More than 725,000 PCs were scanned using the Prevx CSI malware scanner over a two-month period. Of the around 291,000 users who scanned their PCs during October 2007, some form of spyware or malware was found on one in six.

Significantly, although rootkits were detected on 15.6% of PCs during October 2007, that figure had risen to 22% by early December.

Rootkits are often ‘dropped’ or buried by other infections.

They then modify a PC’s operating system to hide themselves from both the user and any security products installed on the computer.

By so doing rootkits can allow criminals to remotely monitor, record, modify, steal and transfer data from the victim’s PC.

Some rootkits are undetectable by conventional antivirus and antispyware applications. A tech-savvy user may believe his or her computer is ‘clean’, and unwittingly pass on increasingly valuable personal and financial data.

Since 1 December 2007, 114,891 new users have run Prevx CSI with rootkit-detection features enabled. Of those PCs, 1,678 had what Prevx describes as ’significant rootkit infections’.

That equates to 1.46% or approximately one in 70 systems, which is almost 15 times higher than the one in 1,000 rootkit-infected PCs previously estimated by industry experts.

Dubbed “S3200″, the faster communication technology is fully backward compatible and builds upon the existing 1394b standard ratified in 2002.

S3200 will also use the same cabling and equipment as FireWire 800, making for fast adoption and industry uptake.

S3200 will begin the ratification process in January, 2008, and is expected to be ratified in February, 2008. FireWire 800 products today deliver 90 MB/s of sustainable throughput.

With the anticipated 3% overhead, FireWire 3200 could deliver nearly 390 MB/s of usable data bandwidth, though a straight-forward 400% increase would be 360 MB/s.

That is enough to drive full 1920 x 1200 HDTV signals at up to 50 fps.

FireWire hard drives can move data on FireWire 800 nearly three times as fast as with USB 2.0.

With FireWire 3200, the advantages eSATA has today will be made moot.

FireWire also capable of providing much more electrical power for remote device operation than USB.

As a result, FireWire 3200 will be capable of not only communicating with a hard drive at eSATA speeds, but it will also be able to completely power it remotely at those speeds.

Current cable solutions, including long distance cables used for 100+ meter communications, will be used with the new protocol.

With full backward compatibility, the internal hardware components will be the only required upgrade parts necessary for system maker adoption.

Provided an equal sized unit can be created, it will literally be drop-in upgradeable.

As such, FireWire 3200 products should be available very soon after final ratification.

The corporation plans to release IE8 as a Crucial Update for users running the previous versions 6 and 7 respectivley.

This will happen the third week in April, but might be slightly later depending on testing.

The rollout will start for businesses then worldwide.

Microsoft also made changes to alerts that signal when an application needs attention.

The icon for a so-called “needy” application will now flash up to seven times, as opposed to the previous three, in an effort to grab the user’s attention.

Windows Vista, the company’s current Operating System, has failed to catch on with mainstream computer users while businesses have shunned it outright.

Many users have complained about Vista’s hardware requirements, intrusive security measures, and lack of compatibility with older applications.

Windows 2000 and ME were repackaged editions of Windows 98 hopefully Windows 7 a repack of Vista will be more accepted as a dependable new operating system.

Built on the technology of Windows NT 4.0 …. Windows XP is the best Windows eXPerience! 

This disease is now spreading to their latest tool; malware-infected media players.

We have reported on BitTorrent clients which install malware like Torrent101, BitRoll, TorrentQ and GetTorrent and do our very best to let people know the dangers of using such a product.

Unfortunately, as fast as we report such things, the malware peddlers create yet more bad clients with new names, with the same bad story.

However, these guys are very determined to get software such as CIDHELP on your machine, ready to watch your activities and to this end have become quite creative.Recently BitTorrent users are reporting that they have downloaded various pieces of video (usually a TV show) only to be confronted with a message during the first few seconds of the video which advises them to download a new media player called 3wPlayer, in order to view the rest of the file.

The displayed url directs the unsuspecting to the Play3W site, where they are given the chance of installing a shiny new media player.

3wPlayer
You will see that there is a ‘more’ button and when you install this player ‘more’ is exactly what you get – more malware in the form of CIDHELP, yet again.

It can be difficult task to uninstall it too, especially when you consider the veiled legal threat on the CIDHELP site – the vendor warns you could be in breach of the EULA if you try to remove it with your anti-spyware software. (Take no notice of this)

To get rid of the software, they advise to first turn off your anti-spyware software and re-install it, this is something one of my mates did – and when you re-installed the software your mouse stopped working, the desktop froze – a system restore had to be performed in safe mode as access to PC was denied – uninstalling this software was a total nightmare.

Consider yourself’s to be warned about this sort of malicious abuse by software, damaged by people who just want to ruin peoples systems.

It may seem that every pusher in the world is getting involved in the BitTorrent malware scene but a simple WHOIS (check who owns a site and registration) on all the domains hosting the torrent clients listed above, (Torrent101 for example) including the 3wPlayer site, shows that they are more than likely the same group of people, exploiting the less experienced members of the BitTorrent community.

Any questions or queries ask us – because if you dont it could be the last time you use your PC.

Anyone concerned about a particular torrent should take the time to read the user comments on the site where the torrent was downloaded from. This is why our admin staff including myself ask all members to leave comments – we can only help if we know about these problems.

Anyone needing a media player that will deal with almost any video format should consider the excellent VLC Media Player,and KMPlayer also good available for free download.

Those who still haven’t settled on a quality BitTorrent client will find everything they need by getting uTorrent. No spyware, adware or malware present in either product.

Thanks to Lesles for his valuable help in the community with spyware, viruses and malware resolutions to problems. 

Check the forum for the software we reccommend, Lesles also posted an article of which Anti-Spyware and Anti-Virus software removals are the best and which are the worst – you’ll be quite surprised where Microsoft’s Defender ended up 

Check comments link to the torrent your downloading to check whether a previous user has found this.

If this is the case some people wont report it to us – and if you report it to us we can remove it to continue great service to you, you could better your chances of becoming VIP for free – you help us we help you

The forum is packed with information from users just starting out to the more advanced users. Join in – be part of the community, you could even meet my sisters, check the forum!! 

What you are about to read is quite disturbing and people actually do this, causing other computer users to loose data, ruin systems and even businesses.

Computer users who are out to ruin computer systems could send you an E-mail with the subject of “your Online Life is Not Private”.

So you open up the E-mail and it reads:
QUOTE
“Do you trade files online? Then they will come after you. Search the news for RIAA and see what they are doing to people like you. Tor eliminates the trail that leads to you. Use this software to protect your privacy and your right to use the net. Download Tor [URL removed]” we removed the link for security (this is real)The link lead to a malware infested version of the file sharing app Tor, do not follow the link or download any files from that site!

Our admin staff at ExtraTorrent.com have reason to believe that a Worm E-mail might also be sent with much the same information except it reads “I see you on youtube. You naked there! Go look here.[URL removed]” (We removed the link for Security) The link will state “YouTube.com” but it actually links you to a server riddled with viruses and then you can kiss your computer system goodbye.

Our admin staff at ExtraTorrent.com have reason to believe that a Worm E-mail might also be sent with much the same information except it reads “We welcome any comments on any of our reports we issue for informational purposes, if you know something like this that we haven’t reported, please tell us and we can inform our community and other computer users alike. 

Symantec reported recently on a Trojan horse that mimics the Microsoft Windows activation interface. Called Trojan.Kardphisher, it doesn’t do most of the technical things that Trojans usually do: It’s purely a social-engineering attack, aimed at stealing credit card information.

In a sense, it’s a standalone phishing program.

Once you reboot, Kardphisher asks you to reactivate your copy of Windows, citing piracy issues and telling you that another user has activated your copy. Though it assures you that you will not actually be charged, it asks for credit card information.

If you don’t enter the credit card information, Kardphisher shuts down the PC. The Trojan also disables the Windows Task Manager, which makes it more difficult to shut the malware down.
Looks Pretty Official.

Running on the first reboot is clever. It makes the process look more like a legitimate message coming from Microsoft, and it won’t seem to occur as a result of the user clicking on a new file. The program even runs on versions of Windows that were made prior to XP and do not require activation. That’s a bit of a red flag, although I bet there’s a strong correlation between people running pre-XP versions of Windows and people who aren’t as well educated about malware as they could be .

With a nearly 1MB executable, Kardphisher is not a sneak attack. But if you find yourself infected, disable the Trojan in Windows Safe mode by removing the Registry keys described in Symantec’s write-up (Check their website), search on the malware name and deleting the program they point to.

Updated antivirus software should also remove it.

Ad-Aware 2007 is a small but powerful Anti-Spyware remover and is very easy to use, using the link below you can download the actual Ad-Aware 2007 Software package and then update it to the existing Definition File.

Definition File is what Ad-Aware 2007 uses to check the most updated versions of spyware is around and can remove it – if you are running Ad-Aware 2007 with an out-dated version of its Definition File – its not going to do anyone any good.

A bit like Anti-Virus removal software – you can only detect the recent viruses created with an updated or existing file definition.

We recommend this software. 

Download from torrents: Download here