About 24 hours ago, Google made a beta version of their own browser, Chrome, available to the public.

From a privacy standpoint, we neither like to see GoogleUpdate permanently in the background nor those anonymous usage statistics it wants to send home, but since it's open source, we're hoping for free cleaned-up clones.

From a security standpoint, the idea of restricting rights of browsing processes is something we hope to see spreading to other browsers as well, since we fully have to agree with this precaution (see for example Alter Ego).

But the reason to write a news article about it today is not for adding our opinion on Chrome to the mass of other opinions already out there, but to announce support for Chrome in Spybot - Search & Destroy. As soon as Chrome was available, we started digging into it and have now finished support for scanning and cleaning Chrome cookies, bookmarks and history (thanks to the similarity to Firefox, that was actually no big deal). Immunization is pending and depends on Chromes capabilities for that. You can subscribe to the Chrome support feature request or watch our beta forum if you are interested in the progress.

Новый способ, которым TeaTimer сообщает пользователям о том, что он сейчас делает, вызвал недавно брожение умов и мы считаем полезным сделать некоторые пояснения.

The decision to use balloon tooltips to display the progress was made because they're a Windows standard for informing the user, and following standards is in general regarded as making things easier for the user. Informing about scanned processes was also kind of important for people who did not understand what TeaTimer was doing on startup.

The tray icon also allows to disable any future balloons from its context menu, so they were purely optional. Sadly, so far many users did not look for this option, but came asking for a way to get rid of them, so we feel a change to make it more evident might be necessary.

We also did not expect the combination of an unlucky implementation of balloons in Windows 2000 with users who haven't dealed with tooltips yet. On Windows XP, these balloons contain a visible X than can be clicked to close them. On Windows 2000, you can simple click the balloon itself anywhere to close it, which is not as evident, and the reaction takes some time while TeaTimer is scanning.

Balloons also vanish after a specified amount of time, which we have set to a small value to work immediately. Again, Windows 2000 is a bit unlucky there because is does not count this time down when the user is not actively using the computer. Nice thought, but not fully compatible with the intention behind the TeaTimer messages.

While we prepare a workaround that makes balloon messages easier to understand and get rid of for Windows 2000 users, TeaTimer and main application updates are disabled. Expect an update within a week.

К версии Spybot-S&D 1.6 наши детективы с пользой потратили немало времени, внедряя кое-что из новинок в области борьбы с Virtumonde, которые расширили диапазон распознавания более чем на 40% - до более чем 250.000 шаблонов, позволяющих идентифицировать более миллиона "отпечатков пальцев".

Virtumonde (он же - Vundo Trojan) это троянский конь (дайте мне топор!) известный своей привычкой показывать поп-апы и рекламу неких антишпионских программ. Создает он и другие сложности, в том числе снижение производительности и отказ в доступе к некоторым сайта, включая Google. Он подключается к системе, используя ложные BHO (дополнения браузера - Browser Helper Objects) и библиотеки, связанные с Winlogon и Windows Explorer.

Чтобы сполна насладиться новыми возможностями, мы рекомендуем как можно скорее обновиться до версии Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.6, что можно сделать, используя встроенную функцию обновления.

Если у Вас остаются проблемы с Virtumonde, не стесняйтесь заглянуть на наш форум или связаться с нашим отделом обнаружения.