Posts by Ron Haworth

One in ten PCs still vulnerable to Conficker exploit

Still Cheaper and who cares?

Justin, I pay $39.95 a year for a 3 user license to protect my Windows machines. Still way cheaper than a MAC. But in case everyone hasn't noticed, most of the infected machines are ones running pirate copies of XP in places like China. These machines don't pass Windows Genuine Advantage scrutiny and thus the needed patch won't install. Conficker for the most part didn't infect the large numbers of PC's in North America and Western Europe that its authors had hoped for. With the patch widely deployed and anti-virus companies hot on Conficker's ass I doubt that it will spread much more in the regions just mentioned. So if Conficker's masters want to infect Chinese, Indian, and Russian computers running non-genuine copies of XP with a English version of the rogue SpywareProtect2009 who cares? Have fun with that guys.

Scareware scammers adopt cold call tactics

The truth about who really writes this stuff

I live near Redmond WA, the land of the Vole. I've even worked for them. The main Vole campus is teaming with programmers from other countries working under Visa's, especially those from India. Now, what do you think all this expertly trained talent wants to do once they return home? Tend rice fields? Grow sugar cane? Herd goats? No, they want to program code. Any code. For anyone. As long as it pays well. So I hate to say it but the Vole has been training the enemy here. The big M has no one to blame but themselves for the suburb quality of the malware running around out there now. They taught them how to write it. It may be politically correct to be a multi-nationally diverse company these days but its not necessarily the best business model from a security standpoint. The writers of this crap are not just found lurking in the dark dungeons of eastern Europe, Russia, and Asia, they are also walking around in Redmond WA USA in broad daylight.

Online attackers feed off Norton forum purge

Norton fails again

This is why I hate Norton products. The malware miscreats obviously had that version installed on a machine as they probably have machines running every other known anti-virus product out there. Again Norton fails to stop the rigged web pages from infecting the hapless visitors to their site. I have seen and worked on more PC's running Norton products that were infected with garbage than I can count. Aaarrgh.

Microsoft squares up to Google with $6bn buy

New Volekits are a coming...

Adds a whole new meaning to the term "rootkit" when the world's largest OS vendor gets in bed with the Adware demons. Maybe we can just call them "volekits"!

Yes, new Volekits are a coming...

How wonderful. How hard is it going to be to keep adware spewage out of our PC's now that world's biggest OS vendor is bed with the adware demons themselves? This adds a whole new meaning to the word "rootkit." You can just say your machine has been "volekitted" soon enough!