Immunet Blog

It’s no surprise that hackers have piggybacked on the pop culture hoopla surrounding yesterday’s release of the new Twilight installment, “Eclipse.” Fans are eagerly scouring the web for information on the movie, but more than half of the links they’re getting are tainted with malware, according to news reports.

Consider what this means for malware infiltration. If hackers can contaminate more than 50% of links on a particularly hot topic, our vulnerability to viruses is higher than we think. We take for granted that our Internet searches are safe -- after all this is information we’re seeking. It’s not as though we’re clicking on fishy links sent to us via spam. Well, that’s the old way of thinking. In the new world of malware, gaming search engines is a clever way to get savvy web surfers to stumble upon malware. And even if you’re not searching the web for Twilight content, there’s probably someone in your life who is. Are you protected?



Yesterday, Immunet CEO Oliver Friedrichs was invited to be a guest on Cyberhood Watch Radio to talk about the importance of keeping families safe online. Hosts Dave & Bill tapped into Oliver’s expertise to inform audience about keeping teens safe this summer as they spend more time online connecting with their friends. They also asked for Oliver’s take on the urgency of malware lurking on social networks and how Immunet Protect’s unique social network can help you – and your children -- make good decisions online. Take the time to listen and learn about the looming threats online and why traditional antivirus products aren’t working. Click on the show titled “What Consumers Need to Know About Antivirus Software & How to Stay Protected.”

You are exploring the Wild West – at every turn there are grisly town hangings, gunfire ambushes, and reckless gambling sprees. All of this is just part of a day’s work. What actually stops you in your tracks is, when you’re suddenly warned that you have a dangerous virus – a computer virus, that is.

Hackers recently exploited the popular Wild West-themed computer game Red Dead Redemption with scareware. While scareware seems strangely appropriately for a game that thrives on danger, this malware was not part of the amusement. In fact, this is the latest in a string of video games to become prey for malicious software.  

While games being infected with malware is nothing new, the problem is gamers are sometimes reluctant to install antivirus software on their PCs for fear of slowing down their machines and hampering their gaming experience. But as gaming grows from a niche activity to an all-out national pastime, gaming malware could proliferate rapidly unless we step up and protect ourselves. Already we’ve seen popular social games, like Zynga, have become targets of malware and phishing scams.

And here’s the good news. Being protected doesn’t mean turning your computer into a brick anymore. That’s the outmoded desktop-approach to antivirus. Immunet Protect’s cloud-based protection installs less than 10 megs on your PC --- the lightest in the industry. All detection will happen virtually in the cloud, not on your desktop -- so your gaming experience won’t be weighed down. For those who are already protected, Immunet will give you an added layer of essential protection , still without slowing down your PC.

As we’ve mentioned here before, we’re launching a stellar new product next week that takes cloud AV protection to the next level. Stay tuned for more details. And in the meantime, be a friend to Immunet, and promote our new website (also coming next week) with a free Immunet Badge.



While Facebook’s security measures have been garnering top media attention, Mark Zuckerberg’s hugely popular network isn’t the only site hackers are targeting. Twitter’s mushrooming community has also become a favorite for hackers. 

They’re of course, drawn to Twitter’s user base that reaches well into the millions and according to some forecasts will hit 1 billion users by 2013. Case in point, earlier this month the Sunbelt Blog demonstrated how a DIY Twitter Botnet Creator is making botting shockingly simple for hackers. The good news is, the attack method exposes the hackers. And Sunbelt has already notified Twitter about the risk. While Twitter is doing everything it can to keep its users safe, it’s wise to ensure that you’re taking some extra precautions as well. 

Scares, like the DIY botnet, serve as a necessary wake-up call to remind us that undiscovered risks continue to lurk in the digital world. We deserve to enjoy our online communities, but the truth is, we have to be smart about how we do it. 

This is where Immunet Protect comes in. As with Facebook, Immunet Protect is designed to explicitly combat threats on sites like Twitter.

It’s free to download Immunet Protect, it’s lightweight and won’t slow down your computer, and it provides essential security for your PC. Why not do your part to keep you – and your community -- safe? 



Why is it that 50% of all Internet users either don’t have AntiVirus protection or have protection that’s expired or out of date? Between 30-40,000 (thousand!) new viruses are created each DAY, and yet a large percentage of the consumer population remains vulnerable to these threats. So what’s going on here? Perhaps people are too trusting that website security professionals such as Twitter’s Trust and Safety team, or those involved in the Facebook Security Wall will just take care of malware for them.

Consumer Reports has a good phishing test for consumers (and Donna even wrote a post about the dangers to social media, a topic near and dear to all of us at Immunet). eHow has a few good steps to follow. MSNBC offers some good advice from the AP. CNET even tried to help people avoid malware from trusted site the Drudge Report.

We think more people don’t have AntiVirus due to combination of price, effectiveness (or lack thereof), resource and system drain and software conflicts that afflict traditional AntiVirus software. To be fair, without the collective benefit of a cloud-based community that can help to detect, update and defend each other against thousands of new threats daily, it takes copious resources in terms of human and technology costs (which are passed along to the consumer) for a traditional AntiVirus provider to do all the work themselves.

With Immunet Protect’s Collective Immunity, we’ve solved this problem and torn down the barriers standing in the way of increasing consumer AntiVirus penetration from 50% to closer to 100%.  The closer we are as an industry to 100% antivirus penetration, the safer the Internet becomes for everyone online.

We put a focus on educating people on how to avoid getting a virus, from the basics to black SEO to social media aggregators to Facebook-specific worms to how to’s.

It seems attackers have the means to overcome today’s ‘AntiVirus common sense’ we’ve all grown to embrace, namely, only click on links from trusted sources. Now these sources can no longer be trusted.

Case in point is the new spear phishing threat targeted at social networking. Core Security Labs demonstrated this at the RSA Conference last week and lots of people have followed up on the problem. What to do?

While common sense is still very important, getting a real-time AntiVirus that recognizes a threat instantly is just as vital. Viruses take time to spread and the longer one goes undetected, the more dangerous it gets. Immunet Protect’s Collective Immunity solves this problem by detecting a virus from the community and instantly protecting all users against that virus.  



The core theme for viruses is trickery. Fool a person into clicking on a link they think is accessing something they want and the infection spreads (Twitter viruses, Facebook viruses, etc). Viruses spread really fast with this approach – look at the recent Gmail worm the New York Times wrote about. Social media has proved to be a hotbed for this deception and people are getting wise to it. That’s good.

What’s bad? Aggregating all your social media ‘stuff’ in one location, like the recent Microsoft Outlook 2010 Social Connector, Meebo and Snaptu (for phones). As a consumer, surfing Twitter, Facebook and the rest comes with a known risk – watch out for links. Do such ‘street-smarts’ erode if all your activity is accessible from a trusted application, such as Outlook or another? The links are still suspect but our keen eye might dim a bit.

Real-time antivirus protection becomes even more important with the adoption of these social media portals. Yet another reason that Immunet Protect’s “Collective Immunity” against viruses deserves a look as a means to protect you and your community. Once a virus is detected, all users are instantly protected against that virus, rather than having to wait days to update software.

Think about that for a minute. If you have 200 Facebook friends, 1,000 Twitter followers and share files with 50 people and any one of them gets a virus, Immunet Protect kicks in and everyone is instantly protected – you’re all safe! Now, look at this example with traditional, clunky antivirus applications, where there may be 15 different programs running across your 1,250 connections. It might take days to update each program’s database. How many times will you interact, click on and forward links and files among the group in a few days, potentially infecting thousands of your friends and followers!? Scary, right!

Today, the fine reporters of SC Magazine ran a bit of research from Sophos about the US being branded “the dirty man of the web world”. Infected websites, malware and malicious software abound.

We already know Twitter viruses, Facebook viruses and the host of other social networking attacks are an issue. Now, the trustworthiness of legit websites is an increasing concern and time is an issue - time, in the sense that antivirus protection follows the identification of a threat. This could take days for traditional software. There are plenty of examples around the forums. 

This is precisely the reason overlaying existing antivirus software with Immunet Protect is beneficial. Immunet’s community focus plus the Collective Immunity protection feature means if anyone using Immunet Protect registers a virus, all users are instantly protected against that virus. To better illustrate this point, have a look over the actual numbers:

 

	Traditional	Immunet
Sample Collection	1 Day – 1 Month	Real-time
Sample Processing	1 Day – 2 Weeks	Real-time
Publishing	1 Hour – 1 Day	Real-time
Footprint	28 – 352 MB	10MB
Detection Technology	File Based, Signature Focused	Data Mining, Network Centric