Archive for the ‘Antivirus’ Category:
The Hidden Danger of iTunes
Have you installed all the Windows updates? Good, because most of the attackers invade your PC through loopholes in the operating system. But this can change soon. Due to the popularity of IPods, iTunes has been installed withwith QuickTimes on many computers. Hackers are now diverting attention towards this software as their new target. Meanwhile, there are bulk of updates published every few weeks for the QuickTimes software to repair the critcal loopholes there were six updates in November alone.
If there is a security loophole, a manipulated video file, for instance, is sufficient for hackers to gain access to the computer. If java is installed on the systems, attackers can confer more rights in combination with QuickTime applets, which aren’t exactly termed as being reliable. There are bugs even in the image processing routine of QuickTime enabling hackers to read the PC.
You must install the latest version of the iTunes software to view videos safely. The latest QuickTime version with all patches is available at their website. Source www.apple.com/itunes
Test Your Antivirus
Test Your Antivirus – The best bloopers are here
I want to tech you how you can test your antivirus is up to date or not. This work for all antivirus like avg, avast and other.
First open your notepad and paste this code.
X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-
TEST-FILE!$H+H*
You must make sure your code put one line on notepad. Like the video I made.
Now save that notepad save as ‘eicar.com’ and make sure the format file is save as ‘All File’. Close iit and try scan that file. Your antivirus will detact it as a virus. If your antivirus not detect it update your antivirus or change to new one.
Remember don’t panic! when your antivirus detect it as a virus. Just remove it. This virus that we create just for the test. Not the real virus!
Free Antivirus
AVG used to be the free antivirus of choice- to the point nobody minded that annoying sig it would place in your email to tell everyone how great it was. But now they not free and so instead I find a new king of the freebies Avast from Alwil software.
Now you would think that anything free might be mite crap. Not with Avast. It actually offer a decent set of features thought it doesn’t qualify as a full internet suite unlike Trend Micro, Symantec’c Norton or Kaspersky. It also does suffer a little amateurish voice warning. “Your Antivirus has been updated”! Warning! A virus has been found!” Good times, good times needed especially with the little bells and alarms that sound off in your head.
Usability took a bit of a hit as trying to use the scanner first-off was a bit confusing. There are no default scan regions for one setting – they make you a pick a region first and then scan which is a little bit irritating. Then there’s how it looks more like MP3 player than an actual antivirus program. A little bit disconcerting but well, I’ll live that for free. 
Though it was active at cleaning most viruses we threw at it, Avast’s database seem a bit behind and in one case, could isolate and quarantine a virus but not clean the system from it. I had to manually clean up my machine and fix the Visual Basic errors the worm created in my system myself.
Does a pretty good job for free but it is just not as thorough as the other three and should probably be used with a good firewall and efficient spyware cleaner too. As far as free download go, the Home edition is pretty useful and if you want to give this or the professional version a try. Just download the 30 day trail version. Click Here To Download
Using a mobile phone software is very easy. Most of the computers software come with easy instructions. Some like microsoft office software install automatically. Rest require personalized preferences like a personal finance software. Similarly a tax software requires a few commands before getting installed.
