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Ebola, Marburg viruses edit genetic material during infectionFiloviruses like Ebola "edit" genetic material as they invade their hosts, according to a study published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The work, by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Galveston National Laboratory, and the J. Craig Venter Institute, could lead to a better understanding of these viruses, paving the way for new treatments down the road. Using a laboratory technique called deep sequencing, investigators set out to investigate filovirus replication and transcription, processes involved in the virus...

On a day-to-day basis, we encounter far too many small businesses who have accepted viruses and other malware as an unavoidable part of their life. Their machines are constantly having problems, the anti-virus finds malware every week (assuming there is anti-virus), and they have lots of unexplainable "weird" little issues. Unfortunately, the given wisdom of the industry seems to focus on anti-virus, anti-spyware, content-scanning, and other for-pay services and products. However, common sense preventative maintenance is almost never suggested as a low-cost alternative. It doesn't have to be that way! REACTIVE VS. PREVENTATIVE The typical approaches encountered to combat malware...

What began as a ninth-grade prank, a way to trick already-suspicious friends who had fallen for his earlier practical jokes, has earned Rich Skrenta notoriety as the first person ever to let loose a personal computer virus. Although over the next 25 years, Skrenta started the online news business Topix, helped launch a collaborative Web directory now owned by Time Warner Inc. (TWX)'s Netscape and wrote countless other computer programs, he is still remembered most for unleashing the "Elk Cloner" virus on the world. "It was some dumb little practical joke," Skrenta, now 40, said in an interview. "I guess...

Users who put their faith in Vista's new security features and Microsoft's Windows Defender antispyware product may find themselves under attack from spyware all the same, according to the results of a study by Webroot, a leading antispyware vendor and Microsoft competitor. On Thursday, the company released the results of what it claimed was a two-week study of Windows Defender that showed the product missed 84 percent of a sample set of 25 spyware and malicious code samples. The programs that slipped by were a mix of spyware, Trojan horse programs, and keyloggers. While many were not Vista compatible and...

We’ve all been hearing a lot about secure applications recently, or more accurately about insecure applications; specifically those that are exploited in identity theft raids or that we can be “tricked” into running on our PCs.Insecure applications are such a problem that Microsoft has spent the last five years and many millions of dollars re-engineering its operating system and much of its other software in order to improve the situation [and can one ever really overcome the temptation to bolt-on security to a fundamentally insecure design, in pursuit of “backwards compatibility”, in such circumstances – Ed].Other software providers are doing...

Over the last four years, I've been saying that instant messaging (IM) is a security threat waiting to happen. While a few random computer viruses over the years have exploited IMs, there's been a definite uptick in IM-borne virus activity within the last few weeks. Most of these IM-borne viruses have targeted MSN Messenger, although the ever popular AOL IM is not without its own problems. Microsoft's recent announcement regarding greater IM capabilities within Microsoft Office, however, could set the stage for faster and more efficient computer virus attacks in the very near future.

A malicious script that spies on Apple Mac users was discovered over the weekend. The malware, which has been dubbed ‘Opener’ by Mac user-groups, disables Mac OS X’s built-in firewall, steals personal information and can destroy data. Security experts say these traits are common among the thousands of viruses targeting Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system but are virtually unheard of amongst the Apple Macintosh community. Paul Ducklin, Sophos’ head of technology in the Asia Pacific, told ZDNet Australia that the malware, which Sophos calls Renepo, is designed to infect any Mac OS X drives connected to the infected system and...

To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it. We've all heard it many times when a new Microsoft virus comes out. In fact, I've heard it a couple of times this week already. Someone on a mailing list or discussion forum complains about the latest in a long line of Microsoft email viruses or worms and recommends others consider Mac OS X or Linux as a somewhat safer computing platform. In response, another person named, oh, let's call him "Bill," says, basically, "How...

COMMENTARY--Yep, it's Windows vs Linux time again. as usual, the facts go out the window in a points-scoring battle that completely ignores the important issues. At the annual Tech Ed conference in mid-August, Microsoft's chief security strategist Scott Charney said "Half of all crashes in Windows are caused not by Microsoft code, but third-party code". Why would he say that? For about a year, Microsoft has been implementing its Trustworthy Computing initiative, and has gone to great effort to improve its practices and get better security and reliability in its products. Being Microsoft, a lot of the work has gone...

Experts Say New Sobig Virus Could Strike Any Day 17 minutes ago Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo! SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A new version of the Sobig.F e-mail virus that has plagued computers worldwide could arrive any day, even before the latest variant is timed to expire on Sept. 10, security experts said on Monday. Related Quotes SYMCDJIANASDAQ^SPC 54.309317.641764.31993.71 -0.44-31.23-1.01+0.65 delayed 20 mins - disclaimerQuote Data provided by Reuters   "Another virus could be released any time," said Steve Trilling, research director with the Security Response Team at Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq:SYMC - news), a U.S.-based security company. "We can...

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 08, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- In a 173-page dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix says Baghdad may possess about 10,000 liters of anthrax, Scud missile warheads filled with deadly biological and chemical agents, and drones that far exceed the 150-kilometer (93-mile) limit. The report, obtained late Friday by The Associated Press, traces the history of Iraq's weapons programs and outlines the many areas where questions remain - many old but some new. Blix told the Security Council earlier in the day that he planned to cull the document...

"Opening the Open-Source Debate" The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI) has finally published its white paper entitled "Opening the Open Source Debate". My earlier comments were based on media reports and e-mail correspondence with the paper's author. This document was written after I read the actual white paper. (The original link seems not to work; I managed to grab a copy of the paper before AdTI pulled it. This link may work.) The AdTI's very weak and poorly-researched paper opens no debate. It simply confirms that Microsoft paid AdTI to come up with something---anything---to stem the growing adoption of open-source...