Trend Micro Solutions Blog

The Security Conundrum

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:00:00 GMT

In 2007, there were many articles discussing the changing role of IT—a notable shift from maintaining IT infrastructure to contributing to business growth. IT BusnessEdge.com published one by Denis McCauley with the Economist Business Intelligence ...

Malware in the Movies: the good, the bad and the ugly

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

The very first computer virus did not happen on a Windows(TM) machine, or a Mac(TM) or an Apple(TM) II. The first virus did not travel via the Internet or in an email or in a floppy disk. The first virus was not on a minicomputer, nor was it on a ...

Anonymity Online: a Race Between User Privacy and the Cyber-crooks

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:45:23 GMT

The past two decades have drastically changed the ways in which we use technology, particularly what it means to be online. For many years there has been a pervasive belief that the proverbial cyber “wild, wild, west” afforded users all the ...

Website Scripts, the Next Web Threat – More Holes than the Titanic.

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Today hackers take advantage of poorly protected web servers to gain control over websites. Just wait until they discover the range of unmaintained, badly programmed scripts behind most websites – this will get ugly! Imagine that you are a ...

The Crimeware Primer – Part One

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:00:03 GMT

Much of the terminology used in the world of malicious code research must sound like jargon, even more so since the arrival of a distinct and dominant criminal element in its creation, distribution and use. For the purpose of clarity, here is my ...

The Crimeware Primer– Part Two

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:00:02 GMT

The Crimeware Primer – Part Three

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:00:01 GMT

The Illusionist – RBN Vanishing Act

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 22:13:05 GMT

Last month The Guardian ran an article on the apparent disappearance of the notorious Russian Business Network (RBN). “Hunt for Russia’s Web Criminals” describes the recent game of cat and mouse being played out with the Russian ISP blamed for some ...

More Muck Against Mac

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:33:28 GMT

The rise of Web-based threats has leveled the playing field for computer users and hackers alike. Regardless of operating system or applications used, visiting Web sites or trying to download and watch movies online is all it can take for users to ...

Malware as a Service (MaaS) aka RBN

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:07:00 GMT

Sometimes things aren’t what they look like, but sometimes they are. A few months back, our investigators followed a threat taking shape from a dodgy Web server. After chasing the initial lead, they were able to pull a lot of data and track down ...

Spam Excel(s)

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:56:26 GMT

Spammers are Excel-ing, literally. Text and image spam as PDF files are now old news as MS Excel enters the spam scene. Last July 22, Trend Micro researchers started noticing email messages that carry ZIP-packed Excel files. When opened, these Excel ...

PDF Spam - Taking Image Spam a Step Further

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:21:38 GMT

Anti-spam filters have become more effective at stopping image spam, so spammers have taken this trick a step further by placing spam images in PDF files. A flood of these PDF spam started hitting the Internet in late June. TrendLabs has found that ...

Taking Web Threat Communications Offline

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:40:38 GMT

Web Threats can take a variety of different forms. Though most of them propagate through the Web, this is not a requirement. Their common trait is that they have Web communication. This means that even though they can reach the PC in any other way ...

"Spam Lures: from Special Deals to Current Affairs"

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:24:56 GMT

After reading news like this, Spam Campaign Surfs Web on Your Behalf, it is easy to see how dangerous spam has become. I agree that the Web is the propagation vehicle of choice for malware writers today, but often the delivery of Web threats starts ...

Cyber Gangs Surpass Drug Lords

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 08:39:46 GMT

After watching the news recently on the evolution of Web Threats, there's one single piece of data that stuck in my mind: the malware industry is now bigger than the drug-trafficking trade. The implications of this are mind-boggling for us normal ...

From Sausage Spoof to Malware

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 16:02:22 GMT

A few years ago, a friend of mine had his small retail Web site compromised by hackers. When I saw him that very same day, he told me how the “hacker group” had replaced his sausage-selling Web page with a humorous show-off page including a few ...

You Need a Layered Approach to Messaging Security

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 09:14:28 GMT

Whether it is a worm (like Stration) that infects PCs in order to broadcast spam unbeknownst to the owner or a spam campaign that delivers spyware (like troj_small) to steal sensitive information, today’s threats continue to grow in volume and ...

Downloading Video this Season? Beware of Fake Codecs

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 16:39:18 GMT

Thanks to an increased Internet bandwidth in developed countries, video downloading is becoming a more common occurrence. In order to be able to see different video formats, users need to have codecs installed. Codecs are programs that encode and ...

Spam, spam, spam and a big can of Stration

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 14:07:42 GMT

TrendLabs discovered the first Stration worm samples last August. Ever since then, it's been hammering users with annoying emails. The remarkable thing about Stration is that apparently it behaves like an old-time worm. It brings back memories from ...

Changing Browsers In Mid-Stream

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 08:49:35 GMT

Right after Internet Explorer 7 was released a few days ago, some advisories appeared with new bugs that affect this last version of the ever-popular browser: check this advisory and this advisory. What does this tell us about Internet Explorer 7 ...

Who Wants to be an M?

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 13:45:15 GMT

Medium or mid-sized businesses (Ms) are the least understood and most misrepresented sector of the market today. As all manner of vendors try to capitalize on the enormous potential of the so called “SMB” market, how much thought are they really ...

This Halloween...Be Afraid and Be Careful...

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:42:10 GMT

Well I'm not actually one to squirm or shiver when it comes to ghosts and ghouls and 'the undead' that they say rise from the underground and comes out during the night of the 31st of October. It's quite another thing that I'm pretty anxious ...

Will they target me?

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:34:07 GMT

The stakes are quite high for targeted attacks. And you can't afford to gamble with your company's proprietary data. www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/15/targeted_trojan_attacks_on_the_rise The trend in targeted attacks is to send specially crafted ...

Email Security and the Compliance Puzzle

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:25:05 GMT

Yes! Email security is only part of the larger compliance puzzle, but it is a critical component of the solution. More and more regulations are being passed that require companies to comply with data protection and privacy ...

Multi-Vendor Content Security

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 07:59:22 GMT

IT managers might have gone for a multi-vendor content security strategy. For example, one vendor’s product at the Internet gateway, and perhaps two other vendors: one protecting the mail server and another, the desktop. The justification: if one ...

Consolidation and Security

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 14:23:14 GMT

Consolidation appeals to me. I don’t own an ipod, a Tom Tom GPS or a Blackberry, and I don’t carry a diary or notepad. What I do have is one device, a smartphone/PDA which performs all the functions of the devices just listed to an effective ...

Move over IPS, make way for NAC appliances

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 07:38:24 GMT

Even before Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) technology could evolve as a compelling solution for the Enterprise, IT departments are faced with a much harder problem: Network Access Control (NAC). With users connecting to the network from anywhere ...

Software, Appliance, or Hosted Service? Why Choose One Form of Gateway Security Over Another?

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:48:58 GMT

IT managers can choose various form factors depending on the level of security expertise they have in house and the level of control and flexibility they need. Often, total cost of ownership (TCO) is used to choose one form factor over another, but ...