A research by German scientists from the AV-Test information security institute revealed a drastic decrease of the efficiency of anti-virus tools. The research included the testing of 25 anti-virus tools for home use and 8 corporate products.

Anti-virus programs managed to block 92% of low-level attacks and clean 91% of infected systems, of which only 60% were able to operate normally.

Three out of 25 tested programs could not score high enough to get a security certificate: Microsoft Security Essentials, PC Tools and AhnLabs. Another corporate solution from Microsoft, Forefront, also didn’t score high enough in the tests.

A similar alternative research was conducted by a company called Imperva in late 2012 with similarly discouraging results: all anti-virus tools of the VirusTotal service successfully detected less than 5% of malware.

Vladimir Zdorovenin, a Russian national, was sentenced to 2 years in prison by the New York court for a series of cybercrimes involving the theft of personal details and credit card information. The hacker committed crimes remotely from Russia, targeting American citizens.

Zdorovenin and his son used phishing and viruses since 2004 to steal the personal details of credit card holders. Apart from carding and other types of online fraud, Zdorovenin was also interested in the stock exchange market – he attempted to make money by manipulating stock prices and closing deals on behalf of people whose details he had previously stolen.

He was arrested in Zurich, Switzerland in March 2011 and extradited to the U.S. following an official order. The fraudster pleaded guilty to two charges.

A group of hackers called The Hackers Army announced a successful breach of a server belonging to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). They claim to have hacked the authentication server and secured access to logins and passwords of FBI employees.

As a proof of this breach, the hackers provided details of server configurations and versions of software used on them, as well as login credentials of several employees.

The Anti-Malware.Ru analytical center has conducted a brief analysis of these data and concluded that “many of these addresses really exist, but it’s impossible to tell right now whether these passwords are valid.”

Traditionally, FBI representatives have not provided any official comments on this matter.