I-BLOG

We’re at the top for all wrong reasons…. Still the top SPAM position to be acquired

According to a recent study of Internet threats by Network Box, India surpasses the US as the top most virus producer.

Globally, India alone is accountable for 13.74% of viruses, which was 9.5% in July, 2010. It is followed by Russia, which is at second place in August, 2010. Russia’s average rate of viruses on a daily basis increased from 4.01% in July, 2010, to a little bit above 11% in August, 2010.

As a virus producer, the US calculated for a rate over 8% of the entire detected by Network Box, which is considerably lesser than 14.65% in July, 2010. The UK virus levels also came down to 2.5% from 5% in July, 2010. Globally, the UK is now the seventh-largest producer of viruses, which was fourth in July, 2010.

The US retained its position as the world’s leader in generating spam, with a daily average of 12.2%. The other two positions were acquired by India ( second) with 7.69% and Brazil ( third) with 5.4%.

Network Box’s Internet Security Analyst, Simon Heron stated that, continuous change in such kind of data reflected the adaptability of cybercriminals, as reported by InfoSecurity on 31st Aug, 2010.

He also added that, the country sources of such kind of Internet threats moves every month, which reflected how fast the cybercriminals could shift their operations throughout the world and initiate attacks. Organizations are required to be alert and make sure that they are not attacked by hackers while using new applications and techniques.

It is also being reported by Network Box that the largest amount of firewall blocks stems from the US with 18.3% and Korea with 13%. While commenting on these findings, Simon Heron stated that it was amusing to see that UDP: 137 (NetBIOS’ name service) was the second most attacked port. It was absolutely necessary for the organizations to examine their firewall rules, as these data showed that there had to be some system available with this port open to the Internet, as reported by Malware Research Group on 31st August, 2010.

He also added that, web proxies were seemed to be worth checking as TCP: 8080 was third on the list, which showed that cybercriminals perceived this as another backdoor entry.

Source :: SPAMFighter

How often do you update the drivers for the computer/notebook? I did a Google search of this and found out 2 interesting things about it;

1. Users prefer not to update their drivers and the main reason is they are vary of issues that might happen once the new drivers are installed.

2. Users think of driver update the same way as Windows Update, in fact; I saw couple of forum comments mentioning about windows update can break system since M$ releases unstable stuff, so you have to wait.

Pretty much this seems to be the mindset for a lot of folks. Well, I’m a strong believer of update everything when an update is available. So I use for most purpose an aggregate updater service for my software/hardware.

I use Windows Update regularly.

I use 3rd party software upgrade aggregator like the one ‘filehippo.com’ provides. Also use the ‘Secunia PSI’ software – the use of this helps me in 2 ways. If there are instability in the programs, that is why the update is appearing in the first place (for example, take the adobe reader update to patch the vulnerability which was hot couple of weeks back. Secunia PSI helps identify outdated/old program files and helps us derive a score of the machine and helps finding out a download link for the updated software as well.

Now, when it comes to hardware drivers, I do the same thing. Had evaluated a lot of auto updaters/aggregators but seems most of them are paid versions (this is one area where there is not much choice), else it’d be requiring a lot of registration and uploading of your current drivers to that the database can be build (which I guess is good).

Recently I found out something good in this front too and from 2 days of evaluation, it looks like I’m going to keep it.

It is called SlimDrivers, tried it on both my home PC and laptop, it detected most of the drivers and above all, without any mistakes! My laptop is a standard Thinkpad T series and I have the nVidia Quadro NVS 140M. It is a pain to find an updated drivers for this from nVidia’s site itself, and filehippo.com updater makes mistake when it detects this too, after download – you may not be able to install it. However this time, with SlimDrivers; it was a breeze. It is still in beta and I hope they keep it free for ever. Try this out, it is cool.

They do have computer cleaner as well (pretty similar to CCleaner, looks almost the same).