The patient, who had recently travelled to the Middle East and Pakistan, is the second confirmed U.K. resident to be diagnosed with the virus. Worldwide, 10 confirmed cases of the virus have been diagnosed. The new virus has been found in patients with acute respiratory illnesses who had coughing, shortness of breath, breathing difficulties, and a fever.

“The HPA is providing advice to healthcare workers to ensure the patient under investigation is being treated appropriately and that healthcare staff who are looking after the patient are protected,” said John Watson, head of the respiratory diseases department at the HPS. “Contacts of the case are also being followed up to check on their health.”

Coronaviruses generally infect the upper respiratory system and gastrointestinal tract. Though they have been linked to the common cold, they are also cause of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

The first case of the new coronavirus was diagnosed in the U.K. in September 2012. That patient died from a severe respiratory infection.

Since that time, the HPA has been working with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Centre for Disease prevention and Control (ECDC) to watch for illnesses caused by the new virus. Doctors in the U.K. have also been provided with updated guidance on the investigation and management of possible cases of the new coronavirus.

“Our assessment is that the risk associated with novel coronavirus to the general UK population remains extremely low and the risk to travelers to the Arabian Peninsula and surrounding countries remains very low,” said Watson. “No travel restrictions are in place but people who develop severe respiratory symptoms, such as shortness of breath, within ten days of returning from these countries should seek medical advice and mention which countries they have visited.”

(Image courtesy HPA)

The new study, published this week in the journal Current Biology, reports that researchers were able to successfully manipulate a virus to evolve the ability to change behavior according to the number of other viruses present in a host. The research demonstrates that viruses can easily adapt their behavior to spread an infection alone or in combination with other viruses.

“Scientists are constantly searching for ways to limit the damage viruses can cause, to help reduce the impact of illnesses like winter flu and to respond to the next pandemic,” said Helen Legget, lead scientist on the study and a researcher at the University of Exeter. “Our work proves that regardless of how we try to manipulate viruses, they will always switch their behaviour to serve their own purposes and kill as many cells as possible. This study involved a relatively simple virus. If it can evolve so quickly, it’s reasonable to assume that a lot of other viruses and parasites can, too.”

The viruses tested were only able to cooperate with other viruses that were related to them. When infecting a host, the viruses cloned themselves and then “cooperated” with the new viruses. Researchers said that when the viruses interacted with others related to them, they killed the host cell slowly so as to replicate more. When they interacted with unrelated viruses, however, the host was killed more quickly as a result of competition between virus types to out-replicate each other.

Since that time, it has become clear that the hantavirus outbreak isn’t yet contained. The infected woman succumbed to the disease and four new cases were identified. Just before the holiday weekend, it was made clear that the national park was working with the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to investigate the outbreak and identify new cases.

“CDPH is working closely with the National Park Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to further investigate the cluster of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome cases in Yosemite and reduce the risk of other visitors becoming ill from this virus,” said CDPH Director Dr. Ron Chapman on August 30. “CDPH is continuing to monitor cases of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome in persons who visited Yosemite National Park.”

The park has begun scaling up its public awareness campaign, and has begun contacting campers who have stayed at Yosemite’s Curry Village in recent months. Around 3,000 people have been contacted and informed of hantavirus symptoms. The campsite has not been closed.

“The park and public health officials are contacting visitors and raising awareness in the medical community to increase the chances that any additional cases that may be incubating will be successfully diagnosed and treated early,” stated Dr. Danielle Buttke, an epidemiologist with the National Park Service Office of Public Health.

Luckily, the four people confirmed to have hantavirus who haven’t died are reported to be improving or recovered. Still, hantavirus can be extremely deadly. While the early symptoms of the disease are generally flu-like, they can include coughing, malaise, headache, nausea, vomiting, and shortness of breath, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. If not treated promptly, the virus can cause lung, kidney, and/or heart failure. The disease is spread by rodent urine, droppings, and saliva, particularly of deer mice.

McAfee recently published its quarterly Threats Report and things do not look good. Let’s just get the worst new out of the way: malware is on the rise. McAfee now has over 90 million samples of Malware in its database. It was at a little under 60 million in July of last year. New types of malware have also been greatly increasing with Q2 of this year seeing over 8 million new types of malware alone.

While it contributes little to the overall malware numbers, Mac malware is also on the rise again. It hit a high point in the second quarter of 2011 when over 600 types of new malware hit Mac OS X. That number immediately dropped to a little over 150 in next quarter, but it’s now up to a little over 400 in Q2 of this year.

Traditional desktop computing is no longer the only platform that’s susceptible to malware. We’ve already covered the massive amounts of malware that hits the Android platform, but McAfee’s statistics put things into a much better perspective. They found that mobile malware has hit an all time high this year with over 13,000 mobile samples in their database. It was a little under 2,000 this time last year. The first quarter of 2012 alone saw over 6,000 new types of mobile malware being released in the wild.

It’s easy to see that malware is on the rise across the board, but where is it all coming from? It may surprise that most malware attacks originate in the United States. It probably shouldn’t surprise you, however, that most victims are also in the United States. Other nations leading the world in attacks including Venezuela, Japan and China.

The details in McAfee’s latest reports seemingly confirm that crime is moving to the Internet. There’s just no real reward in traditional crime anymore and the stakes are too high. Many criminals are finding that its easier to steal information, money and other things via malware. Instead of pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist, worried netizens should just stay on their guard. Malware can’t affect you unless you let it.

[h/t: CNN Money]

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called it a “massive and sophisticated scheme.”

The fraud was perpetrated by seven individuals, all of whom the U.S. is trying to get extradited. Six of the seven are Estonian nationals and have been taken into custody. The seventh is a Russian national and he remains at large.

Here’s how the scheme worked:

Malware installed to millions of computers allowed the perpetrators to manipulate online searches in order to redirect clicks to certain sites and ads. They used these falsely-acquired clicks to generate ad revenue.

Some examples of this included links to Apple’s iTunes, Netflix, and even the IRS being redirected to unrelated sites.

The malware also interfered with the computers’ anti-virus software, making the intrusion even harder to identify.

As alleged in the Indictment, from 2007 until October 2011, the defendants controlled and operated various companies that masqueraded as legitimate publisher networks (the “Publisher Networks”) in the Internet advertising industry. The Publisher Networks entered into agreements with ad brokers under which they were paid based on the number of times that Internet users clicked on the links for certain websites or advertisements, or based on the number of times that certain advertisements were displayed on certain websites.

Thus, the more traffic to the advertisers’ websites and display ads, the more money the defendants earned under their agreements with the ad brokers. As alleged in the Indictment, the defendants fraudulently increased the traffic to the websites and advertisements that would earn them money. They accomplished this by making it appear to advertisers that the Internet traffic came from legitimate clicks and ad displays on the defendants’ Publisher Networks when, in actuality, it had not.

It’s shocking to see that the scheme apparently went on for more than 4 years.

The schemers also operated ad-replacement fraud, replacing certain ads on websites with their own. For instance, the infected computers that visited the Wall Street Journal site saw ads for “Fashion Girl LA” as opposed to what should have been there – an ad for the American Express “Plum Card.”

More than 500,000 of the computers that were hit came from the U.S. And we’re not just talking about personal systems – but systems from within U.S. government agencies like NASA as well as colleges & universities and non-profits.

The suspects face 27 charges, including wire fraud and computer intrusion.

The FBI wants to hear from you if you think your computer might have been involved in this scheme. They say standard, up-to-date antivirus software should be able to detect the malware.

"It is disconcerting to see what in concept is a very informed audience knowingly rolling the dice when it comes to staying secure on line – it is an important indicator of the practices of general consumers," said Siobhan MacDermott, head of global communications and investor relations with AVG. "If the informed press is exposed, then even more so is the home user that is not as savvy at detecting or protecting against the latest scam."

"The value of the research is not that it exposes journalists, but rather it gives us great insight to how our more knowledgeable users are, or are not, protecting themselves," said MacDermott. "This tells the security community that we have a great deal of work to do as users are not doing many of the basics."

Here are some highlights from the poll:

- More than half don’t change their passwords, or rely on their company to do it for them, even though 13 percent have experienced critical data loss or system failure due to malware to their systems.

- 80 percent of media staff rarely or never inform their network administrator of online security concerns they encounter.

- 36 percent use Wi-Fi networks most of the time, potentially endangering them to security risks associated with public networks

- 90 percent of them use some sort of social networking site, with LinkedIn (75 percent) the most popular site followed by Facebook (70 percent) and Twitter (51 percent).

-  20 percent access social networking sites both from their mobile phone and their computer

"Clearly, we’ve got to do a better job as a security community in shifting the mentality of our users from one that is dependent on the system to keep them safe to one that takes personal accountability and understands their role in the security continuum," said MacDermott. "Users have to understand they are a vital piece of [the] equation and that they have a great deal of ownership in shoring up their cyberspaces."

According to AVG, over 40,000 new viruses and malware arrive in virus labs around the world every day. Many of these are documented in the media. 

What to Look For

Like most viruses, this one relies on deceit, and tries to get users to download it using a non-existent video as bait. David Sarno at the LA Times explains:

The virus’ most insidious property is that users receive the offending message from a friend: On Facebook, only people whom users have explicitly approved as friends can send them e-mails.

The Koobface e-mails have a subject like "You look so amazing funny on our new video," and contain a link to a YouTube-like video site that appears to contain a movie clip (see image).  The video, however, doesn’t play, and the website then asks the user to update his or her video software by downloading a file. It’s that file that contains the malicious code.

McAfee provides more information about Koobface and shows a screenshot of a possible page that users could land on to get to it:

What it Does

"As part of their malicious payload, the worms transform victim machines into zombie computers to form botnets," said security firm Kaspersky Lab when it reported on two variants of Koobface back in July. One variant targeted Facebook, while the other targeted MySpace.

Facebook’s security page says, "We’re currently helping our users with the recently discovered "Koobface" worm and phishing sites. If your account has recently been used to send spam, please visit one of the online antivirus scanners from the Helpful Links list, and reset your password here." The links list is as follows:

The worm must be affecting a lot of people now to make its way though the news so much all of a sudden. It’s been around for months, yet we haven’t heard much about it until now. Facebook users who have accounts that have been in jeopardy have been receiving emails about how to proceed.

The ad, which according to the screenshot at security company Sophos blog achieved top placement for the keyword phrase “Obama win,” clicked out to a “rogue” site and a download prompt for an installer that is “100% checked by Antivirus.”

Despite that vague reassurance, downloading launches a PDF file to exploit an Acrobat Reader flaw and deliver a virus labeled Mal/PDFEx-B.

Hopefully nobody was click-happy enough to click that “Download now” button, especially since neither the paid ad nor the site it led to actually ever said what the user would be downloading. All the AdWords ad said was “Download Now” and Instant Download Download Now and Save Time.”

The text lets the reader assume what it would be related to “Obama win,” and imagine how much time they’ll save downloading whatever it is.  

Sophos says the ad has been removed since that sighting.
 

Consumers also report significant worry that their privacy might be invaded by programs that track and record which Internet sites they visit.

The majority (74%) of those surveyed said they were "very concerned," about identity theft, compared to 68 percent who indicated great worry about identity theft in a similar ACI survey from 2006.

The number who said they were very concerned about viruses increased from 61 percent in 2006 to 70 percent and concern about spam rose from 51 percent to 56 percent from two years ago.

The survey of 648 households with Internet included three new questions compared to the survey conducted in 2006. The new questions revealed that privacy is a greater concern than spam, with 61 percent of those polled reporting "great concern" that their privacy is at risk because of online tracking programs.

One half of those surveyed reported significant concerns about unwanted online advertisements, and 45 percent said they were very worried about spyware.

"The survey shows that consumers draw a distinction between threats that can cause serious problems and those that come under the heading of annoyances," ACI president Steve Pociask says. 

"Identity theft and computer viruses can be extremely disruptive and it’s not surprising that they top consumer concerns.  However, consumer concerns about privacy, online safety and the handing of personal information suggest that some online providers are not doing enough to tell consumers what information is being collected, how long it will be kept and how will it be used, or, for that matter, whether consumers can opt out of its collection altogether."  
 
 

Researchers at security software maker Exploit Prevention Labs have uncovered evidence that malware distributors are using Google AdWords to infect computers.

Exploit’s CTO, Roger Thompson said his team discovered many AdWords ads posing as legitimate ads, but then redirecting to more sinister content. He blames Google’s model of taking money first and asking questions later.

“Google says they are doing the best that they can, but their business model is to take as much money as they can for advertisements. No matter how much due diligence they do, it’s a difficult position to be in, but clearly they are not doing enough,” Thompson said.

“If they don’t do a better job of vetting their customers, we will see this sort of thing happening again and again.”

Google’s response?

Google said it had canceled the affected advertisements after it was informed of the situation. “We actively work to detect and remove sites that serve malware to our users both in our ad network and in our search results,” the company said.

Before we all freak out, and vow never to click an ad again, just remember that these are mostly isolated incidents and hyped a little by a company that sells virus protection software for a living.

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