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CONAKRY, Guinea — Ebola, one of the world's most deadly viruses, has spread from a remote forested corner of southern Guinea to the country's seaside capital, raising fears that the disease, which causes severe bleeding and almost always death, could spread far beyond this tiny West African nation's borders.

A team of UCLA-led researchers has identified a protein with broad virus-fighting properties that potentially could be used as a weapon against deadly human pathogenic viruses such as HIV, Ebola, Rift Valley Fever, Nipah and others designated "priority pathogens" for national biosecurity purposes by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. In a study published in the January issue of the journal Immunity, the researchers describe the novel antiviral property of the protein, cholesterol-25-hydroxylase (CH25H), an enzyme that converts cholesterol to an oxysterol called 25-hydroxycholesterol (25HC), which can permeate a cell's wall and block a virus from getting in....

Researchers have spotted a new banking Trojan subbed 'Tinba' that appears to have hit on a simple tactic for evading security - be as small as possible. An astonishing 20KB in size, Tinba ('Tiny Banker') retains enough sophistication to match almost anything that can be done by much larger malware types. Its main purpose is to burrow into browsers in order to steal logins, but it can also use 'obfuscated' (i.e disguised) web injection and man-in-the-browser to attempt to finesse two-factor web authentication systems. A particularly interesting feature is the way it tries to evade resident security, injecting itself into...

Avira has stirred up some controversy among users after deciding to display ads for a third-party registry cleaner within the free version of its antivirus product. Avira AntiVir Personal, the free solution offered by the German security vendor, is one of the most popular anti-malware products on the market today and has over 100 million users. It seems that Avira recently partnered up with Uniblue, the owners of ProcessLibrary.com, a database of information about Windows processes, and creators of several software products. The partnership between the two companies requires Avira to display ads for Uniblue RegistryBooster within AntiVir Personal. These...

First of the parasitic parasites to be discovered in a natural environment points to hidden diversity. A genomic survey of the microbial life in an Antarctic lake has revealed a new virophage — a virus that attacks viruses. The discovery suggests that these life forms are more common, and have a larger role in the environment, than was once thought. An Australian research team found the virophage while surveying the extremely salty Organic Lake in eastern Antarctica. While sequencing the collective genome of microbes living in the surface waters, they discovered the virus, which they dubbed the Organic Lake Virophage...

I would like to get information on the best possible courses to take. I also wanted to know if I indeed needed to take Medical Terminology to get a degree in Virology. If there are any virologists who would like to tutor me, that would be good too

A team at Oxford University has had success testing a vaccine that can neuter any strain of flu virus. Photograph: Science Photo Library The treatment ... targets a different part of the flu virus to traditional vaccines, meaning it does not need to be expensively reformulated every year to match the most prevalent virus that is circulating the world. Developed by a team led by Dr Sarah Gilbert at Oxford's Jenner Institute, the vaccine targets proteins inside the flu virus that are common across all strains, instead of those that sit on the virus's external coat, which are liable...

Enlarge Image Buried gem. Researchers have uncovered "fossil virus" inside the zebra finch genome. Credit: Peripitus/Wikimedia The hepatitis B virus and its ilk have been around for a long, long time. A newly uncovered "viral fossil" buried deep in the genome of the zebra finch indicates that the hepatitis B family of viruses—known as hepadnaviruses—originated at least 19 million years ago. Together with recent findings on other viruses, the work suggests that all viruses may be much older than thought. No one knows exactly where or when viruses originated. They don't leave fossils, so scientists have begun scouring the...

Justin Timberlake must have a thing for dangerous women. Last year, the Web's riskiest celebrity search was the pop star's current girlfriend starlet Jessica Biel. Cruise and Diaz rehearse stunts for their new movie, "Knight and Day."And this year, Timberlake's former flame Cameron Diaz took the top spot on Internet security firm McAfee's annual list of the most dangerous stars to search for on the Web. Look up one of these people and you almost invite computer viruses and worms to invade your computer. "It's sort of a little bit of rivalry from the traditional world going to the cyber...

HTC EVO rooted once again by using an exploit in Flash Player. Security concerns arise as users rejoice over being able to root their phones once again after the OTA update.

Has anyone in the last week gotten a computer virus from Antispyware Soft? It was a real bear to get rid of. I picked it up over the past weekend, and wondered if I could have possibly gotten it from FR or perhaps the alternate FR site when FR was inoperative sometime over the weekend. When I typed Start/run/msconfig and went to the start menu, there was an item ending in tssd.exe which is the virus. Also in start/run/regedit, there was AV Soft and AV Suite. After many times, restarting and unchecking tssd.exe, and running Microsoft Security Essentials, I believe...

I am sure that every person who has ever used a computer has had a moment or two when they wanted literally destroy the darn thing. Well imagine if you really did begin to pulverize your computer when all of a sudden things did not go quite the way you planned? Follow the link below to watch theVideo of the PC's Revenge.

About the content of Security Update 2010-003 Last Modified: April 14, 2010 Article: HT4131 Products Affected Product Security, Mac OS X Server 10.5, Mac OS X 10.5, Mac OS X 10.6, Mac OS X Server 10.6Security Update 2010-003 ATS CVE-ID: CVE-2010-1120 Available for: Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.3, Mac OS X Server v10.6.3 Impact: Viewing or downloading a document containing a maliciously crafted embedded font may lead to arbitrary code execution. Description: An unchecked index issue exists in Apple Type Services' handling of embedded fonts. Viewing or downloading a document containing a...

I find it interesting that one constituency, Lawyers, endeavors to Socialize another, Medical Doctors. Medical Doctors are currently getting out of the business. Fewer and fewer accept medicaid/medicare patients. Methink Lawyers should be "Socialized" as well: - Put them in a big pen. Call out at random. - Fees/compensation should be fixed as is planned for Doctors. - Attire: Government issued round straw hats and pajamas. Wigs? - Foods: simple, no wines. - Lodging: modest apartments. - Transportation: bicycles. This country has a stinking lawyer problem reflected in the biggest expense for a Medical Doctor: malpractice insurance. Legal harassment and...

The weird world of quantum mechanics describes the strange, often contradictory, behaviour of small inanimate objects such as atoms. Researchers have now started looking for ways to detect quantum properties in more complex and larger entities, possibly even living organisms. A German-Spanish research group, split between the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), is using the principles of an iconic quantum mechanics thought experiment - Schrödinger's superpositioned cat – to test for quantum properties in objects composed of as many as one billion atoms, possibly including the flu virus. New research...

Just as the healthcare drama in the capitol reaches a grand finale, congressional officials are warning employees to avoid the DRUDGE REPORT! The Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works issued an urgent email late Monday claiming the DRUDGE REPORT is 'responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate.' The committee ordered hill staff: 'Try to avoid' the DRUDGE REPORT 'for now'. On Monday DRUDGE served over 29 million pages with NOT ONE email complaint received about 'pop ups', or the site serving 'viruses'. The site was seen 149,967 times since March 1st from users at senate.gov and...

Research published in the journal Genetics suggests that mutagenic drugs designed to kill viruses may make them strongerAs the flu season continues in full-swing, most people can appreciate the need for drugs that stop viruses after they take hold in the body. Despite this serious need for new drugs, a team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin raise serious concerns about an emerging strategy for stopping viral infections. According to their research report appearing in the January 2010 issue of the journal GENETICS, medications that cause viruses to die off by forcing their nucleic acid to mutate...

In many worst case scenarios, a hard drive wipe is the final solution to ridding a system of an infection. But the absolute worst case scenario is if a virus attacks the BIOS, making detection and cleaning an incredible challenge. Viruses that target the BIOS arenÂ’t new, but often they are specific to a type of hardware. Researchers have now demonstrated a new type of attack that could install a rootkit on the BIOS of common systems, making it very lethal and effective. Anibal L. Sacco and Alfredo A. Ortego of Core Security Technologies released a presentation detailing the exploit...

There is this older Toshiba laptop running Windows XP. It loads but I can not log in. It says it is loading the settings but then it logs off, the desktop never loads. I tried safemode but AVG is hard to use in safe mode. There may be a virus but why would it do this? I think AVG may have quarantined a file the computer actually needs or something. Does anyone have a clue?

University of California, Davis, researchers studying the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, formerly referred to as "swine flu," have identified a group of immunologically important sites on the virus that are also present in seasonal flu viruses that have been circulating for years. These molecular sites appear to result in some level of immunity to the new virus in people who were exposed to the earlier influenza viruses. More than a dozen structural sites, or epitopes, in the virus may explain why many people over the age of 60, who were likely exposed to similar viruses earlier in life, carry antibodies...