Study Confirms A Quarter of ALL Antivirus Apps Do Not Work

A study has recently discovered that one quarter of anit virus applications do not do what they are supposed to do. Promisec study says many AV packages are disabled or weren't installed properly in the first place

Read on....

More than one-quarter of business PCs are running antivirus software that has been disabled or was never properly installed, according to a study that will be published on Monday.

Promisec, a company that makes endpoint management tools, conducted the study on 100,000 PCs to prove a point: that antivirus management consoles from leading vendors are not accurately reporting when their software isn't working. The endpoint security tool vendor hopes the report will help drive users to try out its "clientless" management tools, which it says can take a more accurate reading of the status of AV software on remote endpoints.

The study, which was conducted from June to November of this year, tested the status of AV software on 100,000 endpoints in businesses operating in a variety of industries. According to the researchers, more than one-fourth of all computers were found to have missing or disabled antivirus software. But network administrators weren't being alerted to the problem by the vendors' management consoles, Promisec says.

"It's a serious issue, and really a scary situation," says Gary Morse, president of Razorpoint Security Technologies, a penetration testing firm. "Companies rely on antivirus software and assume they're covered. You've got a CIO sleeping well at night, thinking everything is secure when nothing could be further from the truth."

In many cases, users had turned off the antivirus software, thinking that would make their computers run faster, the researchers say. In other instances, the antivirus software was never deployed to certain computers. But the AV management tools didn't pick up the problems, Promisec says.

"What we're seeing are companies paying Symantec, McAfee, and others for protection that is only working about 75 percent of the time," adds Alan Komet, vice president of marketing for Promisec. "The vendors' management console is simply not a good monitoring source."

Koobface Virus Spreads to Bebo

As we have just reported about malware corrupting the world of social netoworks a virus has been discovered on Bebo.

Read on....

A virus that's attacking Facebook users is also infecting other social networking sites, says ScanSafe.

Koobface tricks social networkers into downloading malicious malware onto their PC. Users receive messages that look as if they're videos. Often they say something like "you look funny." When the user clicks to see the video, he is taken to a new website and asked to download special software in order to see the video.

That software is malicious and once installed on a PC, the Trojan will direct users to hoax search engines and other websites, putting them at risk of ID theft.

According to ScanSafe, Koobface has been identified on Bebo and could even spread to other social networking sites including - MySpace and Friendster. ScanSafe also claims that the virus accounts for one percent of all its blocked malware.

"Those who avoid promiscuous 'friending' on social networking sites will be least likely to encounter a Koobface type threat," said Mary Landesman, senior security researcher, at ScanSafe.

Survey: Web-based malware puts corporations at risk

A new study found that 85 percent of malware is being distributed through Web applications, which is creating a growing threat for corporations as employees increasingly do online social networking, video watching, and personal e-mail at work.

Other findings of the survey, conducted by security firm Webroot, are:

• Web-borne malware increased more than 500 percent in 2007.
• One-quarter of companies report that data has been compromised by a Web-based threat.

• Nearly one-third say their Web security was compromised as a result of employees using computers at work to access social networks, Web-based e-mail, and video sites.

• 15 percent enforce Internet usage policies.

About 650 information technology administrators in English-speaking countries were surveyed this summer for the study.