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This year marks the 40th anniversary of Creeper, the world's first computer virus. From Creeper to Stuxnet, the last four decades saw the number of malware instances boom from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010. Besides sheer quantity, viruses, which were originally used as academic proof of concepts, quickly turned into geek pranks, then evolved into cybercriminal tools. By 2005, the virus scene had been monetized, and virtually all viruses were developed with the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models. In the following story, FortiGuard Labs looks at the most significant computer viruses over the last 40 years and explains their historical significance. 1971: Creeper: catch me if you can While theories on self-replicating automatas were developed by genius mathematician Von Neumann in the early 50s, the first real computer virus was released "in lab" in 1971 by an employee of a company working on building ARPANET, the ...

About a week back we reported about a popular paid Antivirus application on the Google Play Store which was actually a scam, dubbed as ' Virus Shield '. This First paid fake app managed to become one of the most popular anti-virus app in less than a week, and apparently more than 10,000 Smartphones users purchased it in $3.99 from Google Play Store and hence scammed more than $40,000. The Virus Shield Android App claimed to protect users' personal information from harmful viruses, malware and spyware, but in actual app doesn't scan anything and was removed from the store once the fraud had been uncovered. If you were one that had downloaded the Virus Shield Antivirus app , then don't worry, just check your email inbox, because Google cares about you and reaching out all those affected android users who purchased the app, in order to refund their money in full. REFUND WITH $5 BONUS CREDIT According to Android Police , Google has decided to refund $3.99 back to u...

Select Ukrainian government networks have remained infected with a malware called OfflRouter since 2015. Cisco Talos said its findings are based on an analysis of over 100 confidential documents that were infected with the VBA macro virus and uploaded to the VirusTotal malware scanning platform since 2018. More than 20 such documents have been uploaded since 2022. "The documents contained VBA code to drop and run an executable with the name 'ctrlpanel.exe,'" security researcher Vanja Svajcer  said . "The virus is still active in Ukraine and is causing potentially confidential documents to be uploaded to publicly accessible document repositories." A striking aspect of OfflRouter is its inability to spread via email, necessitating that it be propagated via other means, such as sharing documents and removable media, including USB memory sticks containing the infected documents. "It would require manual user intervention to send an infected document as...

A team of security researchers from Cybellum, an Israeli zero-day prevention firm, has discovered a new Windows vulnerability that could allow hackers to take full control of your computer. Dubbed DoubleAgent , the new injecting code technique works on all versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems, starting from Windows XP to the latest release of Windows 10. What's worse? DoubleAgent exploits a 15-years-old undocumented legitimate feature of Windows called " Application Verifier ," which cannot be patched. Application Verifier is a runtime verification tool that loads DLLs (dynamic link library) into processes for testing purpose, allowing developers quickly detect and fix programming errors in their applications. Unpatchable Microsoft Application Verifier Exploit The vulnerability resides in how this Application Verifier tool handles DLLs. According to the researchers, as part of the process, DLLs are bound to the target processes in a Windows Regist...

Cybercriminals will stop at nothing to exploit every chance to prey on internet users. Even the disastrous spread of SARS-COV-II (the virus), which causes COVID-19 (the disease), is becoming an opportunity for them to likewise spread malware or launch cyber attacks. Reason Labs recently released a threat analysis report detailing a new attack that takes advantage of internet users' increased craving for information about the novel coronavirus that is wreaking havoc worldwide. The malware attack specifically aims to target those who are looking for cartographic presentations of the spread of COVID-19 on the Internet, and trickes them to download and run a malicious application that, on its front-end, shows a map loaded from a legit online source but in the background compromises the computer. New Threat With An Old Malware Component The latest threat, designed to steal information from unwitting victims, was first spotted by MalwareHunterTeam last week and has now be...

Guess what's more expensive than counterfeit United States passports, stolen credit cards and even guns on the dark web? It's digital code signing certificates. A recent study conducted by the Cyber Security Research Institute (CSRI) this week revealed that stolen digital code-signing certificates are readily available for anyone to purchase on the dark web for up to $1,200. As you may know, digital certificates issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA) are used to cryptographically sign computer applications and software, and are trusted by your computer for execution of those programs without any warning messages. However, malware author and hackers who are always in search of advanced techniques to bypass security solutions have been abusing trusted digital certificates during recent years. Hackers use compromised code signing certificates associated with trusted software vendors in order to sign their malicious code, reducing the possibility of their malw...

A virus specialized for AutoCAD , a perfect cyber espionage tool In recent years we are assisting to a profoundly change in the nature of malware, it is increased the development for spy purposes, for its spread in both private and government sectors. The recent case of Flame malware has demonstrated the efficiency of a malicious agent as a gathering tool in a typical context of state-sponsored attack for cyber espionage. Event like this represent the tip of the iceberg, every day millions of malware instances infect pc in every place in the world causing serious damages related to the leak of sensible information. Specific viruses are developed to address particular sectors and information, that is the case for example of "ACAD/Medre.A", a malware specialized in the theft of AutoCAD files. The virus has been developed to steal blueprints from private companies mostly based in Peru according the expert of the security firm ESET. The virus is able to locate AutoCAD file on in...

We don't really know the pain and cost of a downtime event unless we are directly touched. Be it a flood, electrical failure, ransomware attack or other broad geographic events; we don't know what it is really like to have to restore IT infrastructure unless we have had to do it ourselves. We look at other people's backup and recovery issues and hope we are smarter or clever enough to keep it from happening to us. Recovery from a downtime event includes inconvenience, extra work, embarrassment and yes, real pain. A ransomware attack is a good example. Unitrends—an American company specialised in backup and business continuity solutions—recently shared with us a real cyber-attack incident happened with one of their customers to describe the required steps they took to recover functionality following a CryptoLocker attack against a US city. Also, how it cost city's Governance team days of production and hundreds of man-hours to recover. The Challenge ...

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)—Apple's sole supplier of SoC components for iPhones and iPads, and Qualcomm's major manufacturing partner—shut down several of its chip-fabrication factories Friday night after being hit by a computer virus. The world's largest makers of semiconductors and processors TSMC lost an entire day of production after several of its factories systems were halted by a computer virus in the middle of the ramp-up for chips to be used by Apple's future lines of iPhones. Though the popular chip maker has been attacked by viruses in the past, this is the first time a virus has affected TSMC's production lines, making the incident a real big deal. Without revealing many details, TSMC said a number of its computer systems and fabrication tools were infected by the virus on Friday night, but since then it has recovered 80% of its impacted equipment, though others will be recovered by tomorrow. According to TSMC, the comput...

Computer viruses do not discriminate. They are not just hacking your email and online banking accounts anymore. Computer viruses do not distinguish between a personal computer or a hospital machine delivering therapy to patients — and the results could prove deadly. Cyber attacks on hospitals have emerged as a significant cyber security risk in 2016, which not only threaten highly sensitive information but also potentially harm the very lives of those being protected. In the latest incident, hundreds of planned operations, outpatient appointments, and diagnostic procedures have been canceled at multiple hospitals in Lincolnshire, England, after a "major" computer virus compromised the National Health Service (NHS) network on Sunday. In a bright-red alert warning labeled "Major incident" on its website, the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLAG) said its systems in Scunthorpe and Grimsby were infected with a virus on October 30. Th...

When the headlines focus on breaches of large enterprises like the Optus breach, it's easy for smaller businesses to think they're not a target for hackers. Surely, they're not worth the time or effort?  Unfortunately, when it comes to cyber security, size doesn't matter.  Assuming you're not a target leads to lax security practices in many SMBs who lack the knowledge or expertise to put simple security steps in place. Few small businesses prioritise cybersecurity, and hackers know it. According to Verizon, the number of smaller businesses being hit has climbed steadily in the last few years – 46% of cyber breaches in 2021 impacted businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees.  Cyber security doesn't need to be difficult Securing any business doesn't need to be complex or come with a hefty price tag. Here are seven simple tips to help the smaller business secure their systems, people and data. 1 — Install anti-virus software everywhere Every organisation has anti-vi...

Colombian authorities on Wednesday said they have arrested a Romanian hacker who is wanted in the U.S. for distributing a virus that infected more than a million computers from 2007 to 2012. Mihai Ionut Paunescu (aka "Virus"), the individual in question, was detained at the El Dorado airport in Bogotá, the Office of the Attorney General of Colombia  said . Paunescu was  previously charged  by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) in January 2013 for operating a bulletproof hosting service that "enabled cyber criminals to distribute the Gozi Virus, the Zeus Trojan and other notorious malware, and conduct other sophisticated cyber crimes." He was arrested in Romania in December 2012 but managed to avoid extradition to the U.S. "Through this service, Paunescu, like other bulletproof hosts, knowingly provided critical online infrastructure to cyber criminals that allowed them to commit online criminal activity with little fear of detection by law enforcement,...

If you are dealing in cryptocurrency Bitcoin and have Microsoft's Security Essentials (MSE) installed on your system, then you could be infected by a virus called " DOS/STONED " from the Bitcoin BlockChain. With a number of high-profile cases of fraud, theft, and technical incompetence against the bitcoins, it seems like cyber criminals are looking to scam unsuspecting customers. Blockchain is Bitcoin's most popular bitcoin wallet and block explorer. It is a central part of the Bitcoin system that includes a log file in which all bitcoin transactions are recorded. It stores the wallet data in encrypted form and runs on privately owned dedicated hardware. In an discussion on the Microsoft discussion boards, a user go by the name ' edc678 ' claimed that  Microsoft's Security Essentials  is showing alerts of the signature of the STONED virus in the Bitcoin BlockChain, which could only allow an attacker to write small chunk of text to accomp...