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SAN MATEO, Calif. — Sana Security, Inc., a security software company, today announced Primary Response SafeConnect for Norton AntiVirus to deliver broad threat protection against malware and unwanted programs. By pairing Sana’s proactive anti-malware technology with Norton AntiVirus(TM), enterprise customers and end users receive complete protection against a scope of malicious threats, including unknown malware attacks, without requiring signatures and scanning.

With a complete anti-malware solution, enterprise systems gain protection against attacks that can compromise data integrity and result in fraud, identity theft, or slow machines causing data loss and impairing productivity. While typical signature-based anti-virus (AV) software alone detected only 57% of malware, Primary Response SafeConnect for Norton AntiVirus uses behavioral heuristics to close the gap by detecting and removing a significant portion of malware that is missed by many AV vendors. In a sample of 1,000 machines, the software identified and removed an additional 2,717 files and 674 malware variants that remained undetected by popular AV products. The removal process begins immediately when an attack is detected. The software quarantines and completely eliminates malicious software from the PC so that it can no longer proliferate or install additional components. The combined solution of Sana’s anti-malware software and Norton AntiVirus software results in an advanced level of malware protection that is more dependable, effective and user-friendly than AV alone.

"Enterprises are accustomed to running anti-virus and anti-spyware software, but these products aren’t sufficient to protect against today’s Windows threats," said Andrew Jaquith, Senior Analyst, Yankee Group. "To keep workstations safe from intrusion, we recommend that enterprises strongly consider augmenting their signature-based defenses with behavioral safeguards."

For the past 18 years, reactive AV solutions have relied on signatures to detect and remove known and some unknown viruses. However, the types of stealthy malware surfacing today are increasingly harder to detect and remove. Recently, Sana Labs identified two ‘in the wild’ Trojans, rootkit.hearse and the related win32.goldun, that were not initially picked up by standard signature-based solutions. Malware writers are becoming increasingly motivated to quickly profit by attacking PCs, creating sneaky threats that are concealed from security products while stealing account logins and passwords for banks, credit cards and other financial institutions.

"With the increasingly complex and constantly evolving nature of stealthy malware, it is becoming clear that using anti-virus solutions alone to combat today’s threats is inadequate. In fact, 99% of enterprises have AV solutions deployed but 68% still get viruses, and 13% of machines have confirmed malicious code on them," said Timothy Eades, senior vice president of sales and marketing, Sana Security. "Combining a behavior-based approach with traditional AV is the most effective solution for removing malicious software from PCs. Primary Response SafeConnect for Norton AntiVirus complements the AV solution and brings broad-based threat protection against spyware, adware, Trojans and rootkits to the extended enterprise."

At the core of Primary Response SafeConnect is Sana Security’s latest technology, Active Malware Defense Technology v2.0 (Active MDT). Unlike reactive solutions, Primary Response SafeConnect is the first commercially available anti-malware software using behavior heuristics to instantly detect and completely remove malware before it can harm PCs. Malicious software components, including kernel level rootkit attacks, are quarantined and eliminated to prevent reinstallation or survival of reboot. Client PCs are protected with always-on, proactive protection for immunity against known and unknown threats, which disrupt business continuity and exploit online identities and information.

Primary Response SafeConnect for Norton Anti-Virus provides the following key benefits to protect client PCs from the onslaught of malicious software programs:

–Broad threat protection against spyware, Trojans, adware, keyloggers and rootkits, including variants of existing malware and targeted attacks

–Behavioral removal without signature-based scripts to address all components of malware, avoiding re-installation and re-configuration of PCs

–Easy-to-use software to instantly and constantly protect against new threats without updates and time-consuming system scans, thereby increasing productivity

Availability

Primary Response SafeConnect for Norton AntiVirus is now available and can be purchased for $24.95 via the Sana Security website at http://www.sanasecurity.com or by calling 1-866-900-SANA for further information.

About Sana Security

Sana Security creates award-winning security software that is autonomous, aware of environment change, adaptive to new threats and active in preventing attacks before they do harm.

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The World Health Organization has detailed the first evidence that a person likely caught the bird flu virus from a human, then passed a slightly mutated version to another person. But experts said Friday the genetic change does not increase the threat of a pandemic.

The investigation said the mutation of the H5N1 strain of the virus occurred in a 10-year-old Indonesian boy who was part of the largest cluster ever reported. The index case is believed to have been infected by poultry. She then likely passed it to the boy and five other blood relatives. The boy is then thought to have infected his father, whose samples showed the same mutation, according to the report obtained by The Associated Press.

Only one infected family member survived.

“It stopped. It was dead end at that point,” said Tim Uyeki, an epidemiologist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Uyeki, who was part of the investigating team, stressed that viruses are always slightly changing, and there was no reason for this mutation to raise alarm because the virus has not developed the ability to spread easily among people.

U.N. bird flu chief David Nabarro said the findings nevertheless emphasized the importance of continuous monitoring of the H5N1 virus in both humans and poultry.

“We were fortunate in that the change that took place did not result in sustained human-to-human transmission,” he said by telephone Friday. “This is a vivid reminder of the need to keep a very close watch on what the virus is doing.”

Experts fear the H5N1 virus could eventually mutate into a highly contagious form that spreads easily among people, potentially sparking a global pandemic. The current virus remains hard for people to catch, and most human cases have been traced to contact with sick birds. Scientists believe limited human-to-human transmission has occurred in a handful of other clusters, all of which involved very close contact.

The WHO report was distributed during a three-day meeting in Jakarta attended by some of the world’s top bird flu experts. Indonesian officials called the closed-door session to ask for help in coping with the virus, which has infected more people in Indonesia this year than anywhere else — killing an average of one person every 2 1/2 days last month.

Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s coordinator for the Global Influenza Program in Geneva, said the cluster in Indonesia last month drew international attention because of its size. Otherwise, he said, it resembles family clusters observed elsewhere.

“What we’re really looking for is the kind of human-to-human transmission which can cause large neighborhood outbreaks and big community outbreaks,” he said.

The virus in Sumatra island did not spread beyond the eight blood relatives — no spouses were infected.

William Schaffner, a bird flu expert at the Vanderbilt University, called the mutation “noteworthy but not worrisome.” Generally it takes a series of mutations in a bird flu virus to increase the danger of a pandemic in humans, he said by telephone.

Schaffner said it is remarkable that scientists were able to discover a mutation that occurred in a remote village. That’s the result of intense surveillance linked with “21st-century laboratory virology,” he said.

At the end of the meeting Friday, Indonesia’s Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie reiterated that the government needs $900 million over the next three years to fight bird flu, which is entrenched in poultry stocks across the archipelago of 220 million people.

“Human cases and clusters are expected to continue to occur in Indonesia as long as avian influenza in poultry persists,” said Bayu Krisnamurthi, Indonesia’s national bird flu coordinator.

The virus has killed at least 130 people worldwide since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003. Indonesia has counted 39 deaths and trails only Vietnam, where 42 people have died.

WHO and others continue to investigate a report that a Beijing man originally thought to have SARS actually died of bird flu in November 2003 — two years before the Chinese reported any human H5N1 flu infections from the mainland.

Eight Beijing scientists detailed the case in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine. At the last minute, the journal received a phone call and e-mails purporting to be from the scientists asking to have the report withdrawn, but it had already been printed.

On Friday, journal editors said a man claiming to be the lead author called to say he had not asked for the report to be pulled and that he stood by its claims. The journal alerted reporters and asked the scientist to send a letter signed by all the researchers affirming the report.

Associated Press reporter Zakki Hakim in Jakarta, Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee and Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

Copyright C 2006 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

INTERNET BUSINESS NEWS-(C)1995-2006 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Internet security provider F-Secure has been selected by TalkTalk, a communications company from mobile phone retailer The Carphone Warehouse Group Plc, to offer free anti-virus protection for 90 days to those who sign up for its Talk3 International tariff.

According to the company, TalkTalk offers its users Internet security software enabled by F-Secure on a trial basis. The software is automatically updated daily, and protects users’ PCs from viruses, spam and hacking. It also includes a parental control feature.

At the end of the trial period customers can opt to purchase the software on an ongoing monthly subscription basis at a reduced rate, the company claims.

The TalkTalk security package is available to all new and existing subscribers, who can install the security software from the CD in their connection pack or download it from the TalkTalk website.

No pricing details were disclosed.

((Comments on this story may be sent to info@m2.com))

COPYRIGHT 2006 M2 Communications Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

The consistent use of condoms protects against human papillomavirus, a cause of warts and cervical and other female cancers, researchers are reporting today.

In the study, which independent experts said was the most conclusive to examine the role of condoms in preventing infection with the virus, women whose male partners used condoms every time they had sexual intercourse had less than half the rate of infection as did women whose partners used condoms less than 5 percent of the time.

The study was conducted among students at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Although the Food and Drug Administration recently licensed a human papillomavirus vaccine that is widely expected to prevent many warts and female cancers, the findings of the study are important because the vaccination protects against just four strains of human papillomavirus.

So, the authors said, consistent condom use may protect women against other dangerous strains of the virus.

Experts on infectious diseases say they believe that condoms, when properly used, are effective in preventing papillomavirus and virtually all other sexually transmitted infections.

The issue has been controversial because a number of earlier studies of condoms and human papillomavirus produced conflicting findings about the degree of protection that condoms offered women.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a federal agency, paid $685,000 for the study, carried out from December 2000 to June 2005.

In the study, the researchers followed 82 female students at the University of Washington ages 18 through 22 from the time they said they had their first sexual intercourse with a male partner.

Every two weeks, the women electronically filed information about their daily sexual behavior and condom use to a protected Web site. Every four months, the researchers tested the women for papillomavirus and early indications of cancer. A researcher also conducted a personal interview.

The study “provided a very clear answer” to the question of the protective benefits of condoms and papillomavirus infection, said Dr. James R. Allen, president of the American Social Health Association, an organization in Research Triangle Park, N.C., dedicated to the prevention of sexually transmitted infections. Allen said he was not involved in the study.

Copyright C 2006 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

LONDON (AFP) — A 43-year-old woman was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison by a London court for knowingly infecting a lover with the HIV virus that leads to AIDS.

Sarah Jane Porter, from Kennington in southeast London, who pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm, had had sexual relations with at least four men, always hiding that fact that she was HIV positive, according to police.

One of her victims, a 36-year-old man — who contacted police in May 2005 who then managed to track down some of Porter’s lovers — said she did not reveal she had HIV and encouraged him into having unprotected sex.

One of the four men, aged 31, is HIV positive.

Porter, who is the mother of a six-year-old boy, deliberately led these men into a potentially lethal “nightmare”, said detective sergeant Brian McClusky of the Metropolitan Police. …

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

Correction ran 6/21/2006: A cover story Friday about avian flu should have said that the H5N3 virus killed terns in South Africa in 1961.

BARROW, Alaska — Within sight of an Arctic radar station built for Cold War warnings of air attacks from Soviet Siberia, government scientists are stalking birds that could be carrying a new menace from Asia: the H5N1 avian influenza virus.

Tundra swans, lesser snow geese, spectacled eiders, long-billed dowitchers, bar-tailed godwits, northern pintails, ruddy turnstones: They all come to America. Wildlife biologists don’t know which of these birds, if any, will be the first to carry the killer virus from the Eastern Hemisphere over the North Pole and down the flyways to the Lower 48.

Barrow, on the icy shore of the Arctic Ocean, is the USA’s northernmost settlement. Two flyways for wild birds on their spring migration from Asia cross above …

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

M2 PRESSWIRE-13 June 2006-Kaspersky Lab: Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 achieves top results in AV-Comparatives tests(C)1994-2006 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD RDATE:13062006 Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0, Kaspersky Lab’s latest anti-virus software that protects PCs against all malicious programs, is given a high rating in tests by AV-Comparatives, an independent Austrian anti-virus test lab.

The tests analysed the reliability and effectiveness of the proactive protection module in Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0, and were conducted using an in-house collection of 6,329 samples, including 3,175 …

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

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TOKYO — A computer virus that targets the popular file-sharing program Winny isn’t the most destructive bug or even the most widespread. But it’s the most talked about in Japan as it generates headline after headline, month after month.

The malware, called Antinny, finds random files on Winny users’ PCs and makes them available on the file-sharing network. So far, the data leaked have been varied and plentiful: passwords for restricted areas at airports, police investigations, customer information, sales reports, staff lists.

The constantly updated virus seems to have spared no one — airlines, local police forces, mobile phone companies, the National Defense Agency. Even an antivirus software manufacturer has suffered.

“The virus has been quite effective in getting information off a user’s computer and onto the Internet. The data is supposed to be secret, so people are quite sensitive about it,” said Tsukuba University computer scientist Kazuhiko Kato.

Compared to attacks on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software, the scope of the Antinny outbreak is narrow. But the Winny mess has caused an enormous brouhaha in Japan.

Antinny also may have the dubious distinction of being the first virus to exploit the nature of file-sharing itself — in Japan, if not in the world, said Mamoru Saito of Telecom Information Sharing and Analysis Center Japan. Other viruses and spyware are often found on such networks, though none appears to take advantage of the underlying technology to spread personal data.

And while Antinny’s writers seem to be limiting themselves to Japanese file-sharing software for now, he said, the code theoretically could be modified to attack other file-sharing networks such as Gnutella and BitTorrent.

The outbreak has triggered a broad damage-control effort by government and businesses. They have banned Winny from in-house computers and fired employees who use it on them. They’ve also demanded that staff not take work home and delete Winny from any home PCs used for work.

“The most secure way to prevent the leakage of information is not to use Winny on your computer,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, the government’s top spokesman, told reporters.

But the outbreak shows little sign of abating.

“The problem has shown that many people just don’t know how to use the Internet safely,” said Takeshi Sato of the government’s National Information Security Center.

File-sharing programs like Winny are used to find and get files - - from music to video to documents — from the computers of other people also using the software. The PC owner typically has control over what is made available by limiting sharing to a specific folder.

The virus takes advantage of this culture to propagate itself by playing a “social” trick on users, said Telecom ISAC Japan’s Saito.

When the virus is activated on a computer, it first chooses a new name for itself by taking the names of other files users are likely to be searching for — usually photos or music. The resulting new name becomes so long that, under normal Windows’ settings, the three- letter file extension that indicates the type of file disappears from view, he said.

Careless users who download the file will see only the name and think it is something they wanted — say, a photo of a favorite movie star. They don’t see that they are actually trying to open an application, not a picture.

When they do, the virus then looks on the computer for the Winny application, grabs random files off the hard drive and uses Winny to make those files — and itself — available for download on the network.

And so the cycle repeats.

New strains of Antinny appear all the time. Software maker Trend Micro listed 46 variations of the virus in its database as of mid- May. Trend itself lost sales data due to a Winny leak in 2005.

“Just keeping your antivirus software up to date isn’t enough, because the updates can’t keep up with all the new strains of the virus,” the government’s Sato said.

The government’s concerns about Winny go beyond viruses. It’s often used to share files — and that often means illegally exchanging copyrighted materials.

Winny was already on the government’s radar screen in November 2004, when its creator — then an instructor at the prestigious University of Tokyo — was handed a three-year suspended sentence on charges of violating copyright laws.

But now it is confidential data rather than hit songs that have Winny back in the spotlight.

Japan Airlines, for example, discovered last December that an Antinny-infected computer owned by one of its co-pilots leaked passwords for restricted areas at 16 airports around Japan as well as Guam’s international airport. The airline was forced to alert the airports to have passwords changed as a precaution.

In early March, Japan’s National Defense Agency said it lost “confidential information” due to a Winny leak, again from an employee’s home computer. While defense officials refused to say what data had been lost, a news report said it included reports on training exercises conducted in Okinawa with U.S. troops in 2005.

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

LONDON (AFP) — Trained terrorists could assemble smallpox and other deadly viruses in the absence of laws preventing them from ordering the basic ingredients over the Internet, a British newspaper reported.

The Guardian said it obtained a short sequence of smallpox DNA, though it made sure it ordered a sample which had three small modifications to render it harmless before it was mailed to a home in London.

The deadly smallpox virus has existed only in laboratories since being eradicated from the world’s population 30 years ago, it said.

One study estimated that, because most people on the planet have no resistance to the extinct virus, an initial release which infected just 10 people would spread to 2.2 million people in 180 days, it added.

DNA sequences could also be obtained over the Internet for poliovirus and 1918 flu, it added.

The Guardian said researchers have legitimate reasons …

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

The common cold — inconvenient and annoying but generally considered benign — may cause attacks of multiple sclerosis. And it may provide a clue about what causes MS in the first place.

That’s the premise of a study being launched at the University of Utah School of Medicine, which is seeking help from local MS patients. Several thousand Utahns are estimated to have the disease.

Researchers have previously noticed that while MS patients may be less likely than other people to get a cold in the first place, a worsening of MS symptoms is three to four times more likely when they do catch a cold. Multiple sclerosis typically waxes and wanes in patients with the “relapsing-remitting” form of the disease, which accounts for 80 percent of all MS cases.

It’s possible that a cold virus is also the “inciting agent” for the initial development of MS, says Dr. John D. Kriesel, the study’s principal investigator and an assistant professor of internal medicine and infectious diseases. The cause of the debilitating disease, which damages the brain and spinal cord, has long been a mystery.

The goal of the study, which will be conducted by the U., Salt Lake City Veterans Administration Hospital, ARUP Laboratories and the University of Arizona, is to identify which specific viruses, if any, might be triggering an MS attack. These viruses could then be targeted by vaccines or treated with anti-viral drugs.

Participants, each with active colds that have lasted no more than a day or two, will provide samples of blood and nasal mucous, and undergo a neurological examination. One or more additional visits will be required over a subsequent five-week period.

The possible link between colds and MS was first discovered in 1985 by University of Arizona neurology professor William Sibley, who will be a co-investigator in the current study. The new study will use sophisticated molecular-biology techniques to parse out which particular cold viruses might be to blame, Kriesel says.

Previous research pointing to a virus as the trigger for the initial disease and subsequent attacks includes the fact that outbreaks are often seasonal. The studies also show that disease occurs more often in people who were born in the spring rather than the late fall.

“I would say it has something to do with maternal antibodies and resistance to viral infection,” Kriesel said. Children born in the spring eventually lose the protection of their mother’s antibodies within the first nine months, he said. By then it’s winter or early spring, when they may be susceptible to a cold virus. Re-exposure to that virus or a similar virus may lead to MS.

Kriesel cited the work of John Kurtzke, which provides evidence that a “priming infection” is acquired before puberty. Migration studies have borne this out, he says. For example, a person born in Africa who moves to Sweden at age 15 has a low chance of acquiring MS, whereas a person born in Sweden, where cold viruses are more prevalent, and then moves to Africa, has a much higher chance of having MS.

An outbreak of MS in the Faroe Islands in 1943 also points to the virus hypothesis, he says. The outbreak on the remote island occurred after the British arrived in 1940.

It’s possible, though, that it’s not the cold virus itself but rather “the nastiness of having the cold” that triggers MS attacks, Kriesel says. “A lot of researchers have given up on the viruses. They’ve tried to grow viruses out of the brains of MS patients and haven’t succeeded.”

For more information about the study, contact Mark McKeough at 581-6406 or mark.mckeough@hsc.utah.edu.

E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com

Copyright C 2006 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

Information provided by: Findarticles.com