If you are a regular reader of this blog you may remember my take on forum spammers relating to Enigma. Well they have now released their own say on it:

Enigma’s Press Release

Update – 28th of April 2007; – Discussions have taken place at SpywareWarrior which included many helpers of this community. You can go read and make your own opinion and mind as to what you think – HERE.

As part of our year anniversary I thought it would be nice to reflect on the looks we have had for this blog, diving into our short history.

I am probably my own worst critic at times and I am a known fiddler. If I see something that I think can be improved or changed to get better results I will do it.

Over the last year or so we have had several looks and lets kick of with the standard one (all images are in jpg format);

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As you can see the awefull header and standard look which is the default in wordpress. I played about with that all the time. Added things and took away things. A bit like now. And this is where I started to learn some basic html stuff.

I always wanted to have a look with three columns. I liked that idea and always thought that was the way to go. I haven’t got the first three column template we used used last July ‘6 which is a shame but looking back it looked cheap and again awefull.

The next look we had was the following;

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Originally a Andreas Viklund design and then modified to work on wordpress by Tara Elmadera. I modified it to suit our needs here. And as you can see this one use to be grey and we changed it to blue etc.

I noticed that the above didn’t work well on several screen resolutions. With me being fiddler and one to please everyone as best as I can I set about to install the current one;

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Designed by Kaushal Seth I set about to modify this to suit what was best for us which I think currently works. It’s fresh and simple. Plus it wasen’t to hard to optimize. I had to add a separate php file which seemed to be missing but that was easy enough to do.

So there you have it. In our short but sweet history you have some of the looks we have had. It’s a shame I haven’t saved or can retrieve the awefull looking blog we had at blogger at the time but there you go. Nevertheless: We’ve come a long way!

Mirrored in our forum

I don’t know whether to eat my hat or be happy with this as it’s going on for what seems forever. The Julie Amero case has been rescheduled to May 18th, next month. But enough of me read about it here. And discuss it here in more detail.

This week marks the last week of contests here at security cadets and the last chance to win fantastic prizes.

We’ve already had a great response to the contests which have been won by new and current forum members. And remember to check if you have won! We won’t be responsible if you do not collect them and send vital details for us to get you the prizes!

So what has been won? Well you can find all about it HERE or in the anniversary forum! There is important info for current winners to read!

Update – All contests have now ended. Please visit the forum to see if you have won and read what is required from you! This is important.

Originally reported at Sunbelt we can confirm a new Spysheriff, PestTrap,

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So add malware-stopper.com & malwarepanacea.com to any blacklist you use.

The whois for these just shows the following:

• whois: malware stopper
• whois: malware panacea

Malware Stopper & Malware Panacea:

Registration Service Provided By: FUTORAMA LIMITED
Contact: +121.29811939
Website: http://www.futorama-limited.com

Domain Name: MALWARE-STOPPER.COM

Domain Name: MALWAREPANACEA.COM

Registrant:
Privacyprotect.org
Domain Admin
PO Box 83-000
Johnsonville
Wellington
null,6440
NZ
Tel. +45.36946676

Creation Date: 16-Apr-2007
Expiration Date: 16-Apr-2008

Domain servers in listed order:
ns2.malware-stopper.com
ns1.malware-stopper.com
ns2.futorama-limited.com
ns1.futorama-limited.com

If these have affected you with fake warnings in your system tray to the right or in any other way then get free help in our malware removal forum. You can discuss it here aswell.

Our Removal Guides:

• Remove Malware-Stopper
• Remove Malware Panacea

Along side our fixes you can also use RogueRemover to remove these pests

Bill Pytolvany announced WinPatrol 2007, Build 3 today with the following feature additions and bug fixes:

• Added new “Open As…” option to Delay Startup program options
• Fixed bug moving Startup Folder programs to Delayed Start.
• Programs will now start as expected.
• NEW Setup/Uninstall program. Much smaller and prevents multiple Add/Remove entries.
• Fixed bug when using “Confirm Exit…” option.
• Fixed bug adding Programs/Services to “Detected” registry when file no longer exists.

Get WinPatrol.

For help with WinPatrol or feature questions, please visit Security Cadets WinPatrol Support Forum.

One of our Visiting Experts first found out about CyberDefender due to a contest at CastleCops celebrating their 5th anniversary.

One of the first things that made our VE suspicious about it however, is that the “free” version contains adverts. Not surprisingly, quite a few of us began questioning the fact it was permitted. Read all about it.

read more | digg story | discuss in our forum

 Media Coverage:

• Donna’s SecurityFlash

….Gahhhhh!

It seems Google are to buy doubleclick for a reported $3.1 billion according to Cnet News.com.

“It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better–less intrusive, more effective and more useful,” Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and president of technology, said in a statement. “Together with DoubleClick, Google will make the Internet more efficient for end users, advertisers and publishers.”

Just think about all the data they have on consumers….Discuss it here.

It appears to be and to be very annoying that 411-spyware.com or gangs are spamming forums!

It hasn’t just affected us but other known forums on the net. The spammers tend to push a program that is claiming to remove the latest rogues like SpyLocked/SpywareLocked/SpyLocker but infact it’s a program called SpyHunter.

…….hears the penny/cent drop.

Yes the company that pushes SpyHunter is Enigma Software Group. The one that use to be on the bad Rogue/Suspect Anti-Spyware Products & Web Sites list for this reason:

“…Enigma’s SpyHunter anti-spyware application was listed on this page primarily because of the company’s history of employing aggressive, deceptive advertising…”

They hide their installer as a tool that claims to remove rogues then when you download the recommended tool from the said site you get the SpyHunter installer. If you ask me in light of this. They should be re-listed on the list above.

They go on your forum (or public service boards) and have a few different tactics to try and make it look like they are legit users. Or just spam links to whatever rogue is on at the time.

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If you are part of the spamming gang, do yourself a favour and stop your posts on each and every forum and public service like yahoo. It doesn’t do you any favours and more importantly the computer users. Especially now people like me blog about it. But feel free to contact me!

If you are a forum owner and wish to discuss this then you can do so in a few ways. Reply with a comment to this article or discuss it on our forum. Computer users with any infection should avoid 411-spyware.com and seek advice from helpers here or at ASAP sites. Oh and Digg it here!

More coverage: Malware Advisor

Update 26th of April 2007, more coverage inlight of Enigma’s press release here visit VitalSecurity. More coverage: Ur I.T. Mate Group

Back towards the end of last year I created a post where you could report new malware.

However now I’ve created a single page for it. So if you used our post on the net. Update the bookmark to our new malware reporting page :

http://www.securitycadets.com/report-new-malware/ – More info HERE