Computerworld - Hard on the heels of the success of the revamped Star Trek franchise, security company Sophos has released a Klingon-language version of a free malware scanning tool it uses to show Earth-bound customers how its technology stacks up against rivals’ software.

Dubbed Klingon Anti-Virus (KAV), the software is actually a tweaked version of Sophos’ Threat Detection Test translated into the language spoken by Klingons in the fictional Star Trek universe.

Downloads of KAV have been “through the roof,” said Carole Theirault, a senior security consultant with Sophos. “It’s been huge. I’m just shocked.”

Sophos’ description of KAV uses considerable humor to pitch the product. “Our routine monitoring of sub-space transmissions alerted Sophos that the loss of the Klingon battlecruiser Klothos was not due to Romulan incursion into the Khitomer system, but a result of trying to remove VBS/PeachyPDF-A from the battle computer using M’swoN’kar after Commander Kor opened an attachment from the system S’cam-419,” the company said on the site promoting KAV.
(more…)

Antivirus researchers from the University of California gained control over a well-known and powerful network of hacked computers for 10 days, gaining insight into how it steals personal and financial data.

The botnet, known as Torpig (AKA Sinowal), is one of the most sophisticated networks that uses hard-to-detect malicious techniques to infect PS-s and subsequently harvest data such as mail passwords and online banking details.

The researchers were able to monitor more than 180,000 hacked computers by exploiting a weakness within the command-and-control network used by the hackers to control the computers. It only worked for 10 days, however, until the hackers updated the command-and-control instructions, according to the researchers’ 13-page paper.
(more…)