McAfee

McAfee founder booked on drug, weapons charges, report says

John McAfee, the man behind the anti-virus name, says he's being bugged by Belize's Gang Suppression Unit.

His home was raided by four different arms of armed Belize official organizations, including the GSU and the police. At least that is what is being reported by Channel 5 in Belize.

When I say "his home," this appears to consist of nine houses and is the site of the Belize Ecological Foundation. The Belize Gang Suppression Unit's press release declares that McAfee, 66, was there with his 17-year-old girlfriend (referred to as a minor) and five security … Read more

Spam continues to dip but malware marches merrily on

Spam may be down, but cybercriminals are keeping busy launching more sophisticated attacks (PDF), according to McAfee's latest Threats Report.

Looking at 2011's final quarter, McAfee found that spam hit its lowest level in years, especially across popular targets such as the U.K., Brazil, Argentina, and South Korea. But the U.S. and Germany saw their rates inch up slightly.

And though spam levels have declined overall, junk mail is still a clear danger because of the increase in spearphishing, or more targeted attacks. In years past, spammers sent their payloads to a slew of random addresses, … Read more

Mozilla contemplates nuking McAfee

The SiteAdvisor add-on for Firefox evaluates search results to let you know how safe a site is to visit before you go there, but one Mozilla engineer says that it drags down Firefox and causes huge memory leaks.

(Update: McAfee announced a fix for later next week, and Mozilla acknowledged it. See below.)

It's just the kind of problem that Mozilla doesn't want to be dealing with as it finds itself knee-deep in an ambitious development plan and surrounded by ever-tougher competition.

Mozilla engineer Nicholas Nethercote wrote a blog post early today in which he recommended that Firefox … Read more

Google Wallet disables prepaid card use following latest hacks

Google has put the brakes on the use of its prepaid cards for Google Wallet after two hacks were discovered that could steal money from a user's account.

Osama Bedier, vice president for Google Wallet and Payments, wrote in a blog on Saturday that the company is taking this action temporarily until it can make a more long-term correction.

"To address an issue that could have allowed unauthorized use of an existing prepaid card balance if someone recovered a lost phone without a screen lock, tonight we temporarily disabled provisioning of prepaid cards," Bedier explained. "We … Read more

Mobile Security at a steep price

The bottom line: McAfee Mobile Security 2.0 gives your Android a fairly robust guard dog, but its steep cost may be too much for some.

Review: Like many Android security apps, McAfee Mobile Security 2.0 realizes that while malware exists on Android, securing a mobile device must include features that combat theft and protect your data.

Note that this review is based on using McAfee Mobile Security on a Samsung Captivate Glide running Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread.

Installation Although all security apps require some kind of registration process before you can use even their trial versions, we … Read more

Mobile security app from McAfee hits 2.0

The latest update to McAfee Mobile Security opens a window onto app permissions and gives you a filter to screen out annoying communiques.

McAfee Mobile Security 2.0 (download for Android) arrived in the Android Market three days ago, and brings two new features to its already-robust set of options for Android, BlackBerry, and Symbian users. The new App Protection interprets how apps handle your personal and private data, and tells you whether those app permissions are risky. What it doesn't do is advise you what to do about those risks, but to be fair, none of the other … Read more

McAfee to plug 'spammer' hole this week

McAfee will release a fix this week for a bug in its SaaS for Total Protection anti-malware service that scammers were using to distribute spam, the company said today.

The problem came to light after McAfee customers reported in blog posts and forum sites that spammers were using a hole in McAfee's RumorServer relay service to secretly send spam from their machines. The customers said they noticed the problem after their e-mails were blocked by e-mail providers and their IP addresses appeared on blacklists.

The problem is isolated to the SaaS Total Protection service, according to David Marcus, director … Read more

McAfee software lets scammers hijack PCs to send spam

McAfee is looking into a problem with a service in its SaaS Endpoint Protection software that appears to be allowing computers to serve as open proxies for sending spam, the company told CNET today.

"We are aware of the issue and have both threat analytics and development teams diligently analyzing the problem and possible solutions," the company said in a statement. "We will have more information on the issue shortly."

A public relations representative said she was attempting to get more information on the matter but did not get back to CNET by the end of … Read more

Android's popularity makes it open target for malware, says study

Android's surge in popularity has triggered an accompanying surge in malware aimed at the mobile OS, says a new study today from Fortinet.

Analyzing the malware landscape this year, the security vendor tracked a 90 percent jump in Android malware families in 2011 compared with 2010. That figure doesn't account for infection rates or severity, only the rise in malware seeking to infect Android devices.

In comparison, malware directed toward Apple's iOS rose by only 25 percent over last year.

Fortinet pointed to two reasons for the larger bull's eye painted on Android's back.

Google'… Read more