Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by perfectgrowwell

Bitdefender free antivirus is closing

perfectgrowwell — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 18:02:39 +0800

Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition will be discontinued at the end of 2021

Some Bitdefender customers will soon need to look for a new way to keep their computers protected against the latest threats and viruses after the company announced it would be closing the free version of its antivirus software.

While Bitdefender has a number of paid antivirus solutions to help users protect their PCs, the company also offers Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition. However, in an email sent to its customers seen by TechRadar Pro, the company has revealed that it will soon end support for its free antivirus.

In the email, Bitdefender explained that immense changes in the security industry have upended many of its plans for product development and unfortunately, beginning January 1 2022, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition will officially be discontinued and will no longer be available for use.

Time for an upgrade
“We are focusing product development around multi-platform protection and as a result, we are retiring Bitdefender Antivirus Free for Windows starting on December 31, 2021. Current users will be supported through June 30, 2022," the company told TechRadar Pro in a statement.

"Bitdefender values its customers and user base; all existing Antivirus Free users will receive privately (via email) a special discounted offer for Bitdefender Total Security.”

Although Bitdefender is discontinuing its free antivirus, the company says that it will continue to offer tech support for the product until June 30 of next year. This will give its customers more than enough time to install an alternative antivirus solution to keep their devices protected.

For those that want to continue using Bitdefender's silent “set-in-and-forget-it” style of antivirus protection, the company is running a promotion where it will upgrade the subscriptions of its free users to Bitdefender Total Security.

Normally a one year subscription to the software costs £69.99 but Bitdefender will provide Free Edition users with a 5 device / 1 year subscription for just £8.98. However, this offer is only available to Free Edition users and will expire on December 31 of this year, so if you want to keep using Bitdefender to protect your PC, now is the time to claim it.

Alternatively, Microsoft Defender is another free antivirus software solution that comes built-in with every Windows PC though it doesn't include nearly as many features as Bitdefender Total Security like a VPN and mobile apps for Android and iOS.

We've also highlighted the best antivirus, best malware removal software and best endpoint protection software

source: Click here

https://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/free.html

Microsoft announces Office 2021 features and prici

perfectgrowwell — Sat, 02 Oct 2021 12:53:03 +0800

Microsoft announces Office 2021 features and pricing

Microsoft is launching Office 2021 on October 5th, and the company is finally detailing the features and pricing today. Office 2021 will be the next standalone version of Microsoft’s Office suite, designed for businesses and consumers who want to avoid the subscription version of Office.

Office Home and Student 2021 will be priced at $149.99 and include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Microsoft Teams for PC and Mac. Office Home and Business 2021 is priced at $249.99 and will include everything in the Home version and Outlook for PC and Mac, alongside the rights to use all of the Office apps for business purposes.

Office 2021 will include the collaboration features found in Microsoft 365 versions of Office, with real-time co-authoring, OneDrive support, and even Microsoft Teams integration. Office 2021 will also include the new Office design that has a refreshed ribbon interface, rounded corners, and a neutral color palette that all matches the UI changes in Windows 11.

Microsoft is also adding in some Microsoft 365 features to Office 2021, including modern Excel features, PowerPoint improvements, better inking in Office apps, and Outlook translation support. Here are all the new Office 2021 features:

Excel:

XLOOKUP function – helps find things in a table or range by row in an Excel worksheet.
Dynamic array support - new functions in Excel that use dynamic arrays.
LET function – an Excel feature that lets you assign names to calculation results.
XMATCH function – this searches for a specified item in an array or range of cells and returns the item’s relative position.
OpenDocument format (ODF) 1.3 support
Updated Draw tab
Performance improvements
PowerPoint:

Record Slide Show – this new PowerPoint feature includes presenter video recording, ink recording and laser pointer recording.
Replay your ink strokes – if you’re using ink in PowerPoint, you can now replay illustrations as they were drawn.
Arrange elements on your slides for screen readers – this lets you re-arrange elements to optimize them for screen readers.
OpenDocument format (ODF) 1.3 support
Updated Draw tab
Performance improvements
Outlook:

Translator and ink – You can now annotate emails, draw in a canvas for messages, or translate emails into more than 70 languages.
Instant search – search results are now instant, with more ways to refine and filter results.
Performance improvements
Word:

OpenDocument format (ODF) 1.3 support
Updated Draw tab
Performance improvements
Office 2021 will be available on October 5th, alongside the launch of Windows 11. Microsoft says Office 2021 is supported on Windows 11, Windows 10, and the three most recent versions of macOS.

Source

No more unlimited storage on Google:

perfectgrowwell — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 15:27:18 +0800

Google is making changes to its policy on “unlimited” storage from June 1, 2021

Google announced last month that its cloud storage is undergoing some changes, and when these changes come into effect next year, you will need to find additional storage space for your high-quality photos and videos, important documents and other files.

From June 1 next year, Google will stop offering “unlimited” storage as new photos or videos uploaded to Google Photos or Google Drive will count towards the free 15GB of cloud storage included with every Google Account. However, photos and videos (in original quality) backed up before June 1, 2021 will still continue to be free and exempt from the storage limit.

“Starting June 1, 2021, any new photos and videos you upload will count toward the free 15 GB of storage that comes with every Google Account or the additional storage you’ve purchased as a Google One member,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Your Google Account storage is shared across Drive, Gmail and Photos. This change also allows us to keep pace with the growing demand for storage. And, as always, we uphold our commitment to not use information in Google Photos for advertising purposes. We know this is a big shift and may come as a surprise, so we wanted to let you know well in advance and give you resources to make this easier.”

This effectively means that newly created Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and other such files will also be counted toward the new changes made with regard to storage, but it is not extended to existing files.

Why is Google changing its storage policy?

Google explained that these changes are necessary to provide users with “a great experience and to keep pace with the growing demand”. It said that users upload 28 billion photos and videos per week, and there were already 4 trillion photos on Google’s servers.

“Today, people are uploading more content than ever before—in fact, more than 4.3 million GB are added across Gmail, Drive, and Photos every day,” the tech giant said while announcing the changes.

However, Google has said that Pixel owners will still be able to upload high-quality photos for free after June 1st without those images counting against their cap.

Google provides 15 GB free storage space to all its users, and this counts toward your Gmail, Google Photos and Google Drive.

While Google claimed that around 80 per cent of its Photo app users won’t hit their 15 GB cap for three years after the changes come into effect, people are wondering: What happens when you do use up your 15 GB storage?

Well, Google has an answer for that—you can subscribe to a plan under the Google One program in order to keep adding high-quality content to your account. For users of Google One account, these changes are inconsequential.

In India, plans for Google One starts at 200 GB for Rs 210 per month, 2 TB for Rs 650 per month or Rs 6,500 per year, 10 TB at Rs 3,250 per month and 20 TB at Rs 6,500 per month.

So, how does one know how much space is left in their Google accounts?

David Lieb, Director at Google Photos, had taken to Twitter soon after the news of storage policy change was announced to provide users with a tool that “estimates the time until you reach your storage quota, based on your personal upload rates”.

You can check the link here: photos.google.com/storage

Oh, and bad news for those who don’t log into their accounts for at least two years—Google will start deleting data and content from these inactive accounts.

Here, too, it’s advantage Google One users. “Google One members who are within their storage quota and in good-standing will not be impacted by this new inactive policy,” the tech giant has said. Anyway, it is expected that Google will warn you before it starts deleting content from your account, thereby giving users the option to save or download it before its gone.

How can one keep a Google account active?

It’s simple, really. Users can keep their accounts active by visiting the apps “Gmail, Google Photos and Google Drive” on the web or through a Google app “periodically”, the company has said.

source: Click here.

Which Avira business products will be discontinued

perfectgrowwell — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 08:16:00 +0800

Which Avira business products will be discontinued?

The following products will no longer be supported beyond December 31, 2021 (information also available via this link):

Avira Antivirus Pro Business Edition
Avira Antivirus for Server
Avira Antivirus for Endpoint
Avira Antivirus for Small Business
Avira Exchange Security

More details please visit the following link.

Source: https://support.avira.com/hc/en-us/articles...e-discontinued-

NortonLifeLock to Acquire Avira

perfectgrowwell — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 08:42:53 +0800

12/07/2020
Press Release
Accelerates International Growth and Expands Consumer Reach through Freemium Model

TEMPE, Ariz. & TETTNANG, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- NortonLifeLock (NASDAQ: NLOK), a global leader in consumer Cyber Safety, today announced it has agreed to acquire Avira in an all-cash transaction for approximately $360 million from Investcorp Technology Partners. Avira provides a consumer-focused portfolio of cybersecurity and privacy solutions to a strong base in Europe and key emerging markets.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201207005513/en/

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201207005513/en/

Malwarebytes launches Privacy,

perfectgrowwell — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 19:56:30 +0800

Antivirus and anti-malware software maker Malwarebytes has thrown its hat into the VPN ring, announcing the launch of Malwarebytes Privacy today (April 23).
Malwarebytes Privacy is available only for Windows (7 and up) for the moment, with Mac, Android, iOS and possibly Chrome OS versions to come "soon."
The best VPN services: Keep your data your own
Malwarebytes Free review: A great complement to antivirus software
Millions of iPhones vulnerable to nasty email hack: What to do

Yearly subscriptions cost $59.99, and bundles with Malwarebytes Premium antivirus software cost $89.99 for a "limited time." Both packages will cover up to five devices.
Malwarebytes told us that Privacy will have more than 180 virtual servers in 30 countries, letting customers appear as though they are in those locations. It swears that Privacy won't keep user logs.

Right out of the gate with WireGuard
Most significantly, Malwarebytes Privacy uses a "newer and faster VPN protocol," according to its website. We've confirmed with Malwarebytes that that protocol is WireGuard.
That suddenly changes the game. WireGuard, which is lighter and faster than the OpenVPN and IKEv2/IPsec protocols in wide use, is only now being rolled out by major VPN services to their users. NordVPN added WireGuard yesterday (April 22), and Mullvad added WireGuard to its iOS app just last week.

Rival antivirus firms Avast, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, McAfee and Norton already offer VPN services, some having done so for many years. But to our knowledge, none of them offer WireGuard.

The current industry trend is to add non-antivirus features, such as backup software, cloud storage, identity theft protection and password managers, to antivirus suites in an attempt to present customers with fully comprehensive security packages.
Along those lines, Malwarebytes says that its VPN service is "the first offering in an emerging suite of privacy products," so we can probably expect more non-malware-related products from the company in the near future.

source:Source

PC security alert: New ransomware 'WannaRen'

perfectgrowwell — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 20:05:46 +0800

PC security alert: New ransomware 'WannaRen' begins to spread

A new type of ransomware called "WannaRen" has recently appeared on the Internet. It behaves similarly to the infamous "WannaCry" and encrypts almost all files in the Windows system.

The suffix of these encrypted files is ".WannaRen", and the hackers demanded a ransom of 0.05 bitcoins.

At present, there are two variants of the virus, the difference is only to send ransom information through text or pictures. The language is in traditional Chinese, and the bitcoin addresses are the same. So it can basically be determined that the authors are the same.

PC security alert: New ransomware 'WannaRen' begins to spread-cnTechPost
According to the feedback from Baidu Tieba and the 360 community, China's popular anti-virus software 360 Safe and other anti-virus software did not report the virus during the infection. The computer was still infected after manual antivirus operations.

Some users have reported that the system will still be infected after installing the Microsoft "Eternal Blue" patch.

In addition, according to the updated information from a blogger named Arision.Y on Zhihu, China's equivalent of Quora, the virus is not using the eternal blue vulnerability. So most antivirus software cannot intercept it. Only Norton can intercept (not wide) but the network requirements are higher.

PC security alert: New ransomware 'WannaRen' begins to spread-cnTechPost
At present, Windows 7 is immune but there is no damage from pop-up windows. Users of Windows 10 has confirmed that there are damages.

PC security alert: New ransomware 'WannaRen' begins to spread-cnTechPost
PC security alert: New ransomware 'WannaRen' begins to spread-cnTechPost
In 2017, the "WannaCry" ransomware infected at least 150 countries with 300,000 computers, causing economic losses of $8 billion, affecting many industries such as finance, energy, and medical care, and causing a serious crisis to social and livelihood security.

source: PC security alert: New ransomware 'WannaRen' begins to spread

Wannaren ransomware decryption tool

Sandboxie Open Source Release

perfectgrowwell — Sat, 11 Apr 2020 16:58:06 +0800

IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING SANDBOXIE OPEN SOURCE RELEASE

Sophos is proud to announce the release of the Sandboxie source code to the community, meaning we are finally an open source tool!
We’re excited to give the code to the community. The Sandboxie tool has been built on many years of highly-skilled developer work and is an example of how to integrate with Windows at a very low level. We’re proud to release it to the community in the hope it will spawn a fresh wave of ideas and use cases.
To download this release please visit our download page here.
As we are monitoring and keeping you up to date on the take-up of the source code and its transition to become a true open source project we can imagine that you have some questions about the availability of the free Sandboxie versions and the future of the forum and this website.
FAQ on this release

Will Sophos take ownership of the open source project?

Sophos is currently engaging with members of the community who are willing to take on the Sandboxie source code and make it available through an open source project to the community. We will keep you informed about the progress through this website.

Will a Sophos pre-compiled version be made available?

The latest version of Sandboxie (Win 7, 8.1 and 10 only) is available here. This is the last version of Sandboxie that Sophos will make available to the community and no further updates will be made to it. All restricted features have been made completely free in this version. Any further improvements to Sandboxie will need to be made through the open source community.

What will happen to the forums?

Sophos is planning to close the Sophos community Sandboxie forum on June 1st 2020.

What will happen to the existing license server?

The open source release has no code to check the license server. We have removed any checks against the license server since the 5.31.1 release. For this reason we will be shutting down the license server on June 1st 2020.

What will happen to the Sandboxie website and available downloads?

As and when the Sandboxie community embraces the available source code, transitioning it to an open source project, we will gradually wind down the website and expect to close the website during the fall of 2020.

How do I compile the code?

There are 3 steps to building Sandboxie:

Compile the source code
Sign the generated binaries (optional for most things but required for the driver)
Create the installer (optional but useful for initially performing tasks like installing the service and driver)
To start with there is a Readme.txt file in the root of the source code.
The main piece of source that is needed to compile the code is Microsoft Visual Studio 2015. (The Community Version may build the source code but be advised that there are restrictions on the use of the binaries generated by this version). There is a dependency on the Microsoft Windows Device Driver Kit 7.1.0 (link has been provided in the Readme.txt file).
There is a separate Readme.txt located in the /install/ folder for building the installer. This contains additional requirements to set up.

Does the Sandboxie Source Code come with pre-compiled code?

No, Sandboxie can be compiled entirely from source code with very few dependencies.

Are there any restrictions to using the source code?

We are releasing the source code under the GPL v3 license (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html)

How do I start studying the source code?

Start with the Readme.txt file at the root. There is a little more explanation of each of the different projects in the source code.

Do I need to sign my drivers?
Yes, Microsoft requires that all drivers are signed. This requires purchasing a validated certificate from a Certificate Authority who normally will vet the individual/company that they are issuing too. Since Windows 10, Microsoft also requires that all drivers be submitted to them through their hardware development portal so that it can be validated and signed by them.
For testing purposes, it is possible to create a self-signed certificate and use that to sign your driver locally. Windows still need to run in what is called Test Signing mode in order to accept this form of signed driver.
It is beyond the scope of this document to describe how to sign the binaries but there are plenty of resources online to help with this.

Can I avoid signing the driver?

If you use a version of the driver that is already signed, it is possible to update other components and drop in files as replacements. The only condition is that the “Version” associated with the SbieSvc project (see common\my_version.h) matches the driver version.

Source

Source Code

Avira has been acquired by Investcorp

perfectgrowwell — Sat, 11 Apr 2020 16:53:22 +0800

German security firm Avira has been acquired by Investcorp at a $180M valuation

Mergers and acquisitions largely grinded to a halt at the end of March, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic spreading around the world, but today comes news of a deal out of Europe that underscores where pockets of activity are still happening. Avira, a cybersecurity company based out of Germany that provides antivirus, identity management and other tools both to consumers and as a white-label offering from a number of big tech brands, has been snapped up by Investcorp Technology Partners, the PE division of Investcorp Bank. Investcorp’s plan is to help Avira make acquisitions in a wider security consolidation play.
The financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed in the companies’ joint announcement, but the CEO of Avira, Travis Witteveen, and ITP’s MD, Gilbert Kamieniecky, both said it gives Avira a total valuation of $180 million. The deal will involve ITP taking a majority ownership in the company, with Avira founder Tjark Auerbach retaining a “significant” stake of the company in the deal, Kamieniecky added.
Avira is not a tech startup in the typical sense. It was founded in 1986 and has been bootstrapped (in that it seems never to have taken any outside investment as it has grown). Witteveen said that it has “tens of millions” of users today of its own-branded products — its anti-virus software has been resold by the likes of Facebook (as part of its now-dormant antivirus marketplace) — and many more via the white-label deals it makes with big names. Strategic partners today include NTT, Deutsche Telekom, IBM, Canonical and more.

He said that the company has had many strategic approaches for acquisition from the ranks of tech companies, and also from more typical investors, but these were not routes that it has wanted to follow, since it wanted to grow as its own business, and needed more of a financial injection to do that than what it could get from more standard VC deals.
“We wanted a partnership where someone could step in and support our organic growth, and the inorganic [acquisition] opportunity,” he said.
The plan will be to make more acquisitions to expand Avira’s footprint, both in terms of products and especially to grow its geographic footprint: today the company is active in Asia, Europe and to a lesser extent in the US, while Investcorp has a business that also extends deep into the Middle East.
Cybersecurity, meanwhile, may never go out of style as an investment and growth opportunity in tech. Not only have cyber threats become more sophisticated and ubiquitous and targeted at individual consumers and businesses over the last several years, but our increasing reliance on technology and internet-connected systems will increase the demand and need to keep these safe from malicious attacks.
That has become no more apparent than in recent weeks, when much of the world’s population has been confined to shelter in place. People have in turn spent unprecedented amounts of time online using their phones, computers and other devices to read news, communicate with their families and friends, entertain themselves, and do critical work that they may have in part done in the past offline.
“In the current market, you can imagine a lot are concerned about the uncertainties of the technology landscape, but this is one that continues to thrive,” said Kamieniecky. “In security, we have seen companies develop quite rapidly and quickly, and here we have an opportunity to do that.”
Avira has been somewhat of a consolidator up to now, buying companies like SocialShield (which provided online security specifically for younger and social media users), while ITP, with Investcorp having some $34 billion under management, has made many acquisitions (and divestments) over the years, with some of the tech deals including Ubisense, Zeta Interactive and Dialogic.

Source

Spyshelter 12 ten years of spyshelter

perfectgrowwell — Sun, 27 Oct 2019 08:50:18 +0800

Today we released SpyShelter version 12.0 together with brand new edition of SpyShelter Free.

10 Years – this is how long we have been helping you to keep your privacy safe. It has been a long journey, and on this anniversary, we celebrate by bringing back a new, revamped version of SpyShelter Free, available on our Download page.
It is a bit different than previous version of SpyShelter Free. It focuses on providing real time system protection together with a firewall module, all wrapped up in the classic SpyShelter GUI.

SpyShelter – where classic solutions are more important than trends.
Thank you for 10 years of your continuous support.

SpyShelter 12.0 Changelog (21/Oct/2019):

– Fixed bugs with protection handling from tray icon
– Internal database with signatures of trusted signers updated

source:
https://www.spyshelter.com/blog/spyshelter-12-ten-years-of-spyshelter/

Zoner AntiVirus

perfectgrowwell — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 19:16:37 +0800

The success of Zoner AntiVirus for smart phones
The Zoner AntiVirus Free application and the paid version – Zoner Mobile Security – are used by millions of satisfied Android users. Join them and make your smart phone secure!

Zoner AntiVirus application for Windows (beta):
Zoner AntiVirus application for Windows (beta)
The application is free and designed for Windows 10. The download is currently beta version so it may contain minor errors

Zoner AntiVirus for Windows focuses on detecting Zero-day vulnerabilities currently spreading across the Internet. It ideally complements system protection with security programs directly in Windows..

Zoner AntiVirus Free for Android
The application is free and can be upgraded to a professional version Zoner Mobile Security, which also contains advert detection + backup and renewal via SMS or a call*.
*The backup can be used up to version 4.4; this and higher Android versions do not support the feature

source: https://zonerantivirus.com

Sandboxie is freeware (soon open source).

perfectgrowwell — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 18:38:08 +0800

IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING SANDBOXIE VERSIONS

Sophos is excited to announce that we are making Sandboxie a free tool, with plans to transition it to an open source tool.

This new evolution of Sandboxie is one we are enthusiastic about, but that does not mean this was an easy decision to make. Sandboxie has never been a significant component of Sophos’ business, and we have been exploring options for its future for a while.

Frankly, the easiest and least costly decision for Sophos would have been to simply end of life Sandboxie. However, we love the technology too much to see it fade away. More importantly, we love the Sandboxie community too much to do that. The Sandboxie user base represents some of the most passionate, forward thinking, and knowledgeable members of the security community and we didn’t want to let you down.

After thoughtful consideration we decided that the best way to keep Sandboxie going was to give it back to its users – transitioning it to an open source tool. We will release more information about the open source project as we continue to work on the details.

Until the open source transition is completed we have decided to make all restricted features of Sandboxie completely free.

Download
Sandboxie version 5.31.4 32 bit
Sandboxie version 5.31.4 64 bit

Or

Sandboxie official website

Released: September 10th, 2019

Removed license check and activation requirements.
Fix IE download issues on Windows 7 and 10
Fix IE download issues (and some file rename failures) on Windows 10 Spring 2019

source: Here

[WTS]AdLock

perfectgrowwell — Sun, 12 May 2019 21:53:01 +0800

Item(s):AdLock for Windows [1 year license] and AdLock for Android device [1 year license]

Package includes:License key(s)/ Activation code(s)

Price:

AdLock for Windows [1 year license]~~RM 86.01~~RM 43.00
AdLock for Android device [1 year license]~~RM 43.01~~RM 21.50
Volume discount applied.

Warranty:One year license

Dealing method:e-mail/bank in/online transfer/ATM/Paypal

Location:Malaysia

Contact method/details:sales@perfectgrowwell.my/ + 6012 6521156

Item(s) conditions:New

Picture:

Reason for sale:Authorized Reseller

Promotion!

April N May 2020
Time limited.

AdLock — The Ad Blocker Which Really Blocks

AdLock is a comprehensive ad blocking software that meets all of your expectations. It blocks pop-ups, flash banners, video ads, banners with malware code, and internet bugs collecting your personal information. AdLock makes your browser, your apps, games, and instant messages absolutely ads-free.

What features our advertisement blocker can perform to you?

• It has zero tolerance to any types of ads, no matter what are you using Google Chrome or Skype you won’t see any annoying banners and pop-ups
• It filters all incoming internet traffic, and regulates internet usage by different applications
• Adlock won’t let you go to any dangerous websites as it checks all potentially harmful links first
• It filters HTTPS connections
• And shows internet traffic and blocking reports

AdLock is the best ad blocker you can use on all of your devices whether on portable or stationary; it’s light and simple in use. It doesn’t load with unnecessary work your operating system; you won’t notice it working just like you won’t notice ads any longer. All you have to do is to download and install AdLock on your device, open it and start a brand new life without online advertisements.

Please download adlock and install on your android device or for your computer/laptop (Windows only), try first before you purchase it.
This item is non-refundable and non-returnable. You have free 14-day trial.
You may download adlock from www.adlock.com.

Adlock for browser (Chrome only) is free forever, please download it from official website.

Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Pwd

perfectgrowwell — Sat, 23 Mar 2019 13:21:40 +0800

Hundreds of millions of Facebook users had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by thousands of Facebook employees — in some cases going back to 2012, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Facebook says an ongoing investigation has so far found no indication that employees have abused access to this data.

Facebook is probing a series of security failures in which employees built applications that logged unencrypted password data for Facebook users and stored it in plain text on internal company servers. That’s according to a senior Facebook employee who is familiar with the investigation and who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

The Facebook source said the investigation so far indicates between 200 million and 600 million Facebook users may have had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. The source said Facebook is still trying to determine how many passwords were exposed and for how long, but so far the inquiry has uncovered archives with plain text user passwords dating back to 2012.

My Facebook insider said access logs showed some 2,000 engineers or developers made approximately nine million internal queries for data elements that contained plain text user passwords.

“The longer we go into this analysis the more comfortable the legal people [at Facebook] are going with the lower bounds” of affected users, the source said. “Right now they’re working on an effort to reduce that number even more by only counting things we have currently in our data warehouse.”

In an interview with KrebsOnSecurity, Facebook software engineer Scott Renfro said the company wasn’t ready to talk about specific numbers — such as the number of Facebook employees who could have accessed the data.

Renfro said the company planned to alert affected Facebook users, but that no password resets would be required.

“We’ve not found any cases so far in our investigations where someone was looking intentionally for passwords, nor have we found signs of misuse of this data,” Renfro said. “In this situation what we’ve found is these passwords were inadvertently logged but that there was no actual risk that’s come from this. We want to make sure we’re reserving those steps and only force a password change in cases where there’s definitely been signs of abuse.”

A written statement from Facebook provided to KrebsOnSecurity says the company expects to notify “hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users.” Facebook Lite is a version of Facebook designed for low speed connections and low-spec phones.

Both Github and Twitter were forced to admit similar stumbles in recent months, but in both of those cases the plain text user passwords were available to a relatively small number of people within those organizations, and for far shorter periods of time.

Renfro said the issue first came to light in January 2019 when security engineers reviewing some new code noticed passwords were being inadvertently logged in plain text.

“This prompted the team to set up a small task force to make sure we did a broad-based review of anywhere this might be happening,” Renfro said. “We have a bunch of controls in place to try to mitigate these problems, and we’re in the process of investigating long-term infrastructure changes to prevent this going forward. We’re now reviewing any logs we have to see if there has been abuse or other access to that data.”

Facebook’s password woes come amid a tough month for the social network. Last week, The New York Times reported that federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into data deals Facebook struck with some of the world’s largest tech companies.

Earlier in March, Facebook came under fire from security and privacy experts for using phone numbers provided for security reasons — like two-factor authentication — for other things (like marketing, advertising and making users searchable by their phone numbers across the social network’s different platforms).

Update, 11:43 a.m.: Facebook has posted a statement about this incident here.

source: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/03/facebook-stored-hundreds-of-millions-of-user-passwords-in-plain-text-for-years/

Zemana AntiMalware Free

perfectgrowwell — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 09:43:59 +0800

Free antimalware protection for you
Don't let malware take away your PC!

Fast Scan
Scan your PC in fast and effective way for malware, spyware, virus detection and removal.
Malware removal tool
Detects and removes annoying browser add-on's, adware, unwanted apps and toolbar and any type of malware on your PC.

Real-Time Protection
Cleans your PC from malware and keeps it safe from future infections.
Why Zemana Antimalware?
Faster, better malware detection and removal
Efficient rootkit and bootkit removal
Detects and removes what Antiviruses don't
Proactive browser hijacker removal
Detects unknown malware

Click here for downloading Zemana AntiMalware Free

source:
https://www.zemana.com/antimalware

Carbonite to Acquire Webroot

perfectgrowwell — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 13:21:16 +0800

I’m excited to share that Webroot has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Carbonite, a leader in cloud-based data protection for consumers and businesses.

Why do I think this is such good news for customers, partners and our employees?

For customers and partners, the combined Webroot and Carbonite will create an integrated solution for their top security needs today and a platform for us to build upon in the future. When surveyed, SMBs and MSPs consistently name endpoint security and backup and data recovery services among their top priorities.

For our threat intelligence partners, the addition of new data sources will make our threat intelligence services even more powerful.

We see great opportunities ahead building on the solutions you trust—endpoint and network protection, security awareness training and threat intelligence services—and extending them to backup and data recovery and beyond.

For employees, we see a great future of growth for a team with a shared culture. Both Webroot and Carbonite have tremendously talented team members who together will bring even more innovative solutions to market. But, just as important, both companies have a culture of customer focus, where customer success is the ultimate proof of company success.

Until the transaction closes, we must operate as separate companies. After close, which we expect to happen in the first calendar quarter of 2019, I look forward to sharing more information about our plans.

In the meantime, customers and partners can expect:

The same commitment to customer care and support. You will have access to your same account reps and award-winning customer support team.
Future solutions that combine Webroot’s threat intelligence driven portfolio with Carbonite’s data protection solutions.
Extended sales channels and partner ecosystems. Carbonite partners will provide additional channels for Webroot to reach new customers and partners worldwide.
The most important point I want to underline is that our commitment to you will not change, and we are just expanding the family of people dedicated to building great solutions to protect you and your customers.

Mike Potts
President & CEO, Webroot

source:
https://www.webroot.com/blog/2019/02/07/carbonite-to-acquire-webroot/

Microsoft Edge: Making the web better through more

perfectgrowwell — Fri, 07 Dec 2018 08:28:53 +0800

For the past few years, Microsoft has meaningfully increased participation in the open source software (OSS) community, becoming one of the world’s largest supporters of OSS projects. Today we’re announcing that we intend to adopt the Chromium open source project in the development of Microsoft Edge on the desktop to create better web compatibility for our customers and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers.

As part of this, we intend to become a significant contributor to the Chromium project, in a way that can make not just Microsoft Edge — but other browsers as well — better on both PCs and other devices.

Making the web better for many audiences

Working with open source is not new for Microsoft Edge. Our mobile browser has been based on open source from its beginnings over a year ago. We’ve also used open source for various features of Microsoft Edge on the desktop (e.g. Angle, Web Audio, Brotli) and we’ve begun making contributions to the Chromium project to help move browsing forward on new ARM-based Windows devices.

Our goal is to do this in a way that embraces the well-established open source model that’s been working effectively for years: meaningful and positive contributions that align to long-standing, thoughtfully designed architecture, and collaborative engineering. Together we seek the best outcome for all people who use the web across many devices.

Ultimately, we want to make the web experience better for many different audiences. People using Microsoft Edge (and potentially other browsers) will experience improved compatibility with all web sites, while getting the best-possible battery life and hardware integration on all kinds of Windows devices. Web developers will have a less-fragmented web platform to test their sites against, ensuring that there are fewer problems and increased satisfaction for users of their sites; and because we’ll continue to provide the Microsoft Edge service-driven understanding of legacy IE-only sites, Corporate IT will have improved compatibility for both old and new web apps in the browser that comes with Windows.

Microsoft Edge + OSS: a new emphasis for Microsoft

Over the next year or so, we’ll be making a technology change that happens “under the hood” for Microsoft Edge, gradually over time, and developed in the open so those of you who are interested can follow along. The key aspects of this evolution in direction are:

1. We will move to a Chromium-compatible web platform for Microsoft Edge on the desktop. Our intent is to align the Microsoft Edge web platform simultaneously (a) with web standards and (b) with other Chromium-based browsers. This will deliver improved compatibility for everyone and create a simpler test-matrix for web developers.

2. Microsoft Edge will now be delivered and updated for all supported versions of Windows and on a more frequent cadence. We also expect this work to enable us to bring Microsoft Edge to other platforms like macOS. Improving the web-platform experience for both end users and developers requires that the web platform and the browser be consistently available to as many devices as possible. To accomplish this, we will evolve the browser code more broadly, so that our distribution model offers an updated Microsoft Edge experience + platform across all supported versions of Windows, while still maintaining the benefits of the browser’s close integration with Windows.

3. We will contribute web platform enhancements to make Chromium-based browsers better on Windows devices. Our philosophy of greater participation in Chromium open source will embrace contribution of beneficial new tech, consistent with some of the work we described above. We recognize that making the web better on Windows is good for our customers, partners and our business – and we intend to actively contribute to that end.

What happens next

If you’re a Microsoft Edge customer, there is nothing you need to do as the Microsoft Edge you use today isn’t changing. If you are a web developer, we invite you to join our community by installing preview builds when they’re available and staying current on our testing and contributions. We expect to have a preview build ready in early 2019 for you to try for yourself.

If you’re part of the open-source community developing browsers, we invite you to collaborate with us as we build the future of Microsoft Edge and contribute to the Chromium project. A few near-term examples will include continued work on ARM64 support, web accessibility, and taking advantage of other hardware features like touch support.

We look forward to sharing more details in the future as we test and learn. We are excited about the opportunity to be an even-more-active part of this community and bring the best of Microsoft forward to continue to make the web better for everyone.

Thanks,

Joe

UPDATED DECEMBER 6, 2018 10:40 AM

source: Microsoft Edge: Making the web better through more open source collaboration

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Making the web a better place for everyone
Back in December, we announced our intention to adopt the Chromium open source project in the development of Microsoft Edge on the desktop to create better web compatibility for our customers, and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers. Now we're ready to show you what we've been working on, and invite you to come along on our journey.

For anyone wants to try Microsoft Edge please visit the link below.
https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/download/

Updated 12 APRIL 2019.

Piriform Announces Move to CCleaner.com

perfectgrowwell — Sat, 03 Feb 2018 18:07:16 +0800

Monday, January 22, 2018
Move recognizes CCleaner’s worldwide success

LONDON – January 22, 2018 - Piriform Software Ltd announces that its Piriform.com website has transitioned to a new domain.

From today, all Piriform software tools will be accessible from CCleaner.com.

For the last fourteen years, CCleaner has cleaned and optimized devices across the world to make them faster, safer and to free up space. With well over 2 billion downloads, it’s now a major success in the consumer market and has a growing list of business and not-for-profit clients, which includes General Electric, Princeton University, Intel, Aviva and the YMCA. CCleaner downloads top 20 million per month.

VP of Operations Louise Kinane commented, “Over the last few years I’ve seen CCleaner evolve from a desktop PC tool to cleaning Mac and Android devices, followed by the launch of its cloud-based offering, CCleaner Cloud. This astonishing growth meant that over time, it became apparent that Piriform.com was no longer the most suitably titled home for CCleaner. Moving our website to CCleaner.com felt like a sensible move and makes room for Cleaner’s growing international presence and product portfolio.”

The website migration doesn’t mark any change to Piriform’s other software products. Defraggler, Speccy and Recuva continue to be offered alongside CCleaner on their new home at CCleaner.com.

Notes for users:
All Piriform.com links have been redirected to their new home on CCleaner.com.

Assets:
Download the CCleaner logo
Download the Piriform logo

For more information please contact:
Claire Chivers
Marketing & Communications Manager
E: press@ccleaner.com | W: ccleaner.com

About Piriform

Piriform, which was founded in 2004, is a global leader in system optimization software with hundreds of millions of home and business users worldwide. Its portfolio of software tools optimizes computing performance, improves security and extends the useful life of hardware.

As well as the flagship CCleaner, which makes PC, Mac and Android devices clean, safe and run fast, Piriform also develops Defraggler which defragments hard drives, Speccy which delivers PC insight and Recuva which recovers lost or deleted files.

A Piriform product is installed more than 23 million times a month and installs have taken place in every single country worldwide.

Source: Piriform Software Ltd

Avast acquires Piriform, maker of CCleaner

perfectgrowwell — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 17:06:45 +0800

Avast acquires Piriform, maker of CCleaner
Adding 130 million users to Avast’s performance optimization installed base
Redwood City, California, July 19, 2017 – Avast, the global leader in digital security products, today announced that it has acquired Piriform, the leading provider of device performance optimization software. Founded and based in London, UK, Piriform’s flagship product, CCleaner, speeds up PCs and smartphones by intelligently removing junk and improving the performance of computers and phones.
CCleaner is a leading brand in the market, used by 130 million people, including 15 million Android users. CCleaner has an extensive and extremely loyal community of tech-savvy users, who need to speed up and optimize their PC and Android experience. Avast will maintain the CCleaner brand of products along with Avast’s existing performance optimization products, Avast Cleanup and AVG Tune Up. With the addition of CCleaner, Avast has dramatically expanded its product offerings in the PC and smartphone optimization market reaching customers around the world who demand faster performance.
“We see many commonalities between CCleaner and Avast, allowing for great new products for our user bases. Avast and CCleaner are the top two downloaded products on popular download sites. They are both known by advanced users as focused on performance, so we believe there will be a great interest from our CCleaner customers in using Avast security products and vice versa,” said Vince Steckler, CEO of Avast. “In today’s connected world, it’s all about speed and high performance, and with Piriform’s robust technology we can address this need perfectly. We look forward to working with the Piriform team to grow the business together.”
The Piriform team will be a part of the Avast consumer business unit, and report to Ondrej Vlcek, Avast CTO and EVP & GM, Consumer.
About Piriform:
Piriform are global leaders in system optimization software, founded in 2004 by Guy Saner and Lindsey Whelan. Piriform software, which makes PC, Mac and Android devices clean, safe and run fast, is used by hundreds of millions of home and business users worldwide. A Piriform product is installed more than 23 million times a month.

ABOUT Avast:
Avast (www.avast.com), the global leader in digital security products, protects over 400 million people online. Avast offers products under the Avast and AVG brands that protect people from threats on the internet and the evolving IoT threat landscape. The company’s threat detection network is among the most advanced in the world, using machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to detect and stop threats in real time. Avast digital security products for Mobile, PC or Mac are top-ranked and certified by VB100, AV-Comparatives, AV-Test, OPSWAT, ICSA Labs, West Coast Labs and others. Avast is backed by leading global private equity firms CVC Capital Partners and Summit Partners.
Contacts:
Avast Software
Marina Ziegler
PR Director
E-mail: pr@avast.com
www.avast.com

source: Avast acquires Piriform, maker of CCleaner

Merging Emsisoft Internet Security with EAM

perfectgrowwell — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 21:09:31 +0800

Starting 1 October 2017, Emsisoft Internet Security will be merged with Emsisoft Anti-Malware. While this may come as a bit of a surprise, there are many factors that have prompted this decision, and I would like to use this as an opportunity to share our reasoning:

A common base
Technically, both products have shared the same code base and even the same file feeds for online updates for the last couple of years. From a branding perspective, Emsisoft Internet Security has kind of been framed as an extended feature set edition of Emsisoft Anti-Malware. The only difference between the two products is Emsisoft Internet Security’s built-in firewall component, which is responsible for its slightly higher price tag. While Emsisoft Internet Security was definitely a valuable product in years gone by, we believe that whatever protective advantages desktop firewalls once had over Windows Firewall are now minimal, if not negligible.

The job of firewalls
The main purpose of a desktop firewall is to shield your computer from attacks from the Internet. It does so by interrupting network communications initiated by foreign computers when they attempt to connect to a program that listens for input on your computer.

However, there are two things to consider here:

Most attack attempts from the outside are made impossible by the use of NAT routers (which includes just about every modern DSL modem), as they separate your inside network (LAN) from the Internet.
The built-in Firewall in Windows 7, 8 and 10 already does a pretty good job of blocking connection attempts from potentially dangerous computers that reside in the same network (e.g. in public WiFi) or on the Internet.
Malware and firewalls
We see our main job as protecting your computer from malware – and today’s malware is generally quite unimpressed by firewalls. Connection attempts from the outside in are blocked by the Windows Firewall by default, and connections from the inside out are prevented by Emsisoft’s multi-layer real time protection, and the Behavior Blocker in particular.

Emsisoft Firewall vs Windows Firewall
When Microsoft introduced the Windows Firewall in a late Windows XP Service Pack update, it was a bit of an embarrassing performance and the software could not be taken too seriously, which led us to build a stronger alternative. But with the release of Windows 7, the Windows Firewall started to do its job much more effectively, and the latest Windows 10 version pretty much does everything you could expect from a desktop firewall. Its only architectural flaw is that its settings (and firewall rules) can be freely edited by anyone or anything that attains the required permission level. In other words, if malware manages to run on the PC, it’s able to allow itself to get through the firewall. That was one of the main reasons for us to maintain our own firewall component.

A better approach: Fortifying the Windows Firewall
Emsisoft Internet Security has always been highly configurable. While some of our more technically minded users might have appreciated the freedom to tweak settings to their heart’s content, it has to be said the majority of our customers are (understandably!) not familiar with the technical intricacies of firewalls and were not always confident when using the software. This was problematic given the fact that a wrong configuration can potentially cause a lot of damage when it comes to malware protection. So, in the interests of protecting our customers, we thought it would be most beneficial if, moving forward, we simply rely on the Windows Firewall and use our software to cover its blind spot and ensure its settings can’t be manipulated by malware from the inside.

How are we going to do that?

Well, one of Emsisoft’s key strengths is creating Behavior Blocking technology that works. It allows us to detect and intercept malicious actions from active programs in real time before they can cause any damage. This technology now allows us to define behavior patterns that indicate illegitimate manipulations of Windows Firewall rules. We make sure Windows Firewall is as safe to use as our own firewall, so we can remove the redundancy of building and maintaining our own firewall code.

Therefore, we decided to end the product life-cycle of Emsisoft Internet Security and merge it with Emsisoft Anti-Malware, which receives the Windows Firewall fortifying enhancements in the version 2017.8 release.

Timeline

September 1st, 2017:
The new Windows Firewall Fortify feature will be part of the version 2017.8 release of Emsisoft Anti-Malware.

October 1st, 2017:
Existing Emsisoft Internet Security software will directly update to Emsisoft Anti-Malware version 2017.9 and the remaining license period will be extended as described below. No manual actions required.

Advantages for Emsisoft Internet Security customers
We appreciate that the decision and swift merging will come as a surprise to our loyal customers, so apart from the additional features already mentioned that ensure capable and secure firewall protection, we are sweetening the transition for existing Emsisoft Internet Security license holders:

By switching to Emsisoft Anti-Malware, your annual software license fee gets about 20% cheaper.
To compensate for the already paid higher product price, we will extend all active Emsisoft Internet Security license periods by 50%. E.g. if you have 1 year left on your license, it will change to 1.5 years for free.
Malware protection capabilities of Emsisoft Anti-Malware will be improved due to less interference with firewall code.
Your Emsisoft protection software will get lighter on the system and there will be fewer incompatibilities with other products.
Less risk of misconfiguring the protection features.
We hope you think this is a fair deal and will make the transition to our flagship product as smooth as possible. Should you still be unhappy with the upcoming changes, we’re happy to do partial refunds for your remaining license period.

As the cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve, we are continuing our mission towards a safer digital world for everyone. Today we have taken an important step in this journey, and we are excited to continue to improve our protection services for our customers.

Have a great, malware-free day!

source: http://blog.emsisoft.com/2017/08/10/mergin...t-anti-malware/