Malware has managed to get off the planet and onto the International Space Station (ISS), NASA confirmed today. And it's not the first time that a worm or virus has stowed away on a trip into orbit.

The attack code, which space news site SpaceRef.com identified Monday as "W32.Gammima.AG," infected at least one of the laptops used on the station, an international effort headlined by the U.S. and Russia.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration spokesman Kelly Humphries declined to identify the malware, saying only that antivirus software detected a worm on July 25.
The first public report of malware about the ISS was logged on Aug. 11. In NASA's daily status report on the station, the agency said that Sergey Volkov, the ISS commander, was "working on the Russian RSS-2 laptop" and "ran digital photo flash cards from stowage through a virus check with the Norton AntiVirus application."A week later, on Aug. 21, Volkov "checked another Russian laptop, today RSK-1, for software virus by scanning its hard drives and a photo disk."

The next day, Volkov transmitted antivirus scanning results from the laptop to Earth, and U.S. astronaut Greg Chamitoff scanned another computer for possible infection. NASA also said in Friday's report that all laptops on board the ISS were being loaded with antivirus software.

"All A31p laptops onboard are currently being loaded with [the] latest [Norton AntiVirus] software and updated definition files for increased protection," said NASA.
source:Computer world

In computing, phishing is an attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. eBay, PayPal and online banks are common targets.
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In the context of computing and software, a Trojan horse, or simply trojan, is a piece of software which appears to perform a certain action but in fact performs another such as a computer virus. Contrary to popular belief, this action, usually encoded in a hidden payload, may or may not be actually malicious, but Trojan horses are notorious today for their use in the installation of backdoor programs. Simply put, a Trojan horse is not a computer virus in most cases. Unlike such malware, it does not propagate by self-replication but relies heavily on the exploitation of an end-user (see Social engineering). It is instead a categorical attribute which can encompass many different forms of codes. Therefore, a computer worm or virus may be a Trojan horse. The term is derived from the classical story of the Trojan Horse.

Story of the Trojan horse

In the context of computing and software, a Trojan horse, or simply trojan, is a piece of software which appears to perform a certain action but in fact performs another such as a computer virus. Contrary to popular belief, this action, usually encoded in a hidden payload, may or may not be actually malicious, but Trojan horses are notorious today for their use in the installation of backdoor programs. Simply put, a Trojan horse is not a computer virus in most cases. Unlike such malware, it does not propagate by self-replication but relies heavily on the exploitation of an end-user (see Social engineering). It is instead a categorical attribute which can encompass many different forms of codes. Therefore, a computer worm or virus may be a Trojan horse. The term is derived from the classical story of the Trojan Horse.

The end of the Trojan war came with one final plan. Odysseus devised a new ruse—a giant hollow wooden horse, an animal that was sacred to the Trojans. It was built by Epeius and guided by Athena, from the wood of a cornel tree grove sacred to Apollo, with the inscription:

The Greeks dedicate this thank-offering to Athena for their return home.

The hollow horse was filled with soldiers led by Odysseus. The rest of the army burned the camp and sailed for Tenedos.

When the Trojans discovered that the Greeks were gone, believing the war was over, they "joyfully dragged the horse inside the city", while they debated what to do with it. Some thought they ought to hurl it down from the rocks, others thought they should burn it, while others said they ought to dedicate it to Athena.

Both Cassandra and Laocoön warned against keeping the horse. While Cassandra had been given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, she was also cursed by Apollo to never be believed. Serpents then came out of the sea and devoured either Laocoön and one of his two sons, Laocoön and both his sons, or only his sons, a portent which so alarmed the followers of Aeneas that they withdrew to Ida.The Trojans decided to keep the horse and turned to a night of mad revelry and celebration. Sinon, an Achaean spy, signaled the fleet stationed at Tenedos when "it was midnight and the clear moon was rising" and the soldiers from inside the horse emerged and killed the guards and finally TROY was ruined by the GREEKS.

This story clearly shows how the TROJAN virus affects your system.


Source: Wikipedia

Posted on February 23, 2008.

What is NOD32 ?

• NOD32 is an antivirus package made by the Slovak company Eset.
• Versions are available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and other platforms.
• A NOD32 Enterprise Edition is available that consists of NOD32 AntiVirus and NOD32 Remote Administrator.
• The NOD32 Remote Administrator program allows a network administrator to monitor anti-virus functions, push installations and upgrades to unprotected PCs on the network, and update configuration files from a central location.

NOD32 was born in the early 1990s when computer viruses were becoming increasingly prevalent.

What does it provide ?

• AMON (Antivirus MONitor) - scans files as they are accessed by the system, preventing a virus from executing on the system.
• DMON (Document MONitor) - scans Microsoft Office documents and files for macro viruses as they are opened and saved by Office applications.
• IMON (Internet MONitor) - intercepts traffic on common protocols such as POP3 and HTTP to detect and intercept viruses before they are saved to discs.
• EMON (E-mail MONitor) - An auxiliary module for scanning incoming/outgoing e-mails via the MAPI interface, such as Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Client.
• XMON (MS eXchange MONitor) - scans incoming and outgoing mail when NOD32 is running and licensed for Microsoft Exchange Server - ie, running on a server environment. This module is not present on workstations at all.

What makes it the best ?

• NOD32 is written largely in assembly code, which contributes to its low use of system resources and high scanning speed.
• NOD32 can process more than 23MB per second while scanning on a Pentium 4 based PC.
  It uses less than 20MB of memory in total.The physical RAM used is often just a third of that.
• According to a 2005 Virus Bulletin test, NOD32 performs scans two to five times faster than other antivirus competitors.
• In a networked environment NOD32 clients can update from a central “mirror server” on the network, reducing bandwidth usage since new definitions need only be downloaded once by the mirror server as opposed to once for each client.
• In addition to signature files, NOD32’s scan engine uses heuristic detection (called “ThreatSense” by Eset) to provide better protection against newly released viruses.

Also Visit: ESET website

Microsoft has revealed that hackers have found a way to infiltrate older versions of its Excel program to take control of infected computer systems.

Earlier in the week, the software major said it's investigating reports of such attacks though hasn't yet determined whether it will go ahead and patch the bug, and if so, when.

Q) How will it infiltrate the anti-virus cordon and how can you protect your PC from it ?
Ans) The modus operandi is: you may either get a specially crafted Excel file as an email attachment or may end up visiting a compromised Web site -- either ways, you could be inviting hackers to arbitrarily take control of your PCs for furthering their malicious cause, be it stealing passwords and other personal information or sending out spam.

Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Service Pack 2, Excel Viewer 2003, Excel 2002, Excel 2000, and Excel 2004 for Mac, are all vulnerable to this form of attack, Microsoft said.

The way to go for users, as advised by Redmond, is to use a tool named 'Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment', which scans files for bad code before opening them.

Meanwhile, more recent versions of Excel such as Excel 2007, Excel 2007 SP 1, and Excel 2008 for Mac are believed not to be vulnerable.