A Typical Day at Emsisoft’s Headquarters

PUPs, they’re called. Potentially Unwanted Programs that sneak in on the software you buy. Those annoying toolbars and extensions that overload your computer with resource-wasting applications you don’t need.

Creating malware is illegal. Creating a PUP is not. Not yet at least. That’s because PUPs technically notify users before they are installed. It happens when you run through the installation wizard on a new software. You click: NEXT, NEXT, NEXT, ignoring all the fine print because you don’t have the time. All the while, you’re unknowingly overloading your computer with junk.

Sound pretty fishy? That’s because it is. It’s entirely deceptive, and for software developers looking to make a quick buck it’s an excellent way to cash in. PUP-Peddlers approach legitimate developers with pay-per-install offers all the time. PUPs are not really programs at all. They’re just advertising.

“Include my PUP in your installation process, and I’ll give $1 every time it’s installed,” they say. And many developers simply can’t help themselves. Many developers say: YES, YES, YES.

This is NOT the case with Emsisoft. It never has been, and it never will be. It’s entirely the opposite, in fact. In fact, Emsisoft Anti-Malware is designed to prevent PUPs, because we know that nobody wants them. Chances are you probably didn’t know this about us. Funny thing is, PUP-Peddlers don’t know it either.

Episode 1: The Potentially Unwanted Person

As it just so happens, our managing director, Christian Mairoll, was recently approached by a particularly pushy PUP-Peddler on Skype. For all of us here at Emsisoft, this was pretty comical.

We have included the full transcript of this conversation for your reading pleasure below. As a primer, we’d also suggest having a look at our knowledge base article, What is a PUP.

Enjoy the read, and Have a Great (PUP-Free) Day!

—————————————————————————————————————————————————–

[08:38:46]

PUP-Peddler: Hi Christian Mairoll, I’d like to add you as a contact. PUP-Peddler

Christian Mairoll: hi there. how can i help?

PUP-Peddler: Hi. Christian. How are You ?

PUP-Peddler: I am looking forward to have some conversation with You regarding Bundling

Christian Mairoll: forget it

PUP-Peddler: why not ?

Christian Mairoll: we have strict ethical principles here at emsisoft

PUP-Peddler: Still it can have a lot of revenue

Christian Mairoll: i’ll not ruin my company in the long run for making quick money now.

PUP-Peddler: Yeah I know that

Christian Mairoll: no matter if you offer $1 or $100 per install

PUP-Peddler: Yes I know Christian

Christian Mairoll: ok, then please stop bugging me

PUP-Peddler: Can we have quick call ?

PUP-Peddler: just to ensure we dont get each other misunderstanding ..

PUP-Peddler: Google chrome was itself a pay per install product

Christian Mairoll: yes… and our antivirus product has lots of fun detecting all the bundle installers, like the one you are trying to sell me, as Potentially Unwanted Programs. our customers appreciate that all that browser stuff is effectively deleted by our software.

PUP-Peddler: I just need an introductory call then we can move on

Christian Mairoll: i just need you to stop this

PUP-Peddler: Or can We bundle Your application as advertisers so You have on everyone’s computer

PUP-Peddler: stopping all unwanted programs

PUP-Peddler: and bundle installers

Christian Mairoll: then it would have to detect and remove itself

PUP-Peddler: lol ..

PUP-Peddler: Lets see if we have something in future .. and message me when You are interested in Bundle concepts .. I was just thinking to have a quick introductory call to see everything happening

PUP-Peddler: just to know each other

PUP-Peddler: http://securitygarden.blogspot.in/2012/02/avast-users-frustrated-with-unwanted.html

Christian Mairoll: ok, so you know that bundles are evil, yet you propose that I make the same mistake as avast?

PUP-Peddler: No .. I am looking forward to have a call

PUP-Peddler: and just a introduction nothing more than that

Christian Mairoll: i really admire your determination. hardcore sales guy. but unfortunately our businesses couldn’t be farther away.

PUP-Peddler: I am just looking forward to have a call nothing more than that .. and it will be fine afterwards ..

PUP-Peddler: I am just making business collaboration no sales .. Because avg is a toolbar and many things .. I am not trying to change Your decisions … But to show every path

PUP-Peddler: before deciding anything .. before knowing all facts

Christian Mairoll: to make this clear once again: there is absolutely no chance we could ever do business together. not today, not tomorrow.

Christian Mairoll: do yourself a favor and drop me from your skype buddy list.

PUP-Peddler: ok .. I know we are not going to have Bundling business ..

PUP-Peddler: But in future If anything changes .. let me know

Christian Mairoll: of course

PUP-Peddler: have a nice day ahead Christian

PUP-Peddler: take care .. bbyee

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A Typical Day at Emsisoft’s Headquarters

RIP Mt.Gox

About two weeks ago, Emsisoft published a blog post on the transaction malleability crisis at Mt.Gox.  Today, the headlines read that the Bitcoin exchange is dead.

The Mt.Gox website has been taken offline.  The Mt.Gox Twitter is gone.  A leaked Crisis Strategy Draft has hit the web, apparently authored by Mt.Gox executive leadership.  This document states:

"At this point 744,408 BTC are missing due to 

malleability-related theft which went unnoticed 

for several years."

744,408 BTC = 350 million USD.

The remainder of the document reads like an exit strategy, with plans to re-launch the corporation under new leadership and branding.  Assuming this document is legitimate, Mt.Gox knew they were through.  The corporation was more or less blindsided by transaction malleability.

Is Cryptocurrency Worth it?

Small details matter.  Glitches propagate.  One small bug has enabled $350 million in theft and has crippled a multibillion dollar corporation.

This is a principle of engineering that pops up time and time again.  The devil is in the details.  The more complex a system becomes, the more chaotic too.  Grammarians like to illustrate this principle through the comparison of two sentences:

“Let’s eat Grandma!”  vs.  “Let’s eat, Grandma!”

One comma changes everything.

Computer security is the exact same way.  Overcomplicated structures built on weak foundations topple.  The temptation to make a quick buck is immense, but the methodologies necessary to do so cannot coexist with a sustainable business model.

At least we think so.

The question remains: Is cryptocurrency worth it?  Has Bitcoin met its end?

We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

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RIP Mt.Gox

Fast-Growing 2U Files For $100M IPO, But Is It Poised To Be The Next Big Education Company?

When 2U emerged in 2008, online education was still struggling to be taken seriously. Despite steadily increasing online enrollment, many remained skeptical. Both fairly and unfairly, online education was seen as a world of simple micro-correspondence courses, limited in quality, incapable of producing outcomes truly commensurate with on-campus education and therefore merely a supplement, not a… Read More

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Box Picks Up Former Symantec CEO Enrique Salem As Special Adviser On Its Road To IPO

Today Box announced that it has picked up another Adult In The Room, increasing its leadership depth as it ramps towards a widely leaked, forthcoming initial public offering. Former Symantec CEO Enrique Salem will take on the role of Special Adviser to the growing company. Read More

Box Picks Up Former Symantec CEO Enrique Salem As Special Adviser On Its Road To IPO

Samsung Introduces KNOX Marketplace, An Enterprise App Store Powered By AppDirect

Samsung is making a big push with its enterprise market appeal today, thanks to the introduction of the new Samsung KNOX Marketplace. This is a special mobile-focused digital software storefront that offers up business apps, IT provisioning and tools for tech managers working within large organizations. Samsung and partner AppDirect, which powers the marketplace, are aiming to give companies… Read More

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Caphaw Trojan Found in Youtube Ads

Last Friday – under the shadow of two critical zero day exploits on Internet Explorer and Adobe Flash – researchers at Bromium Labs discovered malware in an advertising network connected to Youtube.  Specific details are yet unknown and the threat has yet to be completely mitigated.  As of Friday, Google Security was made aware of the issue and is currently investigating the matter with Bromium.

What is Known

The malware being served is a Caphaw banking Trojan.  Emsisoft detects Trojans from this family as Trojan.Win32.Caphaw.

The attackers are infecting Youtube users through third-party Youtube ads, using the drive-by download technique.

Further investigation has revealed that the ad network serving the Caphaw malware is also hosting the Styx exploit kit.  An exploit kit is a toolkit hackers can purchase ready-made and then place on malicious websites to automatically target common vulnerabilities present on un-updated computers.  The Styx exploit kit targets Java vulnerabilities in particular.  Research indicates that in this attack Styx is being used to target CVE-2013-2460.

Research has also indicated that this attack connects users to a C&C server in Europe.  As yet, this server’s specific location remains unknown.

Am I at Risk?

Anyone running Emsisoft is automatically protected from Caphaw.  Users not running a comprehensive anti-virus software who have recently clicked on a Youtube ad may be infected.

The Caphaw Trojan allows attackers remote control of your PC.  With such control, attackers may directly access your files, monitor your Internet usage, or use your PC for any number of malicious activities.

If you recently clicked on a Youtube ad, Emsisoft recommends an immediate scan with Emsisoft Anti-Malware.  The software will detect and remove Caphaw, and protect your PC from future attacks.

More Details on this Threat

Bromium published an initial analysis of the attack in a blogpost on Friday.  The research firm is currently working with Google Security to investigate the attack in greater detail.  Updates are sure to follow.

Targeting a high profile website such as Youtube is a watering hole tactic.  Youtube receives thousands if not millions of visitors per day, so attacks like this one have a greater chance of infecting more users.  People often think that they are safest when visiting such websites, as security is generally much tighter and the odds of being targeted among so many other users seem slim, but this is somewhat of a misconception.  From an attacker’s perspective, poisoning just one giant waterhole can be much more profitable and can take much less time than poisoning one hundred smaller ones.

This recent attack acts as an important reminder.  No website is 100% secure.  And, whether malicious or not, Internet advertising exists to make money.  So be careful where you click.

Here’s to a Malware-Free Week Ahead!

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Caphaw Trojan Found in Youtube Ads

Ex-Googler-Founded Shape Security Picks Up Another $40M To Build Out Its “Botwall” For Businesses

Shape Security — the enterprise startup that emerged from stealth last month with an enterprise product that fights automated malware and bots by way of a firewall (or ‘botwall’ in its words) that shifts its shape depending on what is trying to scale it — has picked up another $40 million in funding. Read More

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Atlassian Launches Git Essentials For The Enterprise

Atlassian, the company behind popular development tools like JIRA and Confluence, has long been focusing on Git as one of the main tools for getting enterprises to adopt the agile development methodology. Until now, though, it didn’t offer a single product that combined its Git-centric tools like Stash for source-code management and Bamboo for continuous integration with JIRA and JIRA Agile. To… Read More

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CloudFlare Acquires Anti-Malware Firm StopTheHacker

CloudFlare, the website security and content delivery service, today announced that it has acquired the anti-malware firm StopTheHacker. As CloudFlare founder and CEO Matthew Prince explains in today’s announcement, one of the challenges the company faces is to ensure that its network can’t be used to more efficiently distribute malware. “While CloudFlare is good at stopping new… Read More

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IBM Doubles Down On Cloud Services With Cloudant Acquisition

IBM is attempting to make up for its delayed push in cloud services by acquiring Cloudant, a YC alum and a cloud specialist in the area of NoSQL, database-as-a-service. This acquisition, the terms of which were not disclosed by the companies, comes a year after IBM acquired SoftLayer for around $2 billion, and also announced it will invest an additional $1 billion to enhance its cloud portfolio in… Read More

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BlueTalon Raises $1.5M In Seed To Offer Single-Click Data Collaboration For Enterprises

BlueTalon, a big data startup that helps companies analyze information from both internal and external databases on-the-fly, is raising seed funding of $1.5 million from Data Collective. With the new funding, BlueTalon is also appointing Eric Tilenius, a former executive-in-residence at Scale Venture Partners, as its new CEO. Before joining Scale, Tilenius was CEO of two venture-backed… Read More

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Beckon Wants To Help Marketers Make Sense Of Data And Track Spend On-The-Fly

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ThreatStream Raises $4M From Google Ventures To Add Realtime Cybersecurity Intelligence

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Sellsy, The French Sales Management Platform For SMBs, Is Opening New York Office

Sellsy, a French startup that offers a nifty suite of online tools to help businesses manage sales, is making its first push into the U.S. via opening a New York office. Its Software-as-a-Service combines multiple functionality — CRM, ERP, invoicing, purchase management, POS, time tracking and help desk — to enable companies to manage the entire sales process and to monitor key indicators in… Read More

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CloudLock Launches A Fully Cloud-Based Selective Encryption Product

Cloud security startup CloudLock will launch new encryption product to make it easier for software-as-a-service and cloud platforms to protect sensitive data. Called CloudLock Selective Encryption, the product’s launch comes a few weeks after CloudLock announced that it had raised $16.5 million in Series C funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to $28.2 million. It… Read More

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CrowdTwist Brings On Two New Board Members, Coca-Cola’s Carol Kruse And Visa’s Shiv Singh

CrowdTwist, a social loyalty rewards platform, has today announced two new heavy-hitting board members, Carol Kruse and Shiv Singh. Kruse spent nearly 10 years at Coca-Cola, where she led the interactive marketing team as global vice president of Digital. She then went to ESPN and served as a senior vice president and then CMO. Currently, Kruse holds the position of CMO at Tough Mudder. Singh,… Read More

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Adobe Flash Zero Day: Operation GreedyWonk

No more than a week after discovering Internet Explorer 10 Zero Day, researchers at FireEye have uncovered yet another critical vulnerability on widely used software.  CVE-2014-0502, dubbed Operation GreedyWonk, affects the latest versions of Adobe Flash.

Like the IE 10 Zero Day, Operation GreedyWonk bypasses ASLR, a protective measure that randomizes the positions of important data in a program, making it harder for attackers to pinpoint vulnerabilities.

Operation GreedyWonk Affects:

• Windows XP


• Windows 7 with version 1.6 version of Java


• Windows 7 with Office 2007 or Office 2010


• Any other computer with Flash versions 12.0.0.44, 11.7.700.261, or anything earlier.

Steps to Mitigation

1. To determine which version of Flash you are running, you can visit Adobe’s website here.
   


2. If you need to update, you can find operating system specific versions here.
   


3. If you require assistance with this update process, please don’t hesitate to contact Emsisoft Support.

For a technical analysis of this new Zero Day, we recommend FireEye’s blogpost on Operation GreedyWonk.  Research suggests that GreedyWonk has been perpetrated by politically motivated attackers, as the Zero Day initially targeted three nonprofit organizations: the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.  In particular, users linked to the Smith Richardson Foundation are actively involved in matters of public policy and national security.

As with Snowman, GreedyWonk is likely to spawn many copycat attacks.  As such, Emsisoft recommends that you update Flash immediately.  An official statement from Adobe regarding this matter can be viewed here.

Have a Great (Malware-Free) Weekend!

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BlueTalon Raises $1.5M In Seed To Offer Single-Click Data Collaboration For Enterprises

BlueTalon, a big data startup that helps companies analyze information from both internal and external databases on-the-fly, is raising seed funding of $1.5 million from Data Collective.

With the new funding, BlueTalon is also appointing Eric Tilenius, a former executive-in-residence at Scale Venture Partners, as its new CEO. Before joining Scale, Tilenius was CEO of two venture-backed startups: Netcentives (which he co-founded) and Answers.com, both of which had successful IPOs.

The startup was founded in July 2013 by Pratik Verma, a PhD from Stanford University and a veteran data scientist who also founded database security company AgeTak in 2005.

BlueTalon joins a growing breed of big data and data analytics startups that are attempting to help enterprise customers make sense of information residing in databases outside and inside their companies.

“There’s been a lot of innovation around storing, retrieving and providing big data, but all of them are focused within enterprise within walls. What’s missing is the ability to combine data that’s inside the enterprise and outside residing at competitors, and anywhere else,” said Verma.

BlueTalon achieves this by offering a virtual database through SaaS model. The startup’s virtual database is a catalog of data from all contributing databases, but contains no data itself. This helps it maintain virtual connections with all back-end databases without slowing down the process.

“BlueTalon does for database data what Box or Dropbox do for documents,” said Tilenius.

Unlike in a traditional data ETL (extract, transform, load) process that could take months and cost millions of dollars for a large enterprise, these virtual databases can be up and running in weeks and at a fraction of cost, the startup says.

“What we are seeing as competition are big proprietary data warehousing projects, but they don’t give data collaborators the ability to control their own data. They do data ETL projects and BlueTalon eliminates the need to deal with ETL,” Tilenius added.

BlueTalon has already signed up paying customers including United Healthcare and Eli Lilly who were looking to get a unified view of data residing across different locations on-the-fly.

“The kinds of technologies they [United] were putting together, it would have taken much longer, maybe months. We delivered in a fraction of time and without any security holes. Can you imagine United Healthcare working with a startup?” added Verma.

From what we have seen over the past few months, big data and data analytics are going to be among the top investment and startup themes going forward. Most of the big data startups are promising (and some are already delivering) to help enterprises make sense of terabytes of data on-the-fly.

One one hand, the in-memory database startups such as MemSQL are challenging NoSQL solutions on speed and accuracy. And on the other side, startups such as BlueTalon are now catching the attention of some of the world’s biggest enterprise customers. But of course, these startups also face the usual challenges of scaling their solutions to work beyond the initial set of receptive customers.

BlueTalon Raises $1.5M In Seed To Offer Single-Click Data Collaboration For Enterprises

Emsisoft Malwarelympics 2014

Just like last year, Emsisoft’s Malwarelympics infographic decorates winners that don’t necessarily want to be on the podium. This year the United States takes gold  from reigning champion Russia, for the most infected country in the world. In second, Russia takes silver; and in third, Iran takes bronze, just beating out Germany by a few thousand samples.

Aside from the country winners, some other impressive malware Olympians are highlighted. Research indicates that Trojan horses were the year’s largest malware family yet again, with a 10.3% worldwide infection rate. Worms took silver with 4.7%, and exploits rounded out the list at 3.9%, earning the family bronze. This year, viruses were outsiders yet again, with only a 2.1%  infection rate worldwide.

2013 was also a year of new threats from ransomware.  Cryptolocker had a global impact and as yet has proven nearly impossible to unlock.  Like last year, the most attacked operating system is still Windows, which received over 64% of all malware attacks, while attacks on Linux and Mac OS remained barely noticeable.   2013 also  saw an alarming rise in mobile malware.  In fact, just last year mobile malware exploded by over 600%, and estimates place 92% of that explosion targeting Android devices

Emsisoft CEO Christian Mairoll states: “There are also some internal numbers we are able to announce. Our software saw up to 250 000 new malware samples each day, which is up from last year’s 30,000-50,000 range.  Today, our tools make use of more than 12,000,000 signatures.  That’s on top of the behavior blocking, which prevents unregistered threats.”

This and even more malware trends from 2013 can be found in the Emsisoft Malwarelympics infographic (direct download).

Editorial teams may link to this graphic and publish it completely or in parts themselves, as long as there is a link back to the original file or to emsisoft.com directly.

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Zeus Found Crawling through Salesforce.com

The infamous banking Trojan Zeus has been spotted on Salesforce.com.  This interesting discovery has just been made by SaaS security firm Adallom, who has since shared the information with Salesforce.  As yet, the investigation ongoing.

What is known so far is that Zeus was used to target a single Windows PC.  Adallom provides security by monitoring cloud traffic, and the firm noticed the attack when they saw about 2 gigabytes of data being downloaded to the victim’s computer, in less than 10 minutes.  Adallom has yet to publish a report, but in a brief interview with Techworld their spokesperson mentioned the variant having web crawling capabilities.  It is believed the malware is being used to grab sensitive business data from the massive CRM.

Zeus Evolving in 2014

This is the first time Zeus has been used to attack a CRM, but it is far from the Trojan’s Internet debut.  In 2013, Zeus’s Gameover variant was responsible for approximately one-third of all computerized attacks on financial institutions.  Early last year, Zeus was also found connecting to LinkedIn.

It would seem that 2014 is shaping up to be a year of transformation for the Trojan.  Late last week, reports emerged of yet another variant, ZeusVM, which is being steganographically concealed in .JPG image files.  Stenographic coding techniques allow hackers to append malicious code to an otherwise harmless file, without altering the file’s appearance.  .JPG files are therefore being used to hide ZuesVM’s configuration file, which sneaks in as users download what they think is just an image.

Over the last year, the Zeus Trojan has been so effective because it enables man in the middle attacks.  Essentially, Zeus can recognize when users log on to major banking sites, and when they do it ‘wakes up.’  Once awoken, attackers can then use Zeus to gain direct access to an account, since the user has already provided verification using their credentials. Such access can be used to steal sensitive data, or even schedule a wire transfer to the attacker’s bank account.

As Adallom’s discovery has shown, this same man in the middle technique is now being leveraged to download data from CRMs.   In theory, the same technique could be used to harvest sensitive information from any SaaS website.

Exacerbating the situation, is the fact that Zeus’s code is widely available on the dark web, and is modified into new variants quite often.

 Threat Mitigation

• Keep an eye on your Salesforce account.  It is likely the company will release an official statement in the next few hours or days.


• Be wary of all files you download on the Internet.  Just because it’s an image file, doesn’t mean it’s innocuous.


• Use an Antivirus solution with a good behavior blocker, such as Emsisoft Anti-Malware.  Traditional signature-based detection alone is ineffective against malware like Zeus, as it is constantly evolving into new variants.


• If you are worried that you have become a victim of this exploit and need help cleaning your computer, our experts in the “Help, my PC is infected!” Emsisoft Forum are always ready and willing to offer additional help. Our removal service is free, even if you are not an Emsisoft customer yet.

Have a Great (Malware-Free) Wednesday…and if you’re using Salesforce.com: Go Make Some Sales!

UPDATE 2/20/2014:

Adallom has published a report of their findings on their blog.

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Beckon Wants To Help Marketers Make Sense Of Data And Track Spend On-The-Fly

There is Salesforce.com for sales professionals, numerous off-the-shelf packages for finance and HR professionals and thousands of apps for several other enterprise utilities. But marketeers still don’t have a single dashboard to monitor their spend and its impact across different campaigns and functions. And while there are several marketing tools and dashboards that offer custom reporting and analytics, there’s no “single version of the truth” for marketeers.

At least that’s what Beckon, a bootstrapped marketing analytics startup coming out of stealth mode today, is hoping to solve by combining data analytics with an easy-to-use and ‘Flipboard-like’ dashboard.

“There are lots of marketing tools out there that offer reports, but they are single-channel. Search engine tools that spit out search engine insights, email tools that spit out email insights, agencies offering pretty PDFs and PowerPoints filled with insights into their own campaigns, and on and on,” said Jennifer Zeszut, CEO and co-founder of Beckon. Zeszut sold her last startup, Scout Labs, to Lithium Technologies for $22.5 million in May 2010.

“But those don’t come together in one place (except for a marketer’s email inbox),” she added.

Beckon helps marketers consolidate all data and insights coming from different sources including emails where users just mark Beckon on the cc, so all that data is available real time.

The startup already has some high-profile marketers from some of the top Fortune companies as customers. These include StubHub, Nokia, BSkyB and Converse (Nike).

“Beckon has made our marketing data more actionable and timely. Live entertainment is a fast-moving environment. If we take too long to analyze and react, we miss meaningful opportunities,” said Ray Elias, CMO of Stubhub.

“Finance has a finance system of record where every spend/receipt is stored. Sales has Salesforce where all its contacts and accounts live. HR has Successfactors or Workday where it tracks people performance. What marketer can log in and see all his/her stuff in one place and how it’s performing?”

Marketers today are dealing with much more data than ever before. The growing influence of social media for instance, has only added to the deluge of data that needs to be converted into actionable insights on-the-fly.

“They log in and see all campaign spend and performance in one place, with ready-to-go reports, analysis and benchmarks. They see live comparisons of what works best across it all,” added Zeszut.

In the old enterprise world, ERP was used as a tool to automate and integrate different business processes. Now many of these processes have overgrown in scope and complexity. Moreover, the new-age enterprise users don’t want to look at data in rows and columns. The consumerization of enterprise software underscores this shift, and this is where niche applications from startups such as Beckon are beginning to make sense. They not only improve upon the old world performance monitoring, but also present insights in beautiful, easy formats.

“I need to know that we’re spending our dollars in the right way and investing in the programs that drive consumer obsession with our brand,” said Karen Riley-Grant of Converse.

For its part, Beckon has been able to launch with a pool of some high-profile customers. The challenge going forward will be to fend off much bigger and dominant enterprise rivals such as Oracle and SAP on one hand, and at the same time, making sure that Beckon’s core product keeps evolving.

Beckon Wants To Help Marketers Make Sense Of Data And Track Spend On-The-Fly

ThreatStream Raises $4M From Google Ventures To Add Realtime Cybersecurity Intelligence

ThreatStream, a SaaS-based cybersecurity startup backed by top Cloudera executives, has raised $4 million in Series A funding from investors led by Google Ventures. The other investors participating in the latest round of funding are Paladin Capital Group, Cloudera CEO Tom Reilly and Hugh Nijemanze, former CTO and founder of ArcSight.

The new funding will be used to add a new layer of cybersecurity for enterprise and government customers, the startup said.

Over past few months, we have seen several security startups getting launched with some of them coming out of stealth mode after readying their products. The increasing number of these niche security startups also underscores a growing market for solutions that help enterprises and governments secure their data and networks in realtime.

“ThreatStream’s Optic platform is the first ever crowd-sourced cyber security intelligence solution that aggregates millions of threat indicators from around the Internet and integrates them directly to an organization’s existing security infrastructure,” said Greg Martin, CEO and founder of the startup.  Founded in 2013, the startup had raised $300,000 in seed funding last year.

“By leveraging data and analytics, Optic helps organizations sort through much of the “noise,” allowing security analysts to focus on the more sophisticated, 20% of attacks, the targeted ones,” Martin added.

ThreatStream uses data science to identify potential threats and targets in real time and helps existing enterprise security to defend.

Google Ventures general partner Karim Faris said the startup addresses a critical gap in threat intelligence.

“Traditional models of securing the gate are becoming less effective, and we’re seeing meaningful new investments in creating more intelligent security layers. In today’s environment, it’s imperative to continuously augment existing perimeter defenses like firewalls with threat intelligence to get a broader view of the attacks forming,” Karim said.

The cybersecurity threats have been rising at an alarming rate over past few years. The Target data breach that was traced back to a piece of malware called “Kaptoxa”, developed by a Russian teenager, was actually running on hundreds of point-of-sale machines at the retailer. ThreatStream believes such instances could be easily managed in realtime through threat intelligence.

ThreatStream Raises $4M From Google Ventures To Add Realtime Cybersecurity Intelligence

Sellsy, The French Sales Management Platform For SMBs, Is Opening New York Office

Sellsy, a French startup that offers a nifty suite of online tools to help businesses manage sales, is making its first push into the U.S. via opening a New York office. Its Software-as-a-Service combines multiple functionality — CRM, ERP, invoicing, purchase management, POS, time tracking and help desk — to enable companies to manage the entire sales process and to monitor key indicators in real-time.

Its pitch to SMBs is that by combing what would typically be separate apps and moving them to the cloud, it’s able to offer a much simpler and more cost-effective solution.

Founded in 2009 in the French coastal city La Rochelle, Sellsy claims 3,700 paying customers, totalling 15,000 users. It says much of its growth currently comes from the international version of its SaaS business management solution, which already accounts for “over” 10% of customers in thirty or so countries. The decision to set-up-shop in the Big Apple is designed to meet and further grow this demand and “provide a quality support” to the startup’s English speaking users.

“We chose New York for its attractiveness, its affinity with Sellsy model (SaaS and mobile) and local target markets (entrepreneurs, startups, web agencies, design, fashion, technology, communication, etc.). In addition, the State of New York is a market the size of France for the number of companies from which we can spread internationally and provide responsive support in English” says Sellsy co-founder Alain Mevellec in a statement.

Situated in the heart of Manhattan, Sellsy says its U.S. office will open this April where it will initially recruit 2-3 staff.

Sellsy, The French Sales Management Platform For SMBs, Is Opening New York Office

CloudLock Launches A Fully Cloud-Based Selective Encryption Product

Cloud security startup CloudLock will launch new encryption product to make it easier for software-as-a-service and cloud platforms to protect sensitive data. Called CloudLock Selective Encryption, the product’s launch comes a few weeks after CloudLock announced that it had raised $16.5 million in Series C funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to $28.2 million. It will make its public debut next week at the 2014 RSA Conference in San Francisco.

CloudLock Selective Encryption will protect data on the two platforms, Salesforce.com and Google Apps, that CloudLock currently covers, as well as new cloud service providers the startup signs up as it expands.

Cloud traffic is expected to reach a total of 7.7 zettabytes, or two-thirds of global data center traffic, by 2017. For SaaS and cloud platforms, rapid growth also presents a significant security challenge because certain types of information have to protected in specific ways to meet compliance laws and regulations. This data includes personal information; credit card data; medical records protected under the HIPAA privacy law; and intellectual property.

By making it easier for customers to provide higher levels of security for just the data that requires it, CloudLock Selective Encryption can help cloud service companies scale up more efficiently while complying with security regulations.

CloudLock Selective Encryption looks for sensitive data and then automatically encrypts it to meet compliance laws without affecting the app’s performance. The product can be used for either end-user and corporate-governed encryption, and it protects data that is being uploaded to the cloud, as well data that is already in storage.

In a statement, CloudLock CTO and co-founder Ron Zalkind said: “We’ve heard from hundreds of our customers that the gateway-based and reverse-proxy solutions out there require heavy deployments, are highly prone to breaking cloud apps, and are often unavailable from mobile apps. CloudLock is provisioned completely in the cloud, in minutes.”

Image by picjumbo

CloudLock Launches A Fully Cloud-Based Selective Encryption Product

CrowdTwist Brings On Two New Board Members, Coca-Cola’s Carol Kruse And Visa’s Shiv Singh

CrowdTwist, a social loyalty rewards platform, has today announced two new heavy-hitting board members, Carol Kruse and Shiv Singh.

Kruse spent nearly 10 years at Coca-Cola, where she led the interactive marketing team as global vice president of Digital. She then went to ESPN and served as a senior vice president and then CMO. Currently, Kruse holds the position of CMO at Tough Mudder.

Singh, meanwhile, works as SVP of global brand and marketing transformation for Visa and was formerly the global head of digital for PepsiCo. If you’ve ever heard of the social platforms Pepsi Sound Off or Pepsi Pulse, those were Singh’s idea. Before his stint at Pepsi, Singh led the global social media team at RazorFish for 11 years.

With CrowdTwist’s focus on brands and brand engagement, these board members will surely add some extra edge to the company’s growth in 2014.

Here’s what CEO and co-founder Irvin Fain had to say about it in a prepared statement:

As the first company to extend loyalty programs beyond the traditional “spend and get” models, we’re helping marketers account for customer value in a truly multi-channel world including mobile, social media, online and offline spend and more—we’re not just capturing more data, we’re making data more meaningful for marketers. Carol and Shiv have both been at the forefront of innovative marketing technologies and forging stronger relationships with consumers. Their expertise in addition to Eric’s years of relevant experience will be instrumental in supporting our continued growth in 2014.

CrowdTwist has raised a total of $6.75 million since launching out of TechStars in 2011.

CrowdTwist Brings On Two New Board Members, Coca-Cola’s Carol Kruse And Visa’s Shiv Singh

Firmware Vulnerabilities Discovered on Linksys and ASUS Routers

Last week, researchers at the SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center discovered a new worm that affects multiple Linksys router models.  Named “The Moon,” the worm takes advantage of a CGI script vulnerability located in the administration interface on routers that have remote management access enabled.

Linksys has since posted steps on how to mitigate the threat here.  Excellent analyses have also been posted by SANS researcher Johannes Ullrich, here and here.  Highlights include details on The Moon’s worming behavior and speculation as to whether it has bot capabilities as well.  Researchers are currently investigating whether the malware connects to a command and control channel.

A Bad Connection

Yesterday, reports emerged about another router exploit, this time leveraging an ASUS vulnerability that was publically disclosed a full 8 months ago.  Once again, this exploit targets routers that have remote web access enabled, through a service ASUS calls AiCloud.  The vulnerability allows attackers to gain direct access to any storage device connected to the router by USB.

ASUS users have been discovering that they are affected by way of an almost comical .txt file dropped on all vulnerable devices:

"This is an automated message being sent out to everyone effected.  Your ASUS router (and your documents) can be accessed by anyone in the world with an internet connection.  You need to protect yourself and learn more by reading the following news article:

‘http://nullfluid.com/asusgate.txt’

Below is a list of all vulnerable IP addresses that have been leaked.  If you are reading this, YOU ARE VULNERABLE TOO:

‘http://pastebin.com/ASfyTWgw’

Solution: COMPLETELY DISABLE ‘FTP’ and ‘AICLOUD’, IMMEDIATELY.

I hope we helped.

Sincerely,

/g/

While the ‘news’ article is currently unavailable, the Pastebin entry contains a list of over 13,000 apparently vulnerable IP addresses.

The alert-like nature of this message suggests that whoever is behind this exploit may indeed be a good guy, working in anonymity and simply trying to provide any lagging ASUS users with a much needed wake-up call to update their firmware.  That The Moon exploit is so similarly innocuous – apparently only redirecting to an IP address used by Google’s DNS service, and even disappearing after router reboot – suggests a similarly minded agent.  It could indeed be that this week’s exploits are merely friendly reminders to update, or else.

The Malicious Side of Things

Then again, there very well could be a dark underside to each vulnerability.  As much as The Moon could be a playful warning, it could also be an act of experimentation, meant to feel out what is possible in a future attack.  In the case of ASUS, initial reports have also pointed to a deep web torrent link containing over 10,000 lists of files that can be found on ASUS linked storage devices.  Regardless of who is behind these router exploits and what their intentions may be, it is quite clear that the threat of compromised personal or financial information does exist.  In fact, researchers at CERT Polska recently demonstrated exactly how this could be done in a detailed report on home router vulnerabilities and DNS redirection.

Recommended Steps to Threat Mitigation

• Linksys users can find detailed Moon prevention steps in this official Linksys statement.


• ASUS has yet to release an official statement, however updates for the 8 month old vulnerability can be found here.
  

If you need assistance with either one of these issues, Emsisoft support would be glad to help.  Users running other types of routers are also encouraged to update their firmware, disable remote access, and ensure passwords and usernames have been changed from default factory settings.

Have a Great (Malware-Free) Day!

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Firmware Vulnerabilities Discovered on Linksys and ASUS Routers

PopTip Launches Zipline Analytics On Instagram, Letting Brands Monitor Photo-Friendly Conversations

PopTip, the Techstars-backed startup that offers real-time language tracking across social platforms, has today launched its Zipline analytics tool on Instagram.

Unlike PopTip questions, the product that launched the brand, Zipline doesn’t require brands to poll or ask a question to their audiences. Instead, brands can simply choose which words, phrases, etc. they want tracked and then watch the conversations play out right in front of them.

“We saw some really interesting patterns regarding the relationship between browsing on Instagram and purchasing power, so we wanted to get on Instagram to track the conversation,” said co-founder Kelsey Falter. “We have analysis going on Twitter and Instagram for Nike right now, and it turns out that there is 4x the volume of Nike mentions on Instagram than on Twitter, and that’s powerful information for Nike to have.”

When PopTip first launched back in summer of 2012, the company offered a polling product, letting brands ask things like: “do you wear #boxers or #briefs?”

PopTip would then offer a dashboard showing real time conversations around the questions and answers, even if respondents didn’t use a hashtag or spell the word correctly. At its core, after all, PopTip technology is all about natural language processing and tracking in real-time.

At launch, the analytics tool was only available on Twitter.

But in March of 2013, the company expanded their tracking tools to Facebook, letting brands get a true window into their following across multiple platforms.

Shortly after, PopTip launched Zipline, which takes the “polling” out of the equation and simply lets brands watch things play out as they normally would across social networks. With the launch of Zipline for Instagram, brands on PopTip can monitor the conversation across all three of the major network.

If you want to check out how Zipline on Instagram works, check out the demo here.

Zipline customers pay a flat rate of $6,500/month, which lets them track anywhere between 30 million and 50 million messages across all platforms.

PopTip has grown from 3 to 10 full-time employees, with 30 customers, including brands such as L’Oreal, NBA, ESPN, NFL, Spotify, Budweiser and Yoplait.

The New York-based company has raised a total of $2.5 million to date in angel funding from Lerer Ventures, SoftBank Capital, RSE Ventures, David Tisch, Scott Belsky, Soraya Darabi, Amer Rehman, Steve Martocci, Jared Hecht, Ori Allon, Tricia Black and Lee Ann Daly.

PopTip Launches Zipline Analytics On Instagram, Letting Brands Monitor Photo-Friendly Conversations

Skyhigh Debuts CloudRisk, A Tool To Help Large Companies Track Their Cloud Exposure

Skyhigh Networks today debuted CloudRisk, a new tool to help corporations track and manage their potential risk due to use of cloud services.

CloudRisk is a dashboard that tracks a firm’s current surface area with cloud services, providing the company with a number — on a scale of one through 10 — regarding their current exposure and a comparable figure for their industry.

If Skyhigh invented this ranking scale of risk, why grant it weight? The company’s other products vet cloud services, providing a Stamp of Approval — what it calls Skyhigh Enterprise-ready — to the apps deemed sufficiently safe, and it vends tools to help companies manage cloud use inside their businesses. So, if you were looking for a firm with a good pulse on cloud risk, and its mitigation, Skyhigh is a decent bet.

CloudRisk will also provide suggestions for companies that could use, ahem, a better score.

I spoke with CloudRisk CEO Rajiv Gupta about the new product and the larger cloud industry. In short we agree that growth potential remains essentially boundless for the sector as we stand today. Skyhigh is Gupta’s bet that that growth becomes realized, security products and tools will be required for the expansion. So the play makes sense.

Skyhigh raised a $20 million Series B round led by Sequoia Capital in 2013, a funding event that included participation from prior investor Greylock Partners.

IMAGE BY FLICKR USER JESSICA PATERSON UNDER CC BY 2.0 LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN CROPPED) 

Skyhigh Debuts CloudRisk, A Tool To Help Large Companies Track Their Cloud Exposure

An AT&T For Dentistry? Y Combinator-Backed Weave Launches To Bring Modern Telecom To SMBs

Small businesses, by definition, are lean. With a price tag that includes license renewals, maintenance and upgrades to servers and IT support, the costs of adopting enterprise-grade software and services has been prohibitive for most SMBs, posing a potential threat to delicate profit margins. More recently, however, thanks to increasing access to broadband, the proliferation of connected mobile devices, and the rise of cloud services, this has begun to change.

Today, with access to the cloud and affordable SaaS-based solutions fast increasing, small businesses are adopting the kind of services and tools that were once reserved for their enterprise counterparts in droves. It’s happening across the board, from business apps, securitya and CRM to BI, accounting and telecommunications. Y Combinator-backed Weave is one of a growing set of companies looking to capitalize on this trend and bring modern software and services to the millions of small businesses that have traditionally been underserved by big players.

Launching officially today, Weave is on a mission to help small and medium-sized businesses upgrade their telecom systems and connect the many disparate services they use in day-to-day operations under one roof. Dubbing itself a “new kind of phone company,” Weave’s software integrates with the existing CRM systems used by small businesses — particularly dentists, accountants and chiropractors — and provides access to voice, SMS and email services within one package and interface.

Communication is critical to small businesses and small practices, as customers today have increasingly high expectations when it comes to support. For small businesses, creating fluid communication lines are part of offering that extra level of support that can increase loyalty and become the difference between gaining a customer or losing one.

For businesses that revolve around the phone, like dental practices for example, it’s the little stuff. They want to know who their customers are when they call, they want access to communication histories, and they need to be able to quickly and effectively communicate with them, market to them and offer support at any time. This is where Weave comes in, as it aims to provide small businesses with the kind of tools they need to offer this level of support in less time and without training.

Because founders Brandon Rodman, Jared Rodman, and Clint Berry have prior experience in the market and because it happens to be one that has been ignored by enterprise vendors, since launch, Weave has primarily focused on serving small and medium-sized dental practices. While it may sound like an odd vertical to start with for a technology company, there are 160,000 dentists in the U.S. alone, and judging by the interest in the early going, better telecommunication services are in high demand.

At launch, Weave has already attracted over 200 paying customers and, according to its founders, has been growing at 10 percent each week. To support this early growth, the startup has raised over $750K in seed funding from Y Combinator, the YC VC fund and friends and family.

While Weave was built with dentists in mind, the platform has been designed to be modular and the startup plans to expand into other verticals in the coming months. From the start, Weave’s appeal to dentists has been that it allows practices to upgrade their phone service without the headache. They can transfer their existing numbers to Weave and cancel service with other providers in minutes, while getting access to a system that allows them to integrate telecom features with their practice management software.

Again, while quick integration with the major practice management software providers has limited value outside of dentistry, the founders think that Weave’s modular foundation, VoIP service, SMS and email integration — along with the minimal legwork required to get compatible and sync with existing systems in other verticals — gives it appeal beyond its initial market.

The founders also tell us that Weave’s PBX-based software is set up such that all phone calls travel across its servers and, since it integrates with a practice’s software, the system is able to offer key information about that caller.

After identifying the incoming call, for example, Weave can quickly parse practice data to determine if someone in the caller’s family has an appointment already scheduled, if there are family members overdue that need to be scheduled, does anyone owe money or are past due on their balance, have a birthday coming up and so on. Traditionally, pulling up this range of information would require a lot of time and clicks on the part of dentists (or any small business for that matter).

While Weave offers features two-way text messaging, which enables users to text back and forth with their patients as they would on their smartphones, for now, the service is limited to the desktop. However, the startup has a native mobile app in its near-term plans, and because Weave’s interface is designed in such a way that it looks more like a mobile UI than desktop, the founders believe the transition won’t be difficult.

The one feature of Weave’s system that could present friction depending on the practice is that it’s not just compatible with any old phone. Its technology requires users to buy particular phones, which are specifically programmed to work with its system and support HD voice and unlimited lines. However, Rodman says that the team has found thus far that many dentists are looking to upgrade their hardware as well, and because they have a partnership worked out with a phone vendor, they can offer the phones at a discount.

While telecommunications software and systems for dentistry isn’t exactly the sexiest formula out there, Weave’s growth indicates that it’s managed to tap into the growing demand among small businesses and practices for more modern, enterprise-level products. The “unsexy” industries are often where demand is highest, and pulchritudinous or not, creating solutions that tackle the tough problems in those industries can mean big business.

An AT&T For Dentistry? Y Combinator-Backed Weave Launches To Bring Modern Telecom To SMBs

Cloud Security Startup Elastica Comes Out Of Stealth With $6.3M From Mayfield

Elastica, a cloud security startup launched in 2012, is coming out of stealth mode with $6.3 million in Series A funding from the Mayfield Fund. The startup is also launching its new apps that offer real-time threat detection and even post-incident forensic analysis.

As more enterprises embrace SaaS and other cloud-based services, they are increasingly feeling the need to have a different approach to security beyond just traditional firewalls. This shift means over $2 billion annual market for cloud security vendors like Elastica. As Gartner noted last year, the highest growth is forecast to occur in cloud-based tokenisation and encryption, security information and event management (SIEM), vulnerability assessment and web application firewalls.

Elastica joins a fast growing club of cloud security startups promising to combine data science and in some instances even machine learning tools to help companies and employees secure SaaS data. There’s huge investor interest in the segment and some of the biggest names in the enterprise software world are backing many of these startups.

Elastica was founded in 2012 by Rehan Jalil, former CEO of WiChorus, which was sold to Tellabs for $165 million in 2009.

Cloud Security Startup Elastica Comes Out Of Stealth With $6.3M From Mayfield

Posting 29% Q4 Revenue Growth, Microsoft’s Lync Promises To Land On Android Tablets This Summer

Lync, Microsoft’s little engine that could, continues to grow.

The company announced at the end of its last fiscal year (2013) that Lync had brought in more than $1 billion in revenue. The group had grown more than 30 percent in the fourth, third, and second quarters of Microsoft’s fiscal 2013.

Microsoft put up a flag stating that Lync was its “fastest growing business” in celebration. In terms of its fit as a cloud service into Microsoft’s larger shake up of its business plan, Lync matters. It, along with Office 365 and Azure, are a rising cadre of internal projects that are straining to replace slipping Windows revenues.

Right, so Lync is big, and grew quickly to cross the billion-dollar mark for fiscal 2013. What’s happened since? Well, much the same, it appears. Microsoft announced today that Lync grew 29 percent (compared to the year-ago quarter) in the fourth calendar quarter. That’s below the 30 percent mark that Lync had kept up for so long, but that matters only so much, as the raw dollar revenue growth is more important, provided the comparative percentage delta doesn’t fall too much.

Put another way, 29 percent more of something bigger is larger than 31 percent more of something smaller.

Also out today at the company’s Lync conference is the news that Microsoft will release a new Lync app for Android tablets. It won’t be ready until summer, so hold your equestrian mounts.

I’m keeping you up with Lync because it is a test for Microsoft to sell new(er) services to its enterprise client base. The company expects to find much of its future revenue growth in such terms, so the product matters as bellwether.

Posting 29% Q4 Revenue Growth, Microsoft’s Lync Promises To Land On Android Tablets This Summer

Emsisoft Alert: Kickstarter Data Breach

Over the weekend, popular crowdfunding website Kickstarter announced a data breach of user related information.  Stolen credentials include: usernames, encrypted passwords, email addresses, mailing addresses, and phone numbers. If you use Kickstarter, you should visit Kickstarter.com immediately, log in, and change your password by clicking on the banner they have added to the top of the user homepage.  

Kickstarter has stressed that this data breach has not compromised users’ credit card information and does not affect Facebook linked Kickstarter log ins.  It is also important to realize that while only encrypted passwords have been compromised, such passwords can be hacked through a number of methods – especially if they are weak.

Kickstarter has apologized for the breach and has been providing updated information about the event here.  The company has also stated that, so far, only 2 accounts have been compromised.  Immediate password changes can help keep that number to a minimum.

If you use Kickstarter, Emsisoft recommends changing your password immediately.  Here’s the link: Kickstarter.com.

Have a Great (Malware-Free) Day!

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Emsisoft Alert: Kickstarter Data Breach

New Internet Explorer Zero Day Attack: Operation Snowman

Security firm FireEye has just discovered a new zero day attack that is actively targeting computers running fully patched versions of Internet Explorer 10.  Microsoft has confirmed this discovery (CVE-2014-0322) and added that the vulnerability is also present IE 9.

As such, Emsisoft recommends an immediate update to IE 11.  Users could also consider switching to a more stable browser, such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.

Have a Great (Malware-Free) Day!

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New Internet Explorer Zero Day Attack: Operation Snowman

VB100 Ranking for Emsisoft Anti-Malware on Windows 8.1

Short and simple:

• 100% on-demand and on-access protection against standard & extended wilds.


• Zero Warnings.


• Zero False Positives.


• Virus Bulletin concludes: “Detection was really quite excellent“

Please find a more detailed summary at anti-malware-reviews.com at your convenience.

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VB100 Ranking for Emsisoft Anti-Malware on Windows 8.1