In the June edition of Computer Shopper, the leading UK computer equipment magazine (www.computershopper.co.uk), Kaspersky

Kaspersky

Scam artists and cybercriminals are looking to turn romance into profit now that Valentine's Day approaches, possibly taking over your computer in the process. According to ESET researchers in Latin America, we can expect the quest for love to be leveraged as an effective social engineering ploy to enable the bad guys to infect unsuspecting users with malicious code.

Malware authors, always eager to exploit their victims' susceptibility and curiosity, see great potential for “romantic” hyperlinks that lead, allegedly, to greetings cards, poems, songs or videos. On the right you can see an early example of such a “card of love” received in the run-up to Valentine’s Day, 2012, analyzed by our research team in Latin America:

Apart from the disappointment that the victim might experience when he realizes that the secret admirer is no such thing, there’s also the significant issue of the risk to all his sensitive financial information.

As you can see from the picture on the right, the victim receives an email “greetings card” that purports to be a declaration of love which appeals directly to the reader’s romantic spirit, trying to make him believe that he is someone’s One and Only. Then, to encourage him to download malware, the letter ends with three ellipses and the link inviting him to read the “full message”, which in reality leads to malicious content.

If you were to follow this link it would try to download a malicious program that is detected heuristically by ESET products as a variant of Win32/Injector.HVG Trojan. (According to the information gathered by our Latin America researchers, the threat in question was downloaded approximately 430 times between January 20 and 24).

If there is no antivirus software running on the victim's computer and this Trojan file is downloaded and executed, then Injector.HVG proceeds to modify the victim’s hosts file in order to divert him from certain Chilean banking sites to pages that look similar to the original, but are actually phishing sites created by cybercriminals with the sole purpose of tricking the victim into disclosing his bank details.

As February 14 approaches we are likely to see more malware using love and roses to reel in more victims. This time last year, ESET Latin America put together a blog post with more examples of Valentine scams, so that readers would be better prepared when surfing the Internet. What follows is a summary of their advice.

1. Malware in social networks

Social networks are a major vector for attacks using social engineering. We hate to pour water on romantic inclinations, but all posts in social media relating to the Valentine theme, especially eye-catching messages about special offers and exclusive gifts should be regarded with suspicion, in order to avoid infection and forestall potential threats.

While this example is from Twitter, various kinds of scams exploiting gift cards and other special offers are also seen frequently on Facebook.

In particular, be wary of messages that direct you to web pages using shortened hyperlinks, such as this one from bit.ly. While bit.ly is a very reputable service, it can be abused by the bad guys, looking for a way to mask the final destination of a link. In fact, these types of links have become a fundamental component of the attacker’s toolkit. If you feel you really need to check out where a bit.ly link goes without clicking it, enter a plus sign on the end of the link in the browser URL field (like this: http://bitly.com/w5LAnh+)

Kaspersky Labs received two awards in the latest Computer Shopper comparative reviews. In the February edition, the leading UK computer equipment magazine (www.computershopper.co.uk), compared anti-virus products and Kaspersky

Kaspersky Labs product voted ‘Best Buy’ by the UK IT publication The latest edition of Computer Shopper, one of the most popular IT publications covering computer hardware and software in Britain, gave Kaspersky

Summer is for children the time for play, enjoying the holidays … as well as spending time at home in front of the computer playing games, web surfing and chatting with friends. It also comes as natural that pre-occupied parents can hardly watch over every cyber-step their kids and teens are taking online. Even though we encourage parents to discuss the potential dangers on the Internet with their children, and to help ESET has prepared some tips on how to keep kids safer in cyberspace.

More:
ESET Survey: Online Users See Dangers in Kids’ Internet Activities

Russian solution leads independent tests by the Spanish IT publication Computer Hoy…

See the article here:
Kaspersky Anti-Virus wins in Spain

BMP files can endanger your computer: Agent, a new Trojan using BMP files has been mailed to users worldwide

The rest is here:
Beware! BMP files may contain a new virus

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 5.0 awarded ProtectStar Computer Security Award 2004 by German consulting company.

Link:
Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal 5.0 continues winning streak in Germany

Kaspersky