Intego Releases Virusbarrier X6 Dual Protection: A Mac Antivirus and a Windows Antivirus in One Box

Intego has announced the release of VirusBarrier X6 Dual Protection, featuring the latest version of its acclaimed anti-malware and network security software together with BitDefender Antivirus 2010 so Mac users can protect their Windows installations. VirusBarrier X6 now provides comprehensive protection from both malware and network threats.

VirusBarrier X6, the latest version of Intego’s anti-malware and network security program, includes new threat-detection techniques, improved methods of detection, combined detection protocols, proactive behavioral analysis, and a full range of defensive functions. VirusBarrier X6 includes more than 100 new features, and is the only antivirus program for Mac that includes full antivirus and anti-malware protection together with a two-way firewall, network protection, anti-phishing, anti-spyware features and more.

For Mac users who run Windows on their Mac, using either Apple’s Boot Camp or virtualization software, VirusBarrier X6 Dual Protection provides security for both Mac OS X and Windows, ensuring that Mac users running Windows will have total protection for both operating systems. BitDefender Antivirus 2010 provides advanced proactive protection against viruses, spyware, phishing attacks and identity theft, and is the top-rated antivirus for Windows.

Find out more about VirusBarrier X6 Dual Protection.

Microsoft Updates Office 2004 and 2008

Microsoft has released updates for Office 2004 and 2008, which include security fixes for “vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code.”

The Microsoft Office 2004 11.5.8 update is a mere 9.7 MB, and the Microsoft Office 2008 12.2.4 update is 221.5 MB.

If you use Office, it’s a good idea to keep up with these updates, as they not only provide security fixes, but also improve performance and stability. If you haven’t kept up with Office updates, you cannot, unfortunately, apply the latest update without applying previous updates. (Microsoft does not make any combo updates like Apple does.) So you can find previous updaters for your software on this page.

Intego Personal Backup: Save Space with Multiple Backups

When you want to make multiple backups of your files – to keep a number of versions, for example – you may worry about these backups filling up your hard disk. With Personal Backup, there’s a useful feature that lets you make multiple backups without using much space at all. It’s not voodoo, but it relies on an interesting technical trick.

Lets say you want to keep ten backups of your important work files. You back them up several times a day, and you want to make sure that, if something happens, you can go back to an earlier version. Set up your backup script in Personal Backup with the Backup Options like this:

When Personal Backup runs the first time, it will copy all your files. The second time around, it will create a new folder, and all your files will be in that folder (including those changed since the first backup, but without those deleted since then). However, it won’t take up much more space than the first backup: in fact, the only difference will be those files that you changed or added.

Let’s be even clearer: the first backup is, say, 100 MB. The second, because of some new files, is 105 MB. However, the second backup actually only takes up an additional 5 MB on your hard disk.

The trick that Personal Backup uses is called “hard links.” A hard link is similar to an alias on Mac OS X, but it is, in some ways, the original file. In other words, if you were to delete the first version of a file, the hard link that is the second version of the file will still be there, and it will be the file itself. You can create as many hard links as you want to a file, and as long as one remains, the file is not deleted.

Hard links take up no space, but they appear to take up space. In the above example, you’ll find that the first backup folder is 100 MB and the second 105 MB, but that’s only because the Mac OS X Finder interprets hard links as actual files when calculating disk space used. However, you’ll find that you still have free space; more than you should if you add up all of your backup folders.

This is a hard concept to grasp, but what it means is that you can keep many backups of your files, and they will only take up more space when you add or change files. Personal Backup even includes an option to keep as many copies as possible until the destination disk is full: in that case, Personal Backup will keep adding new backups until there’s no more room, at which time it will delete the oldest backup(s) so new ones can be added. In this manner, you can keep dozens, even hundreds of backups of your most important files on a hard disk without worrying about filling up the disk.

Personal Backup is available as part of Intego Internet Security Barrier.

Security Threats Are More than Just Malware

An InfoWorld article, Underrated computing threats that you need to know about, looks at a number of threats to your computer’s security that don’t come directly from malware. Traditionally, malware is considered to be viruses, worms, or Trojan horses, all types of malicious code that either duplicates itself (viruses and worms) or inserts code, and often executables, onto your computer (Trojan horses).

But with the rise in attacking techniques, malware writers have been looking at new ways to attack your computer. Some of these methods take advantage of vulnerabilities in software such as Adobe Flash or Acrobat, two programs that have shown a number of weakness in recent times. These are especially dangerous, because you can just visit a web site and get hit.

One common manifestation [. . .] comes when the user visits a Web site with a Flash-powered banner ad. No clicking required: as soon as the ad comes up, it delivers its payload. Sometimes it also comes in the form of one of Adobe’s other products — for example, an infected .PDF document, which opens spontaneously upon visiting an ad.

While attacks of this type are not yet targeting Macs, it is highly possible that they will in the future.

Threats also come from Firefox plug-ins, QuickTime flaws, and weaknesses in other applications. There are also risks in following short URLs, the kind used on Twitter posts, because you can’t see where they lead until you get there.

Finally, DNS poisoning is a way of hijacking routers so their DNS servers take users to bogus web sites; a highly sophisticated form of phishing.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the threats to your computer are more than just malware, and especially more than simply viruses. Because of these new threats, Intego added a whole range of new defensive features in its VirusBarrier X6. From a two-way firewall to web threat protection, VirusBarrier X6 protects Macs from network threats as well as malware.

Mac Security Expert Charlie Miller: Flash is Weak

A few days before the CanSecWest security conference, an Italian web site, oneitsecurity, interviews Charlie Miller, Mac security expert, and former winner of the Pwn2Own hacking contest (and this year’s favorite). Miller is well known for having hacked Apple’s Safari browser in this contest, two years in a row. Discussing this year’s contest, he doesn’t seem as confident about breaking through Safari’s defenses:

Everything is my target at this point. I’d love to hack one of the mobile devices, but will probably end up on Safari again. I was the first to hack the iPhone and an Android device in the past, so I am comfortable with those two platforms, but its harder to exploit them. This year only one person can win per target, so my biggest obstacle will be making sure nobody beats me to the punch.

When asked which OS and browser combination is safest, Miller replied, “There probably isn’t enough difference between the browsers to get worked up about. The main thing is not to install Flash!” Flash has been strongly criticized of late for its security weaknesses, and Adobe has been slow to fix them.

Read the rest of the article for more about Miller’s hacking tools, and the different platforms he discusses.

Mac OS X Installed Base Nearly 11% in US

Ars Technica looks at some figures regarding OS penetration in the US, as provided by web analytics firm Quantcast, which show that Mac OS X penetration is currently at 10.9%. This is an interesting figure, and one that merits some examination.

First, Apple’s market share is far below 10.9% in the US, being around 7.5% last summer. So how does Apple get an installed base of nearly 11%? Macs tend to last longer than PCs, and they have a much better penetration in homes than in businesses, where people tend to keep them longer. So while Apple is selling around 8% of new computers, more of the ones they’ve sold over the years are still in circulation.

Of course, all of these figures are just educated guesses. And this older Ars Technica article looks at how to interpret this type of figure. It’s interesting to point out that browser share may be a better judge of actual computer use, because it leaves out the many “utilitarian” PCs that may simply run unattended, or be used for limited applications. Those PCs are generally bought once and never upgraded, until they are replaced, and few, if any, applications are purchased for them. The broader computer ecosystem depends on the computers that are purchased by individuals for home use, and by business for general productivity use.

Nevertheless, this installed base figure does show that Apple’s presence is increasing, in the US at least, and that the number of Apple users is higher than what sales figures may lead one to believe.