The UltraTech Zone

I’ve said it for a few years now, but host-based antivirus is really not working out anymore.  Not with its reliance on signatures to detect malware. Recently, several prominent antivirus vendors have experienced problems with faulty virus definitions:  Faulty McAfee update burns IT execs BitDefender update breaks 64-bit Windows ...

I’ve said it for a few years now, but host-based antivirus is really not working out anymore.  Not with its reliance on signatures to detect malware. Recently, several prominent antivirus vendors have experienced problems with faulty virus definitions: ...(read more)

The prevailing wisdom says that technology is supposed to be getting simpler all the time.  This belief appears to be pervasive with many corporate leaders who insist that there should be less of a need for expensive technology experts in an organization over time, since technology is becoming simpler and less error prone. I touched on this ...

The prevailing wisdom says that technology is supposed to be getting simpler all the time.  This belief appears to be pervasive with many corporate leaders who insist that there should be less of a need for expensive technology experts in an organization...(read more)

Two of my favorite tools for online storage and collaboration are DropBox and Box.net.   Because each product offers features that the other lacks, and because they appear to be attacking the challenges of collaboration different perspectives, I make use of both products, albeit to achieve slightly different objectives.  Due to ...

Two of my favorite tools for online storage and collaboration are DropBox and Box.net .   Because each product offers features that the other lacks, and because they appear to be attacking the challenges of collaboration different perspectives,...(read more)

It's pretty much official now (in case you didn't believe it before):  We have exited the Worm era, and jumped head first into the era of specialized and targeted attacks... According to a recent article by ComputerWorld, SANS security organization sees upsurge in zero-day Web-based attacks. The following excerpt from the ...

According to some reports, spyware is getting harder and harder to control.  The sophistication of the malware makers is growing at a much faster pace than that of the security industry, even to the point of proof-of-concept adware code being developed for MacOS X. And with all this new malware comes a tremendous increase in SPAM over ...

The Microsoft AntiMalware team has recently published a paper discussing some of the data collected by their monthly AntiMalware tool. A summary of the article is available on the SANS website, and the full article is available from Microsoft at the following link: Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool: Progress Made, Trends ...

More About Sophisticated Malware http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1871 Virtual machine detection is a self-defensive property of many malware specimens. It is aimed at making it harder to examine the malicious program, because virtualization software, such as VMware, is a very popular tool among malware analysts. For instance, ...

Pando v1.0 has finally been released, after spending some good time in the beta testing cycle.  If you haven't seen or used it as yet, you're really missing out.  It is one of the coolest tools for sending large files to people via email, without burdening the email system or either the sender or the recipient. I've been happily using ...

Yeah, we're still waiting on Vista and Longhorn, but Microsoft has already starting releasing some other applications since October. Step right up and get your dose of new products: Windows Media Player 11 Windows Defender 2.0 Windows Internet Explorer 7.0 And speaking of Longhorn, here's an article that I saw a couple months back that ...

The level of sophistication of the malware threats we face is continuing to grow at a much faster rate that the methods that most organizations are using to detect and mitigate them.  And let's not talk about home users. We need to ensure that we keep up to date on the latest threats, and that we also constantly evaluate our environments ...

October 2006 is going to be a major month for Oracle.  First, the database and middleware powerhouse has made some significant changes to its patch management process. Secondly, it released its quarterly set of database and application patches on October 17th.  The full list of patches is available on Oracle's website, but interestingly ...

Otherwise known as Vista vs the EU and the World: Part Three... Here's a follow-up to my earlier Vista vs the World and Vista vs the Security Vendors posts, where I noted I greatly preferred a stronger, more secure base OS, even if that inhibited some functionality for third-party security tools. As seen in the following articles, Microsoft is ...