In 2009, the Induc virus was the top new malicious code sample observed by Symantec worldwide. Notably, Induc does not actually do anything strictly malicious; all it does is propagate. No keystroke logging, no spam sending abilities, no ad clicking, and no destruction of data.

So what makes this virus interesting? All Induc does is propagate, but only on developer’s computers. Specifically, it does not do anything unless it detects an installation of versions 4 thru 7 of the Delphi® development environment. Delphi is a variant of the Pascal programming language originally developed by Borland and is meant to facilitate the development of applications for the Microsoft Windows platform. The targeted versions of Delphi were released between 1998 and 2002, but are still in wide use throughout the developer community....

I am proud to announce the release of Volume 15 of the Symantec Global Internet Security Threat Report. I would like to take this opportunity to give a preview of the some of the findings in the vulnerabilities section of this report.

In previous years, we observed that ActiveX vulnerabilities were on the rise. This trend was largely driven by security researchers employing various fuzzing tools to audit ActiveX controls for vulnerabilities. In 2008, 70 percent of all browser plug-in vulnerabilities could be attributed to vulnerable ActiveX controls. In 2009 there was a significant decline in the proportion of ActiveX vulnerabilities when compared to other browser plug-in technologies. In the report we observed that only 42 percent of browser plug-in vulnerabilities affected ActiveX controls. Vulnerabilities in other browser plug-ins increased as a result. In particular, Java SE accounted for 11 percent of browser plug-in vulnerabilities in 2008 but rose to 26...

If a hacker managed to hack into your blog or website, what could they possibly do? They could insert malicious iframes or JavaScript code into your Web pages. Probably even attempt to steal some data. But most likely they would "search engine optimize" your website. Can this be true? Well, let me explain more.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a collection of techniques used to achieve higher search rankings for a given website. "Black hat SEO" is the method of using unethical SEO techniques in order to obtain a higher search ranking. These techniques include things like keyword stuffing, cloaking, and link farming, which are used to "game" the search engine algorithms.

So what does a hacker gain from all this? Why would a hacker help you achieve a higher search engine ranking? Quite the contrary; he is helping himself.

What the hacker actually does is add numerous additional Web pages to your website. Let’s call each of...

Misleading applications, also known as rogue applications, have always tried to lure users into their traps by using various techniques such as fake security scans, misleading task bar notifications, popup windows, etc. To take this to a new level, developers of these applications are now frequently changing the product name and its associated website name in order to mislead users and antivirus vendors. Clones of the same product—with different names—continue to appear almost every day. Earlier this week Symantec published its Report on Rogue Security Software, which discusses misleading apps in greater detail. A couple of examples of rogue security software are given below. We identify one such family of rogue or misleading applications as WiniGuard:

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