Category Archives: Malware

Anything relating to viruses, threats, and other malware.

Do You Know How Many Cyber Attacks We See?

One of the things that most people are probably not aware of is just how many attacks the university sees on a daily basis. For example, yesterday (a middling day in September) the firewall identified and blocked 100,839 attacks. Now … Continue reading

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Detecting Suspicious Emails

This blog post is going to be somewhat longer and more technical than usual. It is intended as documentation for the use of IS staff, but may be more widely useful (at least in parts). To start with emails come … Continue reading

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BadRabbit Up And Running

According to reports, a new ransomware infection dubbed “BadRabbit” is spreading in Russia and Ukraine, and one or two other places further afield. Early indications are that this is not going to become a really nasty problem, but that could be wrong. … Continue reading

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The Ukranian Ransomware (Petya, NotPetya, WannaCry2)

Those keeping aware of the security scene may well have become aware of the latest ransomware worm hitting around the world. Various names have been associated with this outbreak, and the most readily identifiable name (Petya) is technically incorrect. This … Continue reading

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Free Converters May Come With Unwanted Gifts

I read this morning a post on another blog site about an experiment that someone tried. They converted a PDF file to a DOC file using five different free web-based converters and found that three of the results were malware-infected. … Continue reading

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Ransomware for OSX

It turns out that ransomware is no longer just for Windows; OSX has it too. If you use the OSX version of the Transmission Bittorrent client, you may want to check what version you are running because version 2.90 was … Continue reading

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OSX Malware: Yes It Does Exist!

One of the messages that we are regularly trying to push is that malware on Apple devices can and does exist. We have even encountered a few infected Apple laptops! It is easy to overlook amongst the ever rising flood … Continue reading

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The Xcode Ghost In Your Apps

We are seeing a number of instances where people have installed legitimate applications from the Apple App store, and their phone is communicating with the Xcode Ghost malware infrastructure across the network. This sort of malware infection is a bit unusual … Continue reading

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How Effective Is Anti-Virus Detection?

Out of amusement I decided to take one of those strange email spams telling me about an order that I never made (“Order no. 7160668120”), and see if the attachment was detected as a virus. To make things interesting, the … Continue reading

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Dealing with Spyware and Adware

Malware comes in many different forms, and two of the supposedly less damaging aspects are spyware and adware, which keep track of your activities and display advertising selected by your activities. This sounds relatively harmless, but there are concerns. Firstly … Continue reading

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