An unpatched bug in RealPlayer leaves the media player open to drive-by-download attacks, which hackers use to trick prospective marks into visiting maliciously constructed websites.

Top tier anti-virus vendors including McAfee, Trend Micro, and Sophos all failed to secure Windows Vista SP1 in recent independent tests.

Shrinking patch windows hit by automated attacks

Security firms have split over the merits of a hacking contest aimed against anti-virus packages planned for August's Defcon conference.

Antivirus software will account for more than 50 percent of the total security software revenue market in 2007, according to the calculations by analyst Gartner.

Antivirus vendors generally assign virus names consisting of a prefix, the name, and a suffix. Not all vendors follow this convention, however, and even those who do may sometimes use different designators. When attempting to find information about a particular virus, it can be helpful to understand how the names are formed.

Windows Basics is an easy-to-follow two-part course designed to provide you with a basic knowledge of Windows. The first lesson will help you understand what you need to know about files, extensions, and their associated programs. The second and final lesson will provide an overview of the Windows System Registry, truly the central nervous system for Windows and the programs that run under it.

In The Night of the Living Dead, zombies sucked brain matter in a frenzied hunger. In the computer world, a Trojan can be used to turn your PC into its own computing matter - turning it into a zombie machine. Once under the control of such an illicit program, the Trojan can be accessed by attackers intent on any number of ominous deeds.

A threat considered high risk by antivirus vendors McAfee and Trend has confusingly been given three different names: Antivirus vendors have been tasked with standardizing virus naming since an ICSA sponsored meeting in November of 1991. Nearly a decade later, the Creative, aka ProLin/Shockwave worm/Trojan points out the deficiencies in the adoption of this system. As users become more aware of virus issues and seek out information on newly released viruses, their efforts are frustrated by the lack of adherence to any real naming convention.

In its simplest form, behavior blocking monitors file activities, preventing certain modifications to the operating system or related files. For example, behavior blockers may monitor the system registry, and warn users accordingly if a file being executed is attempting to modify it. Some programs, of course, do this legitimately, i.e. a SETUP program. Other files, however, may have malicious intent. The key benefit to a behavior blocker is that it questions whether the action was expected and whether the user wants to allow it.