May 8, 2008

Firefox AddOn Comes with Adware...

For those users keen on installing Firefox Add-Ons (I have to agree that I am one... I love installing different add-ons and testing them... Not the beta ones though. They crash... Often.), think again about installing that new ultra shiny plugin.

Mozilla warns on the 7th of May that a Firefox Add-On that has a malicious adware code in it has been downloaded thousands of times over the past few months.

That particular add-on was the Vietnamese Language Pack for Firefox 2. The Mozilla Security Chief states that users that have downloaded the Vietnamese Language Pack from February 18, 2008 and above had the certain malicious code in the language pack. She also said: "Mozilla does virus scans at upload time but the virus scanner did not catch this issue until several months after the upload. Mozilla is now going to add additional scans of its software to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future."

The adware that was in the language pack was the Trojan Xorer but just displays annoying banners.

The language pack is very popular among users and has been downloaded 16K+ since the release of the add-on in November.

Users that have downloaded this particular plug-in in the certain time frame should disable this immediately.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

Source: NetworksAsia

May 2, 2008

Product Review- Avira AntiVir Personal

Product Review-Avira AntiVir Personal
Vendor: Avira GmbH
Type: Antivirus
Platform: Windows XP/Vista
Download Link: Free-AV.Com
Rating: 4.5/5

Avira AntiVir Personal from Avira GmbH comes back with a faster scanning speed and a new look. Best of all, it's free of charge.

Avira has it's well known "umbrella" logo and simple but unique interface. Now it has been upgraded to a sleek, silverish look. The upgrade comes free, as always, to users using the (Free) Avira AntiVir Personal. Existing users can upgrade to it by right clicking the antivirus icon and clicking "Start Update".

The whole new interface has been applied to most (I think all) of the Avira windows-The control panel, the updater, the scanner, ...

As announced on the website, the scanning speed has been improved by quite a lot. I can now see that the bar is moving faster than the old version of Avira.

Unlike some free trials that disable updating after a certain time (Usually 30 days), the "Avira Guard" and the update system remain intact (If you download the Avira AntiVir Personal). Some setbacks are that the Updater has low piority (Premium and paying users get higher piority) and that an advertisement (No viruses, adware, or other such. The advertisements only try to convince you to upgrade to Avira AntiVir Premium...)

Avira's scanning options are very flexible, with the options of scanning the Local Drives, Local Hard Drives, Removable Drives (CD, USB, things that are plugged in to the computer that is a storage area and can be pulled out), Windows System Directory, Complete System Scan, My Documents, Active Processes (This scan is very useful if you don't want to slow down your computer that much but want to see if theres any viruses running, although full system scan is more effective.), Rootkit Search, and Manual Selection (You select the drives that are to be scanned.)

Avira comes with it's own "AntiVir Guard", which scans on demand. Avira also comes with a quarantine area where infected files are stored and cannot do harm while in quarantine.

You can schedule scanning times and there is a section set aside that features the scanning reports.

Overall, Avira is very good but the looks make it go down. The full scan scanning is very powerful but takes a while to sift through your files.

Avira's interface is very easy to work about and the options for Avira is customizable.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author

Byzone V2.0

Byzone is now out of it's beta stages and is at V2.0. A new layout has been made and hopefully it shouldn't load that slow. I tested it and got a 13.33 seconds fully loaded time.

I'm going to post more often now... I hope.

-FyreVortex
-Byzone Founder and Contributing Author