Author Archives: Avast Blog

Avast! Free Antivirus for Mac outperformed competitor products in the independent tests!

Compared to Windows users, Mac users have been relatively unaffected by malware attacks. Cybercrooks, however, are just as aware as antivirus vendors are about Mac vulnerabilities. With the growing number of Mac users, cybercrooks see more potential for malicious activities, especially as Mac users tend to have a false sense of security and not usesecurity software. You […]

Survey shows the person you trust the most may be spying on you

People expect that they are being watched online in cyberspace, but who would expect to be spied on by the people closest to them? You better watch out – your partner may be spying on you more than the NSA: One in five men and one in four women admitted to checking their partner’s smartphone […]

Think celebrities are the only ones that can get hacked? Think again…

News broke on Sunday that nude photos of female celebrities were posted on the photo sharing site 4Chan. Along with the news came many theories and discussions as to how the hacker managed to collect intimate photos and videos from a long list of celebrities. While figuring out how the hacker accessed these intimate files […]

Bad news for SMBs: Target’s “Backoff” malware attack hits 1,000 more businesses

U.S. merchants advised to protect themselves against same PoS hack that hit Target and Neiman Marcus last year. More than 1,000 U.S. businesses have had their systems infected by Backoff, a point-of-sale (PoS) malware that was linked to the remote-access attacks against Target, Michaels, and P.F. Chang’s last year and more recently, UPS and Dairy […]

Self-propagating ransomware written in Windows batch hits Russian-speaking countries

Ransomware steals email addresses and passwords; spreads to contacts. Recently a lot of users in Russian-speaking countries received emails similar to the message below. It says that some changes in an “agreement’ were made and the victim needs to check them before signing the document. The message has a zip file in an attachment, which […]

U.S. schools give an F to 2014-15 IT budget

AVAST Free for Education protects schools while significantly decreasing IT costs for security. The beginning of the 2014/2015 school year is here. Parents and children are ready after a long summer break, but are schools prepared for the start of the new academic year? AVAST surveyed more than 900 school IT professionals who participate in […]

Win a free avast! Mobile Premium license

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AVAST is celebrating 100 million downloads of avast! Mobile Security & Antivirus for Android. We want to protect your Android phone and tablets, so we’re giving you the chance to win a free license for the most trusted Android security product in the world! How much do you know about your phone’s security? Do you […]

How to look like an idiot on Facebook and Twitter

Looking like an idiot on social networks like Facebook and Twitter is not too difficult. Many people have achieved this state of being without much thought at all. So c’mon! With a little effort and commitment you can lose your job, get arrested, or alienate your friends! Here are the top 3 ways you can […]

Employees using public Wi-Fi put sensitive business data at risk – VPN services provide proper protection

John Smith works for a small business with ten employees. The company is sending John abroad to meet with potential investors. Being the productive employee that John is, he connects to the public Wi-Fi provided by the airport to do some work. He visits the investors’ websites and sends a few emails to his colleagues. […]

Reveton ransomware has dangerously evolved

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The old ransomware business model is no longer enough for malware authors. New additions have made Reveton into a truly dangerous business. The latest generation of Reveton, the infamous “police” lock screen/ransomware, targets new black market business. The authors upped the ante of the despised malware from a LockScreen-only version to a dangerously powerful password […]