In a decisive move, Kaspersky Lab has decided to withdraw from the BSA, over the  insidious Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill. SOPA has already been talked about abundantly, and if you were not following SOPA, you can go through  these earlier posts. SOPA is being pushed aggressively by big brands from the software, music and movie industry, and it is a threat to the freedom of the Internet. Kaspersky Labs is a part of  BSA, which represents a trade group of the software industry, in favor of SOPA.

The  Business Software Alliance  is the voice of the world’s commercial software industry and its hardware partners before governments and in the international marketplace. BSA programs foster technology innovation through education and  policy initiatives that promote copyright protection, cyber security, trade, and e-commerce.

The primary source of income for the BSA is the revenue of its member companies. Although BSA counts software giants like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe as its members, the withdrawal of Kaspersky will come as a big blow to BSA.  Kaspersky is the world’s leading Antivirus vendor with 14 years of experience in this specific niche, and revenue worth over half a billion dollars.

If things do not change by 1st January next year, Kaspersky Lab will no longer be a part of BSA. Kaspersky Lab has taken this move because it believes that SOPA will hurt innovation as well as consumers. The statement made by BSA (on Kaspersky’s withdrawal) reads,

Kaspersky has not participated in drafting the bill, nor participated in the debate on SOPA, and does not support this initiative.

News of this withdrawal was expected to weaken BSA’s stand on SOPA, but they have given a neutral statement saying,

We are very disappointed to learn that Kaspersky Labs may not renew their membership in BSA; especially given we share many of their concerns over SOPA. Kaspersky has been a valued member of BSA over the past two years, and we look forward to working with them again in the future.

Another reason for Kaspersky’s decision of withdrawal from BSA and SOPA seems to be the way this law puts the Internet in control of American censorship. This is something that concerns Eugene Kaspersky  (the CEO of Kaspersky) and many others across the world.

In its latest quarterly malware report, Kaspersky Labs has released key trends after analysing vast numbers of IT threats during the second quarter of 2011.

Software Makers

The top 10 rating of vulnerabilities includes products from just two companies: Adobe and Oracle (by virtue of Java vulnerabilities). With great improvements in the Windows updates mechanism and several Windows XP users moving to a more secure Windows 7 experience, Microsoft is no more featured in the list. Incidentally, seven of the top 10 vulnerabilities were found in Adobe Flash Player alone!

Web-surfing

Navigating the web remains the riskiest activity on the Internet. 87 per cent of the websites used to spread malicious programs were concentrated in just 10 countries, with the US based websites leading the pack.

Local infection

The number of fake antivirus programs detected globally by Kaspersky Lab has increased and also the number of users whose computers blocked attempts to install counterfeit software increased 300 per cent in just three months of the last quarter.

India was among the top 10 countries with highest risk of local infection on computers. Every second computer in the country was at risk of local infection at least once in the past three months.

Botnet controllers see India as a place with millions of unprotected and un-patched computers which can remain active on zombie networks for extended periods of time.

- Yury Namestnikov, Senior Virus Analyst at Kaspersky Lab

Hacking

Interestingly, 2011 can go down in the technology history as the year of hacking  since  services from several major organizations like Sony, Honda, Fox News, Epsilon, and Citibank were hacked and disrupted

Mobile

The number of mobile threats targeting different mobile platforms has increased exponentially. In the second quarter of 2011, the detected threats running on J2ME doubled while those on Android nearly tripled. Malicious programs continue to be detected in the official Android Market.

Kaspersky Lab has released the 2012 editions of its reputed anti-malware products – Kaspersky Antivirus and Kaspersky Internet Security. Kaspersky Antivirus is the base offering which offers file antivirus, web antivirus, cloud scanning and proactive defense. Kaspersky Internet Security offers a more complete protection and has several additional features like firewall, sandboxing, and parental control.

To be honest the biggest change in the new version is the new user interface, which is nothing short of stunning. There isn’t a lot of new stuff, mostly because Kaspersky products are already packed to the brim with features. However, there are several improvements.

The focus of this release is on offering hybrid protection that harnesses the power of the cloud along with the local database and heuristics based security technologies to reduce the average protection delivery time. Kaspersky’s cloud protection relies on the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN), which has been a part of Kaspersky’s offerings for quite some time now. However, in the latest editions of its products, Kaspersky has done a better job at highlighting the cloud integration. KSN currently has more than 30 million voluntary members from 213 countries, and is capable of tackling advanced threats like zero-day exploits, phishing and spam. It also includes a File Advisor and a URL Advisor, which provides ratings on the trustworthiness of files and websites respectively.

The proactive defense module has also been improved. System Watcher module should be more efficient than before at analyzing activities performed by various processes and detecting malicious intent. Kaspersky is also promising better performance and improved compatibility with its latest release.

As I mentioned earlier, the changelog is pretty short and mostly unimpressive. However, Kaspersky is continuing its tradition of offering free upgrades to existing license holders. Just key in your existing activation code into the trial version, and your license will be automatically upgraded. You can download the free 30 day trial versions of Kaspersky Antivirus and Kapsersky Internet Security from here.

Kaspersky is one the best Anti Virus I have used. It has some really good protection and is also pretty lightweight and does not hog on CPU resources as many other AV do.

If you want to get your hands on a Kaspersky Antivirus 2011, now is the right time. Buy.com is selling Kaspersky 2011 3 user license or only $13.99, that is a $46 markdown from the original $60 price. The deal is limited for today only so go ahead and get a really cool Antivirus protection for your PC this Cyber Monday.

Purchase Kaspersky 2011 for $13.99

The Stuxnet worm, which we covered in two previous articles, is continuing to make headlines. Sophisticated malwares are nothing new. Just last year, we saw the Conflicker, which used exceptionally smart techniques to avoid disinfection. However, Stuxnet is a different beast all together.

“I think that this is the turning point, this is the time when we got to a really new world, because in the past there were just cyber-criminals, now I am afraid it is the time of cyber-terrorism, cyber-weapons and cyber-wars,” said Eugene Kaspersky, co-founder and chief executive officer of Kaspersky Lab.

The worm has been confirmed to have caused extensive damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities, and is being currently analyzed by US security organisations. It has also been found in Siemens systems in India, Indonesia, Pakistan and elsewhere. Stuxnet is unique because of its ability to identify a facility’s control network and wreck it. “This malicious program was not designed to steal money, send spam, grab personal data, no, this piece of malware was designed to sabotage plants, to damage industrial systems”, stated Eugene Kaspersky.

The origin and exact purpose of Stuxnet is still a mystery. “One of our hardest jobs is attribution and intent,” said Sean McGurk, director of the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC). The worm, which exploits four separate 0-day (previously unknown) vulnerabilities, is being dubbed as a working and fearsome prototype of a cyber-weapon.

Kaspersky is giving away a free license for 6 months of Kaspersky 2010 Internet Security in partnership with MSN China. To get your free license, visit this page and click on the Orange button and sign in with your Windows Live mail id.

Sorry, but my Chinese is a bit weak, so I won’t be able to translate whatever is written on the page :-). And yes this will only work with the Chinese version of Kapsersky, which you can download here. Now don’t forget to brush up on your Chinese, if you want to use this for free :-). Also, don’t forget to copy the license key from the confirmation screen, as this will not be emailed out to you. Thanks Pranjal.

Want to get your hands on one of the best Internet Security software Kaspersky for Free? If yes, you can buy a 3 user license of Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 for Free after a $60 Mail-In-Rebate (MIR).

After you purchase the software, all you have to do is fill in this MIR form (PDF link [via]) and wait for your money to come back. An awesome deal, so hurry before the offer is taken off.

Buy Kaspersky Security 2010 Free after MIR

We have been reporting for the past week on the various giveaways for free antivirus from reputed companies like Panda and Kaspersky. Looks like only one of them is keeping true to their original deal.

We tested that you could download a free copy of Panda Internet Security 2010, however don’t expect to be able to download Kaspersky for FREE. The deal was a totally for Windows 7 Launch party attendees dud and a dumb marketing idea. Only users who attended someone’s Windows 7 launch party can download a free copy. Duh.

Unless and until you have the email address of the host of some obscure party, you will not be able to download the so called FREE edition of Kaspersky.

And, if you think you can game the system and enter any email address as the host? Take a look at the above message, to see the end result. This is a definite piss off for several thousand users who have been anticipating to download the security software from Kaspersky.

Are we spoiling you with free choices when it comes to securing your PC from hackers and crackers? Well, we would love to continue the trend with another giveaway for a free antivirus license from Kaspersky, one of the leading internet security solution provider.

On October 22nd you will be able to download a copy of Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 for free. The offer is yet to go live, but bookmark the Kaspersky Windows 7 launch part page to download your free copy.

Thank you for visiting our special offer page for Windows 7 Launch Party attendees and hosts. Our offer will go live when Windows 7 is publically released on October 22nd. Please check back then to receive your license code for Kaspersky Internet Security 2010.

We would definitely recommend users to download Kaspersky as it is a lightweight and robust antivirus and security software. The protection provided is definitely pretty good and worth the effort to download and install, to top it, you might get a free license for up-to 1 year (unconfirmed yet).

Oh and talking about choices, you can also download Panda Internet Security 2010 and IObit Security 360 Pro for free. Stay tuned for more freebies.

Recently Kaspersky released their 2010 range of products. With all the new security features in the updated suites, Kaspersky also changed the way their applications are activated.

Previously, to activate the software, the user had to input a key file that he’d purchased. But now, following a method similar to that of Adobe and Norton products, users needed to input a string of numbers and get the license validated through the internet.

This method, although decreases chances of piracy of the software, creates an unnecessary hurdle for those users who don’t have an internet connection where they plan to install the security suite.

Incidentally, the WebTrickz blog has come up with a nifty trick that lets you use the old way of installing and activating a license through a key file. You need not knockout anything, or break into any freakish Windows registry. All that you’ll need to do is enter a beta key string (when disconnected), the setup will try to connect to a server and when it will fail, you’ll get an option to browse for a key file. Read the blog post for all the details.

How to activate Kaspersky 2010 products using a key file | Webtrickz.com