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Is Mozilla’s Firefox 5 a More Stable Browser Than Its Predecessor?

Mozilla Firefox 5.0

Mozilla Firefox 5.0

This week’s release of the Firefox 5 browser came shockingly fast for Mozilla. Firefox 4 came out of beta barely 3 months ago–the previous numbered release, Firefox 3, was released way back in 2008.

A quick look at the features and improvements in Firefox 5 however reveals what the Mozilla foundation did to accomplish the fast release: There are some significant upgrades under the hood, but this is really more of a 4.1 release than a full new version of the browser.

However, the big news is that the release of Firefox 5 may finally solve the stability issues users have complained about since the beta builds of Firefox 4. When the Mozilla foundation released the last major overhaul of Firefox back in March, it was a huge step forward for the browser. The update brought with it a host of new features like improved tab navigation and the ability to sync bookmarks across multiple computers.

Perhaps most importantly, Firefox 4 improved the speed of the browser which had been lagging in recent years.

However, Firefox 4 also brought a lot of complaints about random crashes. A user named bigdaddyken on Mozilla’s support forums posted that “firefox 4 crashes constantly, on opening, different pages, etc. Old firefox worked fine.” More than one thousand users reported the same issue, and this report was only one of many crash complaints on the forums.

PCWorld users have also had problems with the browser. In a comment on our early hands-on with Firefox 4 report, user xvMATTLEEvx said “Sure it has added features but that is just to keep up with everyone else it’s nothing innovative like Mozilla used to be. On top of that Firefox 4.0 is suffering the same crashes and memory spikes Firefox 2.0 suffered. I am talking without add-ons not with add-ons.”

Firefox 5 Feature List

The list of Firefox 5′s new features isn’t exactly designed to thrill. It’s headed by “added support for CSS animations” and features other improvements like “improved discoverability of the Do-Not-Track privacy feature preference” and “improved spell checking for some locales.”

Clearly the features listed here aren’t the real news in Firefox 5. Users will probably be a lot more excited by the list of hundreds of bug fixes that come along with Firefox 5. While there is some reason to worry that this rapid update strategy brings as many problems with it as it solves, with any luck, these bug fixes will make Firefox 5 as crash-proof as it is fast.

Today, we asked our Facebook page users if they had any similar problems with Firefox 4 and quickly got more than 40 responses like Irving Cool who says “FF4 crashes a lot :S” or Wali Khan who stated his “New Firefox crashes every 5 minutes.”

Let’s hope Firefox 5 really solves the problems.

Get Firefox

If you need a fresh new copy of Firefox, you can get it here:

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The Best Antivirus Software in 2011, According to PC Magazine

The Best Antivirus Software in 2011

Best Antivirus Software, 2011

Antivirus vendors have included “2011″ in their product names since the summer of 2010. Now that the year 2011 has actually arrived it’s time for a new look at the whole collection. Several of the latest additions attempt to crank up protection by running two different antivirus engines, and some actually succeed. This batch also brings a new Editors’ Choice for free antivirus and a new shared Editors’ Choice for commercial antivirus.

As always, when I say “antivirus” I mean a utility that protects against all kinds of malicious software, not just viruses. Trojans, spyware, rootkits, keyloggers, adware, scareware – a proper antivirus must handle all of these.

Standalone or Suite?
Many of this year’s products blur the line between standalone antivirus and security suite. In the past the presence of a personal firewall has been one defining suite element; not any more. There’s a fully-functional firewall inside Panda Antivirus Pro 2011. eScan Anti-Virus 11 and McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2011 also offer firewall protection. Norton AntiVirus 2011 doesn’t include a complete firewall, but its intrusion prevention feature is more effective against exploits than most full-blown suites.

Spam filtering is another component typically found in a suite. The spam filter built into BullGuard Antivirus 10 is reasonably accurate and unusually helpful at setup time. eScan also offers a spam filter, but it’s not something you’d want to inflict on your Inbox.

StopSign Internet Security 1.0 includes an optional firewall with spam filtering built in. None of the independent labs have tested it, though, and its performance in my own malware blocking and removal tests was so poor that I didn’t bother evaluating those optional features.

BitDefender Antivirus Pro 2011 offers full remote management of other BitDefender installations across the network. McAfee can monitor other installations remotely and fix problems. Panda and Norton can at least let you know when another installation has problems, though they won’t fix those problems remotely.

BitDefender includes a very effective phishing prevention tool, as does G Data AntiVirus 2011. The LinkScanner component in AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011 also works to block phishing sites, as does McAfee’s SiteAdvisor. AVG and Norton both scan the links on your Facebook pages to protect you from Facebook scams and viruses. BitDefender and Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 both check your system for security vulnerabilities, though BitDefender takes the concept a bit farther.

Outpost Antivirus Pro 7.0 and BitDefender can block transmission of user-defined private data, a feature usually found only in suites. Ad-Aware Pro Internet Security 9.0, AVG, Kaspersky, and McAfee will tune system performance and wipe out traces of computer and Internet use. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that the product is “only” an antivirus, not a full suite.

The true standalone antivirus isn’t dead, however. For example, F-Secure Anti-Virus 2011 sticks to the business of virus protection without any sign of morphing into a mini-suite.

Twin-Engine Trend
Several late-season additions aim to double your protection by using two antivirus engines, with varying degrees of success. G Data’s dual scan doesn’t take much longer than the average single-engine product, and it includes powerful phishing protection. However, it doesn’t thoroughly clean up the threats it detects, and a failed cleanup effectively killed one test system. TrustPort Antivirus 2011 ran a bit slower than G Data and failed significantly in my testing. After its alleged removal some threats were still running. In the malware blocking test a few threats that it claimed to block managed to install and launch anyway.

Double Anti-Spy Professional v2 turned in the best performance of the twin-engine antivirus tools. It scans first with one engine, then with the other, and it also requires two separate updates. It’s noticeably slow, but effective enough that it’s worth waiting for.

Adjustable Interfaces, Built-in Support
Some users want to hear about every little security event, but most prefer a product that just does the job, without making a fuss. Ad-Aware Pro appeals to both with a choice of simple or advanced mode. BitDefender goes even further. Not only can its users choose basic, intermediate or expert view, they can build a personal collection of their most-used tools.

Webroot AntiVirus with Spy Sweeper 2011 totally focuses on keeping everything as simple as possible. It updates automatically, scans while the system is idle, and interacts with the user through a completely redesigned interface. All the detail a tech-savvy user might want is available, but hidden when not needed.

The user interface for Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus + 2011 discards the standard landscape-orientation window for a skinny vertical panel that takes up minimal space. McAfee, too, has switched to a vertical interface.

Norton reserves a panel across the bottom of its main window for interaction and communication with other security components. Initially the panel shows an interactive world map of security activity, but it can also connect with Norton Safe Web for Facebook or with your Norton Online Backup account.

Built-in and automated support features grace many of these tools. BitDefender includes a search box for help topics right on its main screen; a built-in tool will gather system information and contact an agent for chat-based support. Norton’s one-click support system gathers diagnostics and offers relevant FAQs or chat-based support. Kaspersky’s built-in support tool can send diagnostic reports to the company and process purpose-built scripts to fix specific problems. Panda’s PSCAN lets remote analysts request samples and push fixes without requiring full chat-type interaction. BullGuard offers built-in access to e-mail and live chat support with a message center to manage your support interactions. eScan links to live chat and online help.

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Top 10 Security Threats for 2011

Top Ten Security Threats - 2011

Top Ten Security Threats

Imperva announced their predictions for the top ten security trends for 2011 which have been compiled to help IT security professionals defend their organization against the next onslaught of cyber security threats.

The trends have been detailed below:

1. Nation-sponsored hacking: When APT meets industrialization
Nation-sponsored hacking specifically-targeted cyber attacks will incorporate concepts and techniques from the commercial hacker industry. These campaigns will contain a different malware payload than the traditional attacks conducted for monetary gain. However, these attacks will use similar techniques. These Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks will borrow techniques, such as automation and viral distribution, making them all the more powerful and potentially more successful. An example of such an attack is Stuxnet, which was not searching for data to monetize, rather it was focused on gaining control of crucial infrastructure.

Both classes of attack (hacker industry and APT) are going to use some of the same techniques so some security controls are applicable to both. On the positive side, given you’re covered against the cyber mafia you should have some of the controls to be protected from certain APT attacks. As APT is persistent, if a certain attack does not succeed, another one will come into play. The traditional security controls do not deter these relentless, state-sponsored hacker organizations. For the enterprise as well as government, this means increasing monitoring of traffic and setting security controls across all organization layers.


2. The insider threat is much more than you had imagined
In this upcoming year, we expect to see a growing awareness to security incidents of an “insider job” nature. Attention will grow as a consequence of an increased flow of incident reports where data theft and security breaches are tied to employees and other insiders. The cause of this trend will be the emphasis put on new regulations covering the act of notification and disclosure (rather on the actual protection of data).

To deter insider threats, organizations should therefore:

  • Enforce access controls such that access is based only a business need-to-know level. This includes eliminating excessive privileges.
  • Provide the proper access auditing tools to data centers. These auditing tools should monitor who accesses what data

3. Man in the Browser attacks will man up
Man in the Browser (MitB) attack sophistication is going to increase, as well as moving forward to more types of online applications. As a consequence, more online service providers are going to include this in their list of priorities for 2011, shifting the responsibility for mitigating the risk from the consumers to the service providers.

While avoiding infection by proxy Trojans is presumably the responsibility of consumers, MitB attacks are quickly becoming a concern of online service providers. The actual rate of infection and the proliferation of the many types of MitB malware suggest that providers must be able to serve (and protect) customers who might be infected with one type of malware or another. Just as the evolution of vehicle safety drove manufacturers to include device such as ABS, Air Bags and ESP, rather than rely on us to drive carefully, so will online service providers need to invest in mechanisms that allow them to conduct business with allegedly infected consumers. Among the technologies that we foresee as helpful are strong device identification, client profiling, fast security code evolution, session flow tracking and site-to-client authentication.

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Fake AV, SEO Poisoning Top Malware Threats

ZDNet's Scareware GuideAttackers increasingly focused on fake antivirus and black-hat SEO techniques to target victims on the Web in April.

The volume of malware continued to increase in April as online scammers and malware distributors took advantage of major events according to security experts. Fake antivirus software and poisoned image search links were particularly prevalent in April.

There were over 73,000 new variants of malware released daily in April, a 26 percent increase over April 2010, GFI Software found in its monthly analysis released May 16. Cyber-criminals exploited several high-profile events, including the U.K. Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Easter holiday, the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space and the release of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

Seven of the top 10 malware threats were Trojans, according to GFI’s top 10 malware list for the month. Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT, a generic malware classification that encompasses a variety of Trojans, continued to be the biggest threat, accounting for over 20 percent of total malware detected. The Zeus/Spyeye Trojan and fake antivirus were also part of the top 10. [click to continue…]

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Symantec claims spam continuing its downward spiral

Symantec Security

The latest state of spam and phishing report from Symantec claims to show that spam levels are continuing to fall in the wake of the takedown of the Rustock botnet back in March of this year.

The report appears to confirm reports from the BBC and security researcher Brian Krebs, although the slightly bad news is that phishing volumes appear to be up.

Delving into the statistics from the report shows that March spam dropped by 27.4% in that month, along with a further drop of 5.4% in April.

This means that spam now accounts for 74.8% of all email messages – a significant drop on the 89.2% figure noted in April last year, Infosecurity notes.

Phishing levels, however, rose by 15.6% in April says Symantec, noting that this growth was fuelled by a rise in phishing websites created by attack kits, which increased by 26.2%.

According to the security vendor’s report, many of the phishing attacks seen exploited the death of Osama bin Laden and spoofed legitimate media brands as the source to create trust and a feeling of authenticity.

These attacks, notes the report, attempted to trick users into clicking on links that supposedly led to uncensored photos and videos from the raid but instead pointed to malicious files or poisoned web pages.

Phishing attacks do appear to be taking over from spam, as the report notes that phishing emails that used unique URLs increased by 12.3% during April.

Phishing websites with IP domains instead of alphanumeric ‘regular’ web addresses, also increased slightly during April by about 5.5%, and web hosting services comprised 12.0% of all phishing, a massive increase of 10.3% from the previous month.

Interestingly, Symantec found that 89.0% of the phishing sites were hosted on free web hosting sites, whilst 13.0% were typosquatting – typosquatting refers to the practice of registering domain names that are typo variations of popular websites.

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Top 10 Malware Threats reported by GFI Software for February

According to GFI Application, a trend observed since last summer continued, with lots of of the same types of Trojan horses continuing to dominate the threat landscape. GFI’s statistics revealed that Trojans made up three of the top 10 malware threats in February 2011. Topping the list, Trojans detected as Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT accounted for 22.97 percent of total detections, holding its spot as the number one threat.

GFI Application has announced the top 10 most prevalent malware threats for the month of February 2011 as detected by scans performed by its anti-malware solution, VIPRE Antivirus, & its antispyware gizmo, CounterSpy.

These Trojans are downloaders associated with rogue security programs known as Fake Antivirus application, sometimes known as “scareware”. One time they are on a use’s process, these programs perform a fake scan of a victim’s computer for malware then display false warnings that the machine is infected in an try to persuade victims to buy fake security application.

The top 10 results represent the number of times a specific malware infection was detected in the coursework of GFI’s VIPRE & CounterSpy scans that document back to GFI’s community of opt-in users. These threats are classified as moderate to extreme based on process of installation among other criteria established by GFI Labs.

Top 10 Detections for February 2011 as reported by GFI Software:

1
 Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT Trojan
22.97%
2
 Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen Trojan
3.46%
3
 Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra Trojan
2.89%
4
 Zugo LTD (v) Adware
2.52%
5
 Fraudtool.Win32.Securityshield.ek!c (v) Trojan
2.00%
6
 Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 Trojan
1.72%
7
 INF.Autorun (v) Trojan
1.66%
8
 Worm.Win32.Downad.Gen (v) Worm
1.48%
9
 Pinball Corporation (v) Adware
1.19%
10
 Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) PDF exploit
0.83%

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Google, Yahoo, And MySpace Ads May Infect Computers

Infected Search?

Infected Search?

Antivirus company Avast alleges that ads served by companies such as Google, Yahoo! and Fox, and published on websites such as the New York Times and TechCrunch, have included bad software that could infect your computer.

Users don’t even have to click the ads to be affected. Their browser gets infected just from loading the ads. CNet has the story.

The report allegs these companies’ ad platforms include exploits that allow malicious hackers to run a JavaScript exploit called JS:Prontexi.

Prontexi is a Trojan horse targeting Windows machines that looks for further vulnerabilities in software such as Adobe’s Reader and Acrobat, Java, QuickTime and Flash. It pops up fake antivirus warnings to trick you into installing further malware. The malware started spreading in late December. Since then, Avast has found it has infected more than 2.6 million computers. Almost 530,000 of those were from Yield Manager and more than 16,300 from DoubleClick.

The worst affected are Yahoo!’s Yield Manager, Fox Audience Network’s Firmserve.com and Google’s DoubleClick. Together, these networks serve over 50% of all internet ads. DoubleClick has been the least affected and Google has been the fastest at tackling the problem, according to CNet and Avast.

A Yahoo representative confirmed the report and said it was investigating the situation, but didn’t provide much information. “We have identified the creatives in question and are working to make sure they been deactivated in our system,” the company said in a statement.

“Yahoo is deeply committed to providing a high-quality experience for users, advertisers, and publishers. We expect our members to support and abide by our standards and guidelines around acceptable ad content and behavior,” the statement said. “On the rare occasion that an ad is served that is in conflict with our expectations and guidelines we take action to remove it as quickly as possible.”

A Google spokesman said the company had discovered malware in ads from DoubleClick on its own and halted them. “In this case, we stopped several of the ads in question on the same day, independent of this report,” he said.

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Spread Firefox Co-Founder Slams Tech Giants for Stealth Plug-Ins

Spread Firefox's Asa Dotzler

Spread Firefox's Asa Dotzler

Asa Dotzler, co-founder of the Spread Firefox project, is more than a little miffed at Apple, Google, Microsoft, and RockMelt for installing plug-ins into Firefox without first asking for permission from Web surfers.

Dotzler made the stealth plug-in discovery when he installed software like Apple iTunes, Google Chrome, and Windows Live Photo Gallery.

“When I installed iTunes, in order to manage my music collection and sync to my iPod, why did Apple think it was OK to add the iTunes Application Detector plug-in to my Firefox web browser without asking me?” he asked in a blog post.

“Why did Microsoft think it was OK to sneak their Windows Live Photo Gallery or Office Live Plug-in for Firefox into my browser (presumably) when I installed Microsoft Office? What makes Google think it’s reasonable behavior for them to slip a Google Update plug-in into Firefox when I installed Google Earth or Google Chrome (not sure which one caused this) without asking me first?” he asked.

Firefox stealth plug-in and extension security issues

Microsoft, Google and Apple install plug-ins without user's permission

Dotzler compared the companies to those that manufacture malware, as a secondary software installation occurred without user permission.

“These additional pieces of software installed without my consent may not be malicious but the means by which they were installed was sneaky, underhanded, and wrong.”

The Firefox advocate had some strong advice for the offending companies. “Microsoft, stop being evil. Apple, stop being evil. Google, stop being evil. And you upstarts like RockMelt, don’t follow in those evil footsteps.”

RockMelt, Microsoft, and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Google representative said the Firefox browser plug-in is simply Google Update, which automatically pushes software updates to Google products. The representative stated that Google utilizes this method as a non-intrusive way to deliver updates, and that it doesn’t constantly run, eating up CPU resources.

Update: A Microsoft spokesperson replied to our inquiry with the following statement: “We use web/open standards where possible. To reach as many customers as possible with our web experiences, we use HTML/JS/CSS and try to avoid plug-ins. Office Web Apps are a great example of this. Sometimes we need plug-ins to enable key features. For example, Silverlight improves animations in PPT web app, Office 2010 plug-in lets people switch from web editing to Office 2010 on the desktop to do video editing etc.”

Dotzler’s blog post was first reported by The Register.

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Watch Out For Fake Virus Alerts

Watch out for fake virus alerts

Watch out for fake virus alerts

Rogue security software, also known as “scareware,” is software that appears to be beneficial from a security perspective but provides limited or no security, generates erroneous or misleading alerts, or attempts to lure users into participating in fraudulent transactions.

How does rogue security software get on my computer?

Rogue security software designers create legitimate looking pop-up windows that advertise security update software. These windows might appear on your screen while you surf the Web.

The “updates” or “alerts” in the pop-up windows call for you to take some sort of action, such as clicking to install the software, accept recommended updates, or remove unwanted viruses or spyware. When you click, the rogue security software downloads to your computer.

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Rogue security software might also appear in the list of search results when you are searching for trustworthy antispyware software, so it is important to protect your computer.

What does rogue security software do?

Rogue security software might report a virus, even though your computer is actually clean. The software might also fail to report viruses when your computer is infected. Inversely, sometimes, when you download rogue security software, it will install a virus or other malicious software on your computer so that the software has something to detect.

Some rogue security software might also:

  • Lure you into a fraudulent transaction (for example, upgrading to a non-existent paid version of a program).
  • Use social engineering to steal your personal information.
  • Install malware that can go undetected as it steals your data.
  • Launch pop-up windows with false or misleading alerts.
  • Slow your computer or corrupt files.
  • Disable Windows updates or disable updates to legitimate antivirus software.
  • Prevent you from visiting antivirus vendor Web sites.


Rogue security software might also attempt to spoof the Microsoft security update process. Here’s an example of rogue security software that’s disguised as a Microsoft alert but that doesn’t come from Microsoft.

Example of a warning from a rogue security program known as AntivirusXP.

Example of a warning from a rogue security program known as AntivirusXP.

For more information about this threat, including analysis, prevention and recovery, see the Trojan:Win32/Antivirusxp entry in the Microsoft Malware Protection Center encyclopedia.

Here is the legitimate Microsoft Windows Security Center:

Screenshot of legitimate Microsoft Windows Security Center

Screenshot of legitimate Microsoft Windows Security Center

To help protect yourself from rogue security software:

  • Install a firewall and keep it turned on.
  • Use automatic updating to keep your operating system and software up to date.
  • Install antivirus and antispyware software such as Avast! Antivirus and keep it updated.
  • If your antivirus software does not include antispyware software, you should install a separate antispyware program such as Windows Defender and keep it updated. (Windows Defender is available as a free download for Windows XP and is included in Windows Vista.)
  • Use caution when you click links in e-mail or on social networking Web sites.
  • Use a standard user account instead of an administrator account.
  • Familiarize yourself with common phishing scams.

If you think you might have rogue security software on your computer:

Scan your computer. Use your antivirus software or do a free scan with Windows Live safety scanner. The safety scanner checks for and removes viruses, eliminates junk on your hard drive, and improves your PC’s performance.

Need help with virus and malware removal? Have questions about computer cleanup and system optimization? Call me at 262-203-4459. Or you can contact me here.

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Microsoft: Biggest Patch Tuesday Ever

Microsoft plans biggest Patch Tuesday ever

Microsoft plans biggest Patch Tuesday ever

Microsoft is due to issue its biggest ever Patch Tuesday, with 16 bulletins set to be addressed.

Microsoft has planned its biggest ever Patch Tuesday for October, with a total of 49 vulnerabilities set to be fixed. This is over three times the number of security holes fixed in last month’s Patch Tuesday.

Of the 16 bulletins, four have been rated critical, where the flaws could lead to remote code execution. These four affected all versions of Windows.

One of the critical vulnerabilities affects Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8, whilst two of the flaws, classed as “important,” affected Microsoft Office – one for Word and one for Excel on all platforms.

This Patch Tuesday announcement also marked the first time Microsoft Word 2010 had been included in an advisory.

The vulnerabilities are due to be patched on 12 October.

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