Technabob » malware

Watch Your Kids: Hackers Now Planting Viruses into Kids’ Games

Hazel Chua — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:00:42 +0000

Most adults these days have wisened up and refrain from clicking on banner ads that claim “You just one a prize!” or “You just won the 10,000,000th user award!” That means virus writers have to think of other measures to propagate their viruses and malware, and it seems that they’ve decided to go with the realm of free, online games targeted towards kids.

This was revealed in a study by the Avast Virus Labs. Kids are lured into playing games hosted online, while the sites then load programs in the background onto the PC. And before you know it, the PC’s fried and your account information has been stolen.

Ondrej Vlcek, CTO of AVAST Software, says: “Games like these require clicking and children don’t think much about what they are clicking on. This makes them – or their parents’ computer – quite susceptible to malicous software.”

CuteArcade.com has been identified as being one of such sites which has already been able to infect over 12,600 computers. Another site, HiddenNinjaGames.com, has also been said to pose a risk.

So parents, watch your kids when they’re playing seemingly harmless games on seemingly harmless sites, and be sure to keep your anti-virus software up to date. Because you never know what’s happening beneath it all.

[via Daily Mail]

World of Warcraft Attacked by Key-Logging Trojan

Lambert Varias — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:43:26 +0000

There’s a new threat in Azeroth, one so fearsome that not even the combined might of the Alliance and the Horde can stop it: Hackers. Apparently a trojan has been spreading that intercepts the authentication code generated by the Blizzard Authenticator. Players need to input the code before they can log in to their WoW accounts. But here’s the kicker: not only does the trojan steal a valid code that its maker can use to access the account, it generates a false code and sends it to Blizzard, so the log-in attempt will fail. In other words, it renders the authenticator useless.

Judging from the info from Lia at Forever Geek, the trojan only affects Windows users. Lia advises WoW players on Windows to look for a file named emcor.dll which will “probably” be found at C:\Users\(Your user name)\AppData\Temp. Of course there’s a good chance that you won’t be able to search for the culprit manually, so your best bet is to use a good anti-virus program. Have any of you experienced this problem?

[via Forever Geek]

Trend Micro Offers Web Security for Psp and PS3 Browsers, No One Cares.

Lambert Varias — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:25:56 +0000

Anyone who owns an internet-capable device knows that browsing without a keyboard or a good keyboard interface is a pain in the ass. As a PSP and PS3 owner, I can say that that is the case with both systems, not to mention the pathetic, slow-ass connection on the PSP. But if there’s anyone out there that uses the built-in browser on Sony’s gaming platforms, then you might want to purchase Trend Micro’s web security packages.

The service “offers protection against internet crime such as fraudulent acquisition of passwords by detecting malicious or fraudulent sites.” According to Amy-Mae Elliott of Pocket-lint, the PS3 service will be pay-per-use, while the PSP service is free until July, when charging rates will be specified. Or when Trend Micro finally realizes the futility of the exercise and pulls the plug on the thing altogether.

The PS3 service costs £14.95 ($22.25 USD) for PS3 protection or £26.95 ($40.12 USD) for the bundle of the two products. That’s quite pricey; shouldn’t Sony subsidize this and market it as a selling point? Okay maybe I’m just biased and there’s a market for this after all; otherwise the service wouldn’t be offered in the first place. Right? Anyone?

Everything is Malware: was Google Hacked?

Lambert Varias — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:42:17 +0000

It’s 10:54 pm, Saturday, January 31 here in the Philippines as I’m writing this. I noted the time because, right now, Google is going insane. How?

I wanted to check out Google’s M-Lab after reading about it in Lifehacker. I clicked the link on the article but for some reason it didn’t go through. So I go to Google and type M-Lab. Imagine my surprise when all the search results had the “This site may harm your computer” warning underneath them! I tried Yahoo, speedtest.net, and technabob: still the same result. Finally, I searched for Google:

What. Anyone else see this?

*Update : Google’s back to normal again. My time as a detective comes to an end. *