Tech DC

My favorite free security software for Windows is Microsoft Security Essentials from Microsoft, the folks who should be protecting their operating system.
Microsoft just came out with a beta of their next version, Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 featuring:

Windows Firewall integration– allows you to turn on or off the Windows Firewall during setup.
Enhanced protection from web-based threats [...]

Is it time to buy those boxes of ammo and head for the hills? We’ll see.
This Wednesday, April 1st the Conficker worm will do something. No one knows what. But it has security experts up late. It is believed that at one point Conficker was on 6% of the world’s PCs. This has been reduced [...]

A recent Sterling, Virginia customer got hit by a fake warning that her computer had been infected by a virus. But it was just a pop-up browser window that, when clicked, actually installed malware on her computer. To add insult to injury, the malware installed is called Antivirus XP 2008. So you think it’s there [...]

This NY Times article talks about how a gang in a Russian town is using Microsoft administrative tools to infect private and government computers. A few excerpts:
The gang was identified publicly in May by Joe Stewart, director of malware research at SecureWorks, a computer security firm in Atlanta. Mr. Stewart, who has determined that the [...]

Infections Beyond Repair

Most people say that once a machine is infected with a virus, there is no practical way to know for sure if it is ever truly safe. You could take out the drive, attach it to a Linux machine for scans, and run all the latest tools. But this doesn’t guarantee success.
Think of [...]