers are always looking to make a lot of money for little work or just want to be mean. While most of the time hackers exploit a weakness is software, sometimes they exploit weaknesses in the hardware. CPU's are complex little machines; nobody can make a perfect design without any vulnerabilities. The same applies to operating systems such as Windows. Since there is going to be a vulnerability, wouldn't it be nice to have a system designed to detect what black-hat hackers do and block such attacks while being completely transparent to the end-user? Intel purchased McAfee to help implement security and defense in the hardware so that future attacks on computer systems will be harder.

Short term, don't expect anything to change. Long term, I would expect McAfee antivirus to become very much inferior to the competition because I suspect Intel will have the company focus less on the software and more on the hardware.

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 12:17 PM - Categories: News | Security

Another Study Shows Antivirus Software Is Poor Against Malware

Earlier this year, the security software company Surfright published a study showing how even up-to-date antivirus programs fail to detect malicious software, or malware for short. Now Cyveilance, a cyber intelligence company, (whatever that is, I don't know) has shown that traditional signature based antivirus software detects on 19% of the malware. After the malware has been in-the-wild for 30 days, detection rates increased on to 61.7%.

One way antivirus software detects malware and viruses is by using a signature. What the antivirus software is doing is seeing if the file matches the signature the program has of known bad software. This study only considered the signature based portion of antivirus software. There are other techiques to detecting malware which the study did not consider.

Malware has become a great way to make a lot of money with little work. Malware creators make new variants weekly, perhaps daily, to stay ahead of signature based antivirus software. One criticism I have of the study is that it expected antivirus software to know a new strain of malware the day it was released. How can an antivirus program be ready to handle something totally different that was just put in-the-wild a few hours ago? I would give an antivirus program 2 days to detect a new strain of malware.

However, this study does remind me of how bad antivirus software really is. Antivirus companies get fat and lazy. They work hard at first, get a good reputation, get name recognition and a steady stream of renewals, and then they stop trying as hard. I don't want to name names because I don't want to worry about any legal issues. But I have seen firsthand how bad antivirus software is at detecting malware.

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 9:35 AM - Categories: Malware | News

Intel Settles With The FTC

Last year, the FTC announced they were suing Intel for anti-competitive practices. Now Intel has settled with the FTC and agreed to pay a $10 million fine and agree to certain conditions (which Intel should have always been following). The fine is so low because Intel already settled with AMD and as part of the settlement AMD could not testify against Intel for the FTC.

What was Intel doing that was so bad? In short, they were using their money and power to shut out competition. Some of the things Intel agreed to stop doing were still going on this year. Here is the breakdown of what Intel did wrong.

1) The price of an Intel CPU was not based on the number of CPU's purchased, but on other factors. In most businesses, when you buy in bulk the price per unit is lower. For example, suppose Bob's Factory makes widgets. If you buy 1 widget, the price is $10 for the widget. If you buy 100 widgets, you can buy them for $9 each. If you buy 1000 widgets, you can buy them for $8 each. That is normal business practice. Before 2007, Intel would sell CPU's based on how many CPU's you didn't buy from AMD. For example, if Joe's Computer Company bought only Intel CPU's, Joe would get the best price. If 10% of Joe's CPU order was AMD, Joe's price for Intel's CPU went up. The more AMD CPU's Joe bought, the higher his cost for Intel CPU's would be. Those actions are very much illegal. Intel stopped this action in 2007 when Intel finally had a product that could compete with AMD.

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0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 8:45 PM - Categories: News

For Sale: Your Habits

The Wall Street Journal has published two interesting and informative articles about how your browsing habits are sold to advertisers. The two articles are The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets and Sites Feed Personal Details To New Tracking Industry. I highly recommend you read these articles.

The goal of advertisers is to get you to click on their ad. Chances are, you are more likely to click on an ad if it interests you. For instance, if you like dogs you are more likely to click on an ad for a pet store than on an ad about gym membership. On TV you are more likely to see certain ads at certain times a day. Why is it that many commercials during the evening news are about a drug? Because somebody found out that the people likely to be interested in a drug for a problem they have (or are made to think they have) watch the 6 pm news. The best TV can do is generalities; they hope the person interested in their product is watching. With the internet, advertisers can know the person watching is interested.

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0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 7:45 PM - Categories: News | Privacy