La Piazza

Published by José Manuel Bernal, October 27th 2010

We are happy to announce that we just released Panda Cloud Antivirus version 1.3.

This new version of Panda Cloud Antivirus has been made possible thanks to our large community of users and specially to our Support Forum Trusted Mods who have helped a lot of users and gathered enough feedback to incorporate major improvements as well as many different bug fixes. All new features have been included in both the Free and Pro Edition.

If you have Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.1.0, 1.1.1 or 1.1.2, you will get the upgrade automatically and transparently.

If you don’t have Panda Cloud Antivirus installed yet you can download it from www.cloudantivirus.com

What’s new at the latest Cloud Antivirus version?

The new Cloud AV version includes:

• Malicious Web & URL Filtering. This feature blocks websites that push malware, exploits and drive-by downloads. It is available both in Free and in Pro Editions and is installed by the toolbar. Unlike similar solutions, this web filtering works at a low level so it works under all browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.For those of you that didn’t install the toolbar but would like to install the Web & URL Filtering, you can download it from here and install it manually.

• Unified Recycle Bin and Quarantine. Previously the Recycle Bin handled suspicious detections and the Quarantine handled deleted malware detections. This has been unified into a new Recycle Bin for ease of management. This is included in both Free and Pro Editions.

• Automatic and transparent upgrades to new product versions, previously only available in the Pro Edition, this is now available in the Free Edition as well. All users of Free Editions versions 1.1.0, 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 will automatically and transparently upgrade to the new 1.3. See notes below for the upgrade schedule.

• No more nagging advertising. After listening to many of you we have decided to turn off the nagging advertising popups prompting to upgrade to Pro Edition. If you want to support Panda Cloud Antivirus and wish to get the Pro Edition, you can do so from here, but we won’t bug you anymore from the popups.

• Hot updating of behavioural blocking rules. In order to increase protection on the fly against new vulnerabilities and attacks and to fix false positives, hot updating of behavioural blocking rules allows faster response time in both the Free and Pro Editions.

• Immediate notifications of virus detections. Previously if Panda Cloud Antivirus encountered multiple viruses, it would delay its traybar notification and show them grouped. This behaviour has been changed so that the notifications are shown immediately.

• Suspicious detection counter. Under the statistics window there’s some new counters for the different types of heuristics and behavioural detections.

• New versioning format. Unified versioning format in GUI and other parts of the program.

• Many bugfixes as reported by users in our support forum:

1. Fixed issue with Windows 7 Start menu slow-down.
2. Fixed Panda traybar icon disappearing.
3. Fixed “you are not connected to the Internet” message when there is connection.
4. Fixed issue when Free Edition users can activate behavioural analysis.
5. Fixed slow-down and conflicts while playing Allods Online and AION.
6. Fixed cloud-response time configuration which defaults to 30 seconds.
7. Fixed constant accesses to the floppy disk drive.
8. Fixed BSOD issue after install.
9. Fixed bug while exporting an empty report to TXT/CSV.
10. Fixed Conficker detection.
11. Fixed BSOD while compressing malicious PDFs.
12. Fixed translation errors.

Panda Cloud Antivirus version free and Panda Cloud Antivirus version paid

The basic version will remain free, and those who wants to buy superior version with more features and tech support can pay for the Pro one for 29,95.

Panda Cloud Antivirus Support Forum

I’d like to encourage anybody who needs help to contact me or any other moderator through our support forum. I am sure we can be of great help to answer any questions you might have.

You will have a whole support team available to you, including the following moderators: intrepid44, Shadowman, swejuggalo, Ibrad09, GoneToPlaid, budee and kilps. Also, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them all for their great job.

Take part in the forum and tell us your opinion!

Note: More information in Panda Cloud Antivirus Blog

Posted by Blanca Carton, October 2010

I have some very good news to share with you. The new Panda Antivirus for Mac is now available to you.

Panda Antivirus for Mac offers complete protection against viruses and other Internet threats to Mac users, who are now just as vulnerable to infections as PC users.

With the globalization of the Internet, nobody is safe from threats, and Panda Security delivers the protection that Mac users need.

Features & Benefits

Real-time protection – Panda Antivirus for Mac protects your computer in real time against infections. Whenever an infection is detected and blocked. Malware is automatically sent to quarantine.
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Smart, automatic updates – Panda Antivirus for Mac updates the virus signature file via the Internet to protect your Mac from the latest threats.
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Quarantine- Every time Panda Antivirus for Mac detects an infection, the file is sent to quarantine. So files are easily recovered and restored in the event of false positives.
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Minimum resource consumption – Threats are neutralized without impacting the system. Panda Antivirus for Mac works silently in the background, minimizing resource consumption.
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Powerful scanning capacity – Panda Antivirus for Mac scans for malware in other Mac products, such as iPad, iPhone and iPod touch when they are connected to the Mac.
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We have prepared a specific section on the Support Web page with information about Panda Antivirus for Mac product and the most relevant FAQs.

Also, starting today, our support forum includes a specific area where you will find the answer to any questions you might have.

Tell us your opinion!

Published by Javier Guerrero,  October 2010

We use the term malware to refer generically to the multiple threats to which IT systems are exposed every day. However, this word covers a whole range of concepts with which, on the whole, most users are unfamiliar.

Although this is perfectly understandable (one of my favorite maxims is that “you don’t need to be mechanic to drive a car”), it’s not a bad idea to have an understanding of the mechanisms used by the different types of malware. So let’s start with something simple: keyloggers.

A keylogger is simply a component (generally software, although hardware-based keyloggers also exist) that registers keystrokes on a keyboard without the user’s knowledge.

Not too nasty really, is it? Nothing could be further from the truth. Keyloggers are used to steal information entered by users, such as:

• User names and passwords for starting OS sessions social network credentials.
• Credit card numbers. Keyloggers are a crucial element of many banker Trojans that steal this type of data and send it to hackers, who profit financially at the expense of unwitting users.In fact, most banks now implement measures in their Web services to protect against this threat, such as virtual keyboards.

In any event, the advice that we generally give for other types of malware also applies for keyloggers:

• Don’t download or run files from dubious sources
• Only browse trusted sites
• Use a good, up-to-date security suite.

And, of course, use your common sense. These are the best weapons in the fight against malware.

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Javier Guerrero works in Panda Security as a technical specialist and analyst/programmer. Since joining the company in 1998 he has taken part in numerous projects, almost always involved with kernel layer technology: The first Panda Platinum, Panda Security and Panda Security for Networks, involving firewall and TruPrevent technologies, file residents, Shield and the Cloud AV interception layer. He is currently part of the interception unit and it is responsible for the file and process interceptors in Cloud AV.

Published by Luis Corrons, October  7, 2010

Latest news!!

According to Tieve.tk, the ‘Anonymous’ cyber-activist group, has called on its community to launch a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) at midnight (00:00h CET) October 7 against the Spanish copyright protection society (SGAE). This group, in an initiative called “Operation Payback”, has been launching denial of service attacks against various targets in recent weeks as a response to the attempted closure of free file-sharing websites.

SGAE

A distributed denial of service attack (DdoS) involves launching numerous requests at a server hosting the Web page so that the hosting service cannot cope with the load and the server ‘crashes’, i.e. the service is suspended. In this case, for example, anyone trying to access the SGAE website may not be able to reach the domain.

On September 17 we witnessed what could be deemed the first organized mass cyber-protest on the Internet, against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), bodies that set out to protect copyright and distribution rights, as a response to the action that both these organizations have been undertaking against free file-sharing sites: they had contracted an Indian software company to launch attacks against sites such as The Pirate Bay, forcing them to close.

Details of the attacks, which have been monitored in real-time by our researcher Sean-Paul Correll are available here.

Published by Luis Corrons, october 6,  2010

Every day, cyber-crooks find new ways to lure us into their traps. Have you heard of the FAKEBOOK case?

Facebook is one of today’s most popular social networking sites as well as one of the most exploited by cyber-criminals for conducting phishing attacks.

Phishing consists of tricking users into believing they are in a familiar Web page and stealing their confidential information, login credentials, etc.

There many domains with the word facebook but which actually contain malicious pages:  facebook-ims.com, facebooks.bz, gjfacebook.com, image-facebook.com, ims-facebook.net, inbox-facebook.com, kfacebook.net…

In most cases, if you access these URLs, an interface similar to that of the real Facebook page is displayed in order to steal your login credentials. Then, you are redirected to the real website to avoid raising any suspicion. However, phishing doesn’t always involve stealing user details. Sometimes these pages download malware to user computers through ‘drive-by download’ techniques, which run files without the victim’s consent.

There is an ‘IT saying’ that goes like this: The most destructive virus sits between the keyboard and the chair“. Don’t become the weak link on your computer!

In this presentation you can find out if you are infected and how to keep yourself safe from phishing:

And as always, don’t forget that to protect yourself it is essential to have an antivirus program installed and up-to-date with an anti-spam filter. Any of the Panda Security solutions will keep your computer free from phishing and your inbox free from spam.

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You can contact Luis Corrons through his PandaLabs blog.