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Comodo Internet Security will help you detect and remove viruses, Trojans, and other malicious software and hackers, and keep them out of your computer. In one easy-to-use bundle that won’t slow down your computer. All free, really!

Version 3.8.65951.477 : 26th Feb, 2009
* FIXED! Applications do not run when CIS is installed in Vista 64
* FIXED! BSOD in Windows XP 64 when NWLink protocol is installed
* FIXED! Defense+ conflicts with certain security applications
* FIXED! Firewall does not filter traffic on some dialup/adsl adapters
* FIXED! AV crashes while scanning certain files
* FIXED! AV Exclusions do not work

Download Comodo Internet Security 3.8.65951.477 – Vista 32/XP (Full)
Download Comodo Internet Security 3.8.65951.477 – Vista 64 (Full)

PC Tools Firewall Plus is a powerful free personal firewall for Windows® that protects your computer by preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to your computer through the Internet or a network. By monitoring applications that connect to the network Firewall Plus can stop Trojans, backdoors, keyloggers and other malware from damaging your computer and stealing your private information.

PC Tools Firewall Plus is advanced technology designed especially for people, not just experts. Powerful prevention against attacks and known exploits is activated by default while experienced users can optionally create their own advanced packet filtering rules, including IPv6 support, to customize the network defenses. All you need to do is install it for immediate and automatic ongoing protection.

That’s how PC Tools Firewall Plus provides world-leading protection, backed by regular Smart Updates, real-time protection and comprehensive network shielding to ensure your PC remains safe and hacker free. PC Tools products are trusted and used by millions of people every day to protect their home and business computers against online threats.

Download PC Tools Firewall Plus 5.0.0.38

Building on 10 years of advanced malware detection, Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition provides comprehensive malware protection without loading down your system’s resources, bringing you the core competence you need to stay safe online.

Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition is significantly lighter and faster than our own previous versions, as well as many of our top competitors. According to our extensive research, Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition:

* Uses 74% less memory than Ad-Aware 2008.
* Only uses 18% of the CPU during scans – nearly 60% less resources than the previous version, and considerably less than each competitor product tested, including AVG, Kaspersky, Norton, and PC Tools.
* Scans 36 MB per second – faster than each competitor product tested, and over 4 times faster than AVG’s.

To see how our new product’s performance stacks up against previous versions and the top anti-virus and anti-spyware products on the market today, see our Performance and Cleanup Comparison now.

This bad boy isn’t your daddy’s USB porn drive (but maybe it should be). It’s the real deal for keeping your data safe and secure.

The IronKey USB flash drive is one of the most secure devices I’ve ever worked with, but simultaneously tries to be–and achieves being–among the simplest to interact with in achieving that security. The product, from the eponymous company IronKey, comes in capacities from 1 GB to 8 GB that encrypts data five ways to Sunday while achieving government certification as tamper evident. A secured, anonymized version of Firefox is also onboard. Prices start at $79 including a one-year subscription for anonymous browsing; an 8 GB drive is $299…

For starters, there’s hardware AES encryption on board the sleek metal drive: there’s no software to install on a host computer, and all encryption happens within the drive. This dramatically improves the security profile. Encryption keys are stored only on the drive, and only unlocked when a password you create at the time you initialize the drive is entered. (IronKey lets you back that password up on their secure Web servers with additional layers of authentication in case you forget it; accessing your account requires a digital certificate stored on the IronKey.)

Enter the password incorrectly 10 times, and the hardware fries itself. Likewise, if an IronKey is physically tampered with in an attempt to access the on-board flash memory directly, the hardware wipes memory as well. Their tamper-resistance has led to FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validation by the U.S. and Canadian governments–physical tampering must be evident–and they’re working on Level 3, which requires countermeasures to attempts to disassemble the hardware…

A password manager that’s integrated into Firefox takes the oompf out of keylogging software by using a workaround to enter your Web data, making it possible to use a cafe or Kinko’s PC without worrying about having your details snarfed. IronKey’s version of Firefox also stores no temporary files on the host computer, and uses a secure proxy to tunnel browsing to its anonymized endpoints.

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2 please!

Symantec claims its 2009 Internet Security products will have “zero impact” on PC performance…

“Fundamentally, consumers don’t want to be bothered at all. We’ve set as our goal zero-impact security,” she said…

Symantec claims one of the ways the product will make less demand on system resources is by scaling back on the amount of scanning. “Our new technology allows us to scan less,” claimed Chaffin. “We know which files are good files and we can scan those less.”

“If software runs on millions of systems, it’s going to be good software,” Chaffin added. “If software only runs on a small number of machines, chances are it’s bad.”

Is there not a chance malware writers will quickly cotton on to which applications Norton is scanning less frequently and target those? “If they modify a file in any way, we can scan,” claimed Mallon.

Norton will also use the past history of the user to gauge how much scanning is necessary. “If someone’s not been infected before, the chances of them being infected are low.”

Norton Internet Security 2009 and Antivirus 2009 will be out this autumn.

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Alternative Details brings news that PayPal is developing a plan to stop users from accessing its financial services if they aren’t using browsers with anti-phishing protection. PayPal is recommending the use of blacklists, anti-fraud warning pages, and EV SSL certificates. Browsers without anti-phishing features will be considered "unsafe." It seems likely Safari will be included in this category given PayPal’s warning about the Apple browser last month.

"’At PayPal, we are in the process of reimplementing controls which will first warn our customers when logging in to PayPal of those browsers that we consider unsafe. Later, we plan on blocking customers from accessing the site from the most unsafe–usually the oldest–browsers,’ he declared. Barrett only mentioned old, out-of-support versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer among this group of ‘unsafe browsers,’ but it’s clear his warning extends to Apple’s Safari browser, which offers no anti-phishing protection and does not support the use of EV SSL certificates."

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Anyone surprised about this at all? Measure, counter-measure, new measure, new counter-measure, etc,. There is a lot of money spent in what may never be obtainable and plenty of nuisance for consumers who simply want to back up their movies. In the 80s I used to purchase a new album, purchase a blank tape, play the album once and back it to tape then only play the tape until it wore out, broke, got lost, or… got melted on (or to) the car’s dashboard. Then a second playing of the pristine condition album was performed to make another backup for use while the original was safely tucked away.

If you are a parent of a child or teen that you have graciously allowed to have a DVD player in their room you may wish to allow said child or teen to play one of your well cared-for DVDs only to see it returned in a condition much reminiscent of something that was dragged down a dusty rocky road in the old West. A backup would come in handy in this situation. Your DVD player could one day break down and spin your DVD in a strange way that makes it unplayable. The door could accidentally close on your DVD. Of course those that make money on you buying the DVD in the first place want you to buy the same movie over and over and over.

/rant over : )

The press release basically had Slysoft thumbing its nose at Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group, who wrote in July 2007 that: “BD+, unlike AACS which suffered a partial hack last year, won’t likely be breached for 10 years.”

Couldn’t the BD+ protection scheme be tightened up with new encryption keys? That might be so, but van Heuen is not worried. He told Ars that “cracking updates will take significantly less time than the basic work we did the last 3 months (which was figuring out how BD+ works, since it is not documented in public).”

If you were holding back on buying Blue-ray titles due to worries that you wouldn’t be able to make your own backups, I suppose your concerns are no longer valid.

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Release Date: February 04, 2008

Comodo Firewall, rated by PC Magazine Online as an Editor’s Choice, constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks. It’s easy to install and use and passes the industry’s most stringent firewall “leak” tests. Unlike some other ‘free’ firewalls, this is not a stripped down version but is the full, completely functional product. This free solution comes complete with continual updates that are FREE forever!

Comodo Personal Firewall 3.0 – System Requirements

* Windows XP (SP2) – 32 bit version
* Windows XP – 64 bit version
* Windows Vista – 32 and 64 bit versions
* 64 Mb RAM
* 35 MB hard disk space for 32-bit versions and 55 MB for 64-bit versions

Download Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.16.295 – Vista 32/XP (Full)
Download Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.15.277 – Vista 64 (Full)

CFP Comodo Personal Firewall version 3.0.16.295 – Changes:
* NEW! Anti-Leak Configuration:
– A new default configuration is introduced to make D+ show fewer number of popup alerts while still remaining leak proof.
* NEW! On-Demand Virus Scanning:
– CFP now provides an option to scan for viruses during the installation and from its graphical user interface
* NEW! A-VSMART Warranty Program:
– CFP now provides the users an option to enroll one of the available A-VSMART Warranty programs
* IMPROVED! Self-Defense:
– There has been various reports that CFP 3.0 is attacked by some malware to disable its protection.
The self defense has been modified such that an ungraceful termination of CFP will block every unknown action (i.e. it will function as if “Block all unknown actions if the application is closed” option is selected. This option was not enabled by default).
* IMPROVED! Default Configuration:
– Default configuration now protects more registry keys and more COM interfaces.
– Default Web Browser and FTP Client policies are modified to support passive FTP requests
* IMPROVED! Handling of known code executing applications:
– Defense+ has been modified such that some known code executing programs such as rundll32.exe or windows scripting host are not automatically trusted anymore.
* IMPROVED! Pending Files:
– Defense+ has been modified such that it is not going to report any pending files if it is not in clean PC mode.
* FIXED! Bugs in Defense+ Engine:
– Fixed numerous bugs that could stop Defense+ to properly handle the suspicious actions(e.g.bugs in registry and file protection, key logging etc).
– Fixed the bug that could prevent CFP from functioning properly in certain types of hardware configurations(e.g. when a USB harddisk is present etc.).
* FIXED! Minor Bugs in the Graphical User Interface

The code posted freely on many websites and T-shirts and anything that holds ink or paint will soon be less useful.

“BD+ will be the proverbial thorn in the side of Blu-ray movie rippers,” said optical storage analyst Wesley Novack. “With AACS and BD+ switching up encryption keys and methods routinely (BD+), it might become too much work to determine how to rip every Blu-ray Disc title out there.”

BD+ is a system made for Blu-ray Disc, but not all implementations of the media are required to support the system. In fact, support for BD+ is less that for AACS. Of all categories of BD-ROM, only game consoles, movie players and BD PC software are required to work with BD+ encoded media.

Although an entire generation of Blu-ray Disc (and HD DVD) titles were cracked by a single AACS processing key, the extra layer of BD+ should make it much more challenging for crackers. Unlike AACS, BD+ can protect each Blu-ray Disc with a title-specific code, making the circumvention of the scheme much more involved than finding a single “silver bullet” processing key. Crackers would need to reverse-engineer each title individually to bypass the protection. While that task may be difficult, it may not be impossible as PC software with virtual machine-based protections, such as StarForce, are still being circumvented.

“Only time will tell and there is no guarantee that BD+ will be effective against the persistence and tenacity of the talented online community,” added Novack.

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Only time will tell? Not that I condone the theft of intellectual property, but, I like to live in the real world of expectations. Of course hackers and pirates will overcome the latest anti-piracy attempt. Then other smart people will go back to the drawing board for the next prevention method. That, then, will be hacked or circumvented. Rinse and repeat. Pirates may be stealing movies but they’re creating highly paid jobs for someone.