CompuClever Blog

Stay Safely Connected

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Email and social networking are two primary means of communicating and stay connected with family and friends. Through social network sites and emails, you share updates, post photos, and reveal things that are sometimes very personal about you.  Examples include where you live, which company you work for, whom you are related to, when and where you are going on holiday, what food you like, what music you listen to, whom you have just met, etc. By piecing these bits of information together, it becomes easy for anyone to learn more about you. And that’s also how cyber criminals find out information they want from you. Personal identity theft and online scams are two primary threats that target email and social networking users.

Identity theft

A recent study conducted by Bitdefender, a leading European security technology provider, discovered that more than a quarter of a million email addresses, usernames, and passwords can be found easily through social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, personal blog postings, chat forums, and download sites. Surprisingly, 87% of these compromised credentials still provided valid access to personal email and social networking accounts. What’s more astonishing was that 75% of the people in this study use the same password for all their accounts. Hackers really didn’t have to look too hard to gain access to your identity and private information.

Online scams

Users of the social networking site Facebook are informed through a notification system and by e-mail that they have been made administrators of an unknown page and are directed to click on a link that takes them to a fake Facebook page. Once a user has landed on the fake Facebook page, they are re-directed to a different, malicious site where they are asked to provide their e-mail and shipping address in order to take part in a test session of the new Apple iPad. The scam states that Apple is giving away a total of 10,000 iPad2s for review. Making it even more believable, some of the notifications came from emails and posts sent by family members or friends whose PCs were also compromised. You trust your friends, but can you trust their computers as well?

Stay connected safely

Security experts recommend the following guidelines so that you can avoid security risks while staying connected online:

  • Avoid publishing any information that can be used to identify you, such as phone numbers; your home, school, or work address; your birthday; and your social security number.
  • Use different sets of username and passwords for email and social networking sites.
  • Avoid posting holiday dates, locations, or even pictures while you are away. Otherwise, you leave perfect “bread crumbs” for burglars to follow.
  • Never include bank or credit card information in emails or posts.
  • Install and deploy an effective and updated antivirus / anti-spyware solution that features a strong anti-phishing mechanism.

Introducing – Data Protection

CompuClever Antivirus PLUS features an ironclad information safety mechanism called Data Protection. Data Protection prevents sensitive data leaks when you are online. Based on the rules you create, Data Protection scans the web, e-mail, and instant messaging traffic sent by your computer.  It looks for specific character strings, for example, your credit card number. If there is a match, the respective web page, e-mail, or instant message is blocked.

You can create rules to protect any piece of information you might consider personal or confidential, from your phone number or e-mail address to your bank account information. Multi-user support is provided so that more than one person can log on to Windows using different user accounts and can configure their own rules. If your Windows account is an administrator account, the rules you create can be configured to also apply when other users of the computer are logged on to their Windows accounts.

Define what data you want to protect

Define how you want the data be protected

Extra peace of mind

Rest assured, personal information provided to the Data Protection tool is encrypted and cannot be used by anyone else but you. Also for extra safety, you can just enter part of the information that you like to protect. For instance, if you want to prevent leakage of your credit card number, you can just enter the last four digits of the card number so that any web traffic leaving your computer with the same combination of digits will be blocked. It’s a smart way of safeguarding data without any compromise.

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Surf with Confidence

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Unlike shark attacks, cyber-attacks are numerous, sophisticated, and ever-changing. Many cyber criminals who have managed to evade law enforcement are not only resourceful but also considered experts. To a certain extent they are even innovative. Compelled by the sinister desire of luring more victims while remaining undetected, hackers diligently invent new techniques and schemes to exploit systems of users who are even security-conscious.

Jaw-dropping

The cases presented below are a couple of example of classical cyber-attacks that are conniving, stealthy, and almost ingenious.

  • Case 1: While surfing the web at home, the user of a hacked PC was prompted to create new accounts in order to use her own Wireless Access Points (WAP). Not knowing what was happening behind the scenes, the victim would use a common username or email address along with a password that was used for several other online accounts.  The result: the hackers gained complete and unblocked access to her email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or even online banking site.
  • Case 2: On the premises of a Starbucks coffee shop, hackers positioned a Wi-Fi hotspot and disguise it so that it appears to belong to Starbucks. Attackers then redirect victims to frequently used websites that were actually modified or fake to capture login credentials or deploy keylogging malware to harvest personal identity information. This type of cyber-attack even has a code name: waterholes.

Would you believe that the waterholes scheme was so effective it even captured victims from cafeterias inside high-tech companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft? More than likely, those techies have some sort of antivirus solution on their laptops. But the reality is harsher – a bare bones antivirus software without proper web protection is not going to cut it.

Proper web protection

So what types of web protection can help fend off and defy cyber-attacks? You need exactly two types of protection:

  1. Anti-phishing protection that alerts you of potential phishing websites. This prevents you from falling prey to the “honey traps” set up by hackers.
  2. Real-time web protection against malicious code or downloads embedded in the web. This prevents your computer from being infected or even controlled.

Web protection in CompuClever Antivirus PLUS

CompuClever Antivirus PLUS Web protection ensures a safe browsing experience by alerting you about potential phishing web pages. It provides real-time web protection for popular web browsers including:

  • Internet Explorer
  • Firefox
  • Google Chrome

The web protection feature provides two functions:

  • Web Toolbar, which automatically blocks you from accidentally visiting a phishing or compromised website.

    Web toolbar blocking a suspicious site

  • Search Adviser, a component that rates the results of search engine queries and links posted on social networking websites by placing an icon next to every result.  Working like a traffic light, the Search Advisor tells you if a site, as recommended by a search engine, is safe, suspicious, or dangerous.

    Search Advisor

The web protection feature is seamlessly embedded with your default web browser. It is always at your side protecting your web surfing experience without being in the way.

Check out the detailed information about CompuClever Antivirus PLUS Web Protection:

Click here to learn more about CompuClever Antivirus PLUS.

If your antivirus solution doesn’t provide web protection specifically, you should still follow these best-practices to protect yourself against cyber attacks:

  • Do not provide your personal information via e-mail.
  • Do not click any links you receive from senders you do not know.
  • Do not download attachments from unknown senders.
  • Download files only from trusted websites.
  • Check if the final price is the same with the price displayed at the start of a transaction.
  • Keep your antivirus solution updated. If you are not using an antivirus solution, we recommend you install one as soon as possible.
  • Do not log in to your financial account from unknown networks.

Safeguard Your Online Banking

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Over the last few years Internet fraud has increased and is becoming a serious issue for online transactions. Using a variety of methods, online thieves can easily access important information like bank accounts and personal data. This article helps you to understand essential techniques hackers deploy to break into your bank account and how to nullify these hacking attempts by using tools that may already be available with your antivirus application.

How hackers infiltrate your bank account

To infiltrate your bank account hackers need exactly the same set of complete credentials you would supply to your online banking site. It is extremely rare, although not impossible, that a hacker would directly contact someone who would then voluntarily give away her bank account number, login name, and password over the phone or email. But it is very common that a compromised PC infested with malware can provide hackers with the necessary recorded keystrokes, mouse clicks, and even screenshots. By mimicking the procedures they’ve learned with the obtained credentials, hackers can digitally impersonate you and thus gain access to your bank accounts over the Internet with ease.

How to nullify online banking hacking attempts

You can defuse these attempts head-on by knowing the essential schemes used by hackers. First and foremost, guard your PC with an effective antivirus program and prevent any malware from landing on your computer. But that’s not enough, remember we talked about known and unknown malware? What if a new and unknown malware has made its way through the first layer of defense of detection? That’s when the second layer of defense comes to the rescue. To effectively nullify online banking hacks, you also need to:

  • Secure your web browser and data transaction: The web browser is the weakest link of the entire online banking infrastructure and can be hijacked by third-party add-ons / toolbars / extensions and is also susceptible to phishing attempts.
  • Disable logging of your keyboard and mouse movements: Make your keyboard and mouse movement virtually invisible and un-recordable.
  • Disable screenshots: prevent your PC’s screen from being digitally captured or copied.

They all sound theoretically and logically fine but there is no trivial way to configure your PC to take these measures without having software specifically designed to achieve such purposes.

Features that you should demand from security software

As stated above, your security software should provide you with extra measures to protect you from online banking hacks. Let’s illustrate how these features work using CompuClever Antivirus PLUS as an example.

Click to learn more...
CompuClever SafepayTM

CompuClever Safepay is a proprietary and dedicated browser designed specifically for online banking. It creates a sealed environment, shielded from third party intrusions. Compared to products that use browser extensions, CompuClever Safepay offers superior protection because it doesn’t rely on browsers with known vulnerabilities to a large array of attacks.

The dedicated Safepay environment gives you the following benefits:

  • It uses its own browser to avoid malware attacks.
  • It blocks add-ons and extensions which are the weakest link with browser security.
  • It scans all URLs for signs of malware and phishing compromise.

More importantly, CompuClever Safepay also:

  • Completely disables any key logging or mouse tracking attempts, and
  • Prevents any screen information from being captured or recorded – even   the [Print Screen] key is disabled during your session.

You can visit the online help file to learn more about how to maximize the benefit using CompuClever Safepay for online banking protection.

We recommend you check and discover if your existing security product provides equivalent functionality. If it doesn’t or you are in doubt, we recommend you try CompuClever Antivirus PLUS for secure online banking.

Are you well protected

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“Am I well protected by the antivirus product that I just chose?” This is the most common question that lingers in the mind of almost every security-cautious PC user when first installing an antivirus solution, whether it’s free or purchased. Almost every commercially available antivirus program today boasts that it will protect you from any and all malware.  However, the reality is no two security products are created equal and there are similarities and important differences among antivirus software when it comes to evaluating the level of sufficiency and effectiveness of protection. This article shows you what to look for and how to tell if your antivirus software provides you enough protection.

Known or Unknown

There two types of malware: Known and Unknown.

  • A Known virus is a piece of widespread and prevalent malware discovered in the past four weeks. Detection of known viruses is relatively trivial because for the past decade or so, the antivirus industry has evolved into a “coopetition” landscape (in other words, a coexistence of cooperation and competition), through which security researchers and solution providers proactively and voluntarily share discovery of new virus samples with absolutely secure measures.
  • An Unknown virus, better known as a zero-day attack, is a threat that exploits an unknown computer security vulnerability. Zero-day exploits are often put up by renowned hacker groups. Typically, the zero-day attack exploits a bug that neither security solution providers nor users, know about.

Using a medical analogy, Hepatitis A virus (HAV) is a known virus and there has been vaccine available to rid the virus; meanwhile Ebola, first discovered in 1976 but unknown to most of us until the outbreak in March of 2014, was as a virus that typifies a zero-day attack. When it comes to encountering computer viruses, you want to be protected from both known and unknown malware.

The important difference

It now boils down to getting an answer to the key question: how well does your antivirus handle both known and unknown viruses?

In theory, a legitimate antivirus program should detect, immunize, and remove any known malware where signature, behavior, and characters are known. There is really no excuse for a security application not to proactively handle a known virus, either by detection or by removal. This is the expected similarity across mainstream antiviruses; although one would be surprised to learn that a couple of very popular antivirus programs are actually not that effective in terms of dealing with known viruses.

The most important difference that sets the best breed of antiviruses apart from their less-competitive counterpart is how well it handles unknown viruses. It is indeed very tough to detect and neutralize a malware threat that nobody has identified. But the reality is harsh. Everyday there are hundreds of thousands of new malicious files being detected. Kaspersky Labs, a leading security solution provider, alone reported that they were detecting 325,000 new malicious files a day in 2014 – 125,000 more than what was detected in 2012[1].

How to evaluate your own antivirus

So the key question of AV effectiveness really zeros in on: how well does your antivirus handle unknown malware? It is very relevant and pertains to your day-to-day computing especially if your PC is connected online.

As we have presented the key metrics through which we can evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of antivirus software, now let’s look at how you can put it into use for evaluating your own antivirus program. Thanks to a few independent IT-security testing organizations like Virus Bulletin and AV-Test, who conduct tests evaluating mainstream antivirus software on a quarterly basis using objective methods, we can make good use of the evaluation comparison reports that are publicly available. You can browse through the most recent test reports and look for your own antivirus software and read about it:

  • AV-Test report: provides an intuitive chart in terms of Protection, Performance, and Usability. Pay attention to the Protection column first. You can also click on a product of your interest and examine detailed test scores on how it deals with known and unknown virus samples.
  • VB100: is a regular independent review of malware solutions and it provides test results for AV software that handle both known (reactive) and unknown (proactive) virus samples. You can see the latest test results for any product or use the Search filed to quickly find test results.

We have to point out to those readers who rely on default antivirus solutions by Microsoft, whether it is Windows Defender or Microsoft Security Essential, you may want to double check the testing results as we are concerned about the lack of protection you may have.  The reality is Microsoft doesn’t even handle known viruses effectively.

Click to learn more...

What about CompuClever Antivirus PLUS?

Keen readers may find that our own CompuClever Antivirus PLUS is not presented in either of these two reports because the product has just been released when this article was written. We have submitted our product to VB100 for evaluation and the official result won’t be ready until later this year. But here are some facts about how CompuClever Antivirus PLUS:

  • CompuClever Antivirus utilizes the same intelligent and robust antivirus engine that powers top-tier security solution providers like Bitdefender. This technology is protecting, and trusted by, over 500 million users around the world.
  • CompuClever Antivirus deploys a cutting-edge security technology called Active Virus Control (AVC). It is an innovative proactive detection technology which uses advanced heuristic methods to detect new potential threats in real time.
  • Active Virus Control continuously monitors the applications running on the computer looking for malware-like actions. Each of these actions is scored and an overall score is computed for each process. When the overall score for a process reaches a given threshold, the process is considered to be harmful and it is blocked automatically.
Active Virus Control
Active Virus Control – CompuClever Antivirus PLUS

In a nutshell, you can expect CompuClever Antivirus to deliver 100% protection against both known and unknown viruses, comparable to any first-tier antivirus software like Norton, Kaspersky, Bitdefender, and MacAfee. As a matter of fact, an independent third-party lab test revealed that our antivirus product not only delivers a high level of protection, it also creates a very low impact to PC performance.

If you feel that your current antivirus software is either ineffective or you suspect that your PC is slowing down as a result of running an antivirus program, you should check out CompuClever Antivirus PLUS. Just so you know, we will also be talking about the importance of antivirus and PC performance in future articles.

Our recommendation

  • Familiarize yourself with the concept of known and unknown antivirus threats.
  • Check out the aforementioned comparative evaluation reports about your own antivirus product. For VB100 tests, you can compare the test results to CompuClever Antivirus PLUS.
  • Don’t settle for a free antivirus unless it is proven to be effective in dealing with both known and unknown threats.

 

[1] www.kaspersky.com

Antivirus Solutions

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Too frequently PC users suffer the consequences of a virus or malware attack.  Once becoming a victim of an attack it seems the only choices available is to take it to a repair technician or try to re-install the entire operating system yourself.  With all these situations you could face loss of data and you definitely have to wait for your PC to be up and running.  Then there is the cost factor if you have to get someone to do it for you.  It’s no wonder that security tools such as antivirus (AV) products get a lot of attention.  But… as many of us can attest, there are programs that can take over your PC and slow down overall functioning as well as your own workflow when taking into account a constant barrage of popup messages.  We examine here AV solutions and focus on what we need and how we can avoid to some degree malicious attacks from occurring.

In a recent article we touched on the topic of safe PC practices – especially when installing bundled software packages or opening unknown attachments.  Considering many applications contain built-in security and many operating systems also have on-board security tools, what do we actually require from independent AV programs?  Let’s start with some feedback from our users.

From Our Users:

We sent an email to some of our readership about whether they have or are using an AV product.  We asked for their assessment of antivirus security tools and we were very pleased with the responses.  Here’s a bit of what we got:

Concerns about AV Apps:

  • There was a lot of feedback about users feeling their system was bogged down or that the functioning and performance slowed down when using certain AV products.
  • Another point was: “I would like to understand the messages, when I am required to make a decision.”  This was reflected in more than one response.
  • “Don’t want security programs to ‘take over’ the operation of my computers.”
  • There were concerns about safety and trust.  One response mentioned that the updates of their AV tools were coming from an eastern European source.
  • One response was very telling: “I am not completely happy as of now and like most people I do not think my system is safe.”

What We Want in an AV App:

  • Our users felt that they need something that is safe and offers protection from viruses.
  • Having an AV program that is non-obtrusive was very clear in our responses.  The program should run “quietly in the background” and not be “obtrusive or obstructive”.  Another user stated that it should not interfere with daily usage.
  • The system should not run slower and in no way should the AV product bog down PC functioning.
  • It should be easy to use.
  • Updates and good customer care are also suggested.
  • Low cost.

One user writes:

  1. Must be able to trust it.
  2. It must work in the background but just occasionally tell me that it is both still there and OK.
  3. If I pay for it I want the lot – no extra payments for ‘extra features’. How am I going to judge if a ‘byte defibrillator’ or some such other bit of kit is necessary?
  4. One license to cover all my household kit.
  5. Automatic cost free updates within the license period.

From the president of a senior’s computer club:

“We put a great deal of emphasis on the importance of adequate security protection at a reasonable cost, with equally strong advice to make sure that frequent backups are done in case of catastrophic failure.”

From an experienced PC user:

“The ideal AV program should update automatically, use the minimum amount of memory, provide additional facilities such as removing PUPS, scanning memory sticks,  provide a multiple choice of hard drive scanning, and be capable of seeking out malware as well as virus invasion. All of which should be able to run from boot-up without slowing the computer down.”

Not surprisingly many PC users have put time and energy into considering PC security and what antivirus tools work best for their needs.

Microsoft Security Essential

Several of our email responders stated that they used more than one AV product at a time.  Someone had mentioned that they use: “several anti-virus programs and several utilities programs” and still they came across issues they were unable to resolve.  There were also several email responses that made some reference to using Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE).  For Windows 8 this is now called Windows Defender.  Some users feel that this is all they require for security and while Microsoft would agree with this[1] – we disagree.

AV-TEST, an independent IT security institute, released results of what antivirus software is best for Windows Home users.  The list is organized alphabetically and Microsoft Security Essentials is at the bottom of the list – not just because of where it is placed alphabetically.  While it did rate high in usability, and well in performance, it was by far the worst in its class for protection.  You can see the results here: test scores published by AV-TEST.

Performance:

One has to wonder if the drag caused by AV products on PC performance is subjective – could we simply be feeling a slow down or is it actual?  According to www.av-test.org, “the ‘subjective’ slowing down of a PC frequently reported by users is actually a proven objective fact.”  It was found that some protection software puts a heavy burden on everyday PC routines.  Fortunately there are exceptions and at CompuClever, we think performance and usability – including not being nagged – should not be tradeoffs in receiving good virus protection.

Introducing:

We are very excited to introduce a new CompuClever product – one that we hope will solve your issues and concerns of AV protection, performance, and usability – CompuClever AntiVirus PLUS. Some of the features include:

  • Best protection from virus with lowest impact on PC speed: there is no compromise between total PC security and fast PC performance.
  • Active Virus Control: a proactive, dynamic detection technology that monitors processes’ behavior in real time as they are running.  It tags suspicious activities.
  • Safe online banking: a proprietary safe browser that’s specifically designed for online banking to root out any possibilities of intrusion or phishing.
  • Safe social networking: blocking of malicious links or e-threats you receive from your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or any other social network.
  • Safe search and web browsing: CompuClever AntiVirus PLUS tells you if a link is safe even before you click it in Google and Bing search results.  Furthermore, it blocks access to infected links that you have already clicked.
  • Vigilant and silent: a hassle-free experience by making optimal security-related decisions with no input from you.  This means no pop-ups, no alerts, nothing to configure.

In Summary:

Thanks again to our readers who responded to our email.  As one responder pointed out:

“I have antivirus now and it works pretty well but I am looking forward to your new product to work with my pc cleaner and tune up thank you again for good products.”

We are excited about providing an AV product that suites your needs and PC computing practices.  In upcoming articles we will continue covering this theme of protection and security.

Until then… if you have some ideas of topics you would like us to cover or have other feedback to offer, email us at: newsletter@compuclever.com

 

[1] Microsoft blog: Do I need anything besides Windows Defender