Tag Archive for: causing

Avira Antivirus Is Causing Windows PCs To Run So Hard They Freeze Up, Fix Available


One of the telltale signs that your PC has become ill with a virus is an unexpected slowdown in performance. Various forms of malware can sometimes feast on your system’s resources, whether it’s a hidden cryptocurrency miner, keylogger, or something else. Ironically, a recent update to Avira’s antivirus software is having the same effect on system PCs, with users reporting system freezes in Windows.

The issue came to light this week in a post on Reddit. A user who goes by “kiiniiwiinii” reported that their PC had suddenly begun freezing up, which prompted them to start disabling background apps one by one, until only Avira remained running.

“Two other people I know had the same issue (both have Avira). Fixed it by going into safe startup and uninstalling Aviera. This along with the game booster (that we didn’t enable) causing lag (took forever to figure out the cause) and the horrible support, I will be cancelling my subscription and keeping Avira uninstalled,” the user wrote.

Several others chimed in to the Reddit thread and said they too were experiencing the same performance hiccup. One user said they noticed the apparent glitch was causing Avira to utilize 100% of their processor and memory resources. Others reported seeing the same issue on dozens of client PCs. So, what gives?

Avira’s parent company, Gen Digital, confirmed the issue in a statement to Heise.de. According to Gen Digital, a bug in Avira’s firewall was causing the issue “under a certain condition.” The company also said that the issue has been resolved via a new software update.


“We are aware that a recent update from Avira has caused problems for some Windows 10 and Windows 11 users. These were automatically resolved by an update released on Monday, December 11th [at] 11:30 a.m. (CET). In the unlikely event that the update has not reached all computers, users can contact the Avira support team who will be happy to help them,” Gen Digital said.

Interestingly, Gen Digital also said that if the update does not arrive for some reason,…

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Feds: Ransomware attack causing outages at 60 U.S. credit unions



The National Credit Union Administration says some 60 locations across the country are experiencing system outages due to a ransomware hack.

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The Russia-Ukraine war is causing some to rethink the role of offensive cyber operations in armed conflict


The impact of Russia’s offensive cyber operations against Ukraine appears to be muted. (Image credit: Juanmonino via Getty)

For some, the horror of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was also meant to mark the dawn of a new era in modern warfare: one in which degrading your enemy’s capabilities through cyberspace would play an important — perhaps even decisive — role in determining success on the real-world battlefield.

As militaries and societies grew ever more connected to and reliant on the internet to run, so too would the cyberspace domain grow in importance in combat, and nowhere was that supposed to be demonstrated more clearly than in Russia’s war, where their elite and well-resourced military hacking units could cut off Ukraine’s access to power, water and other essential resources, disrupt their communications, wipe out large swaths of private and public sector systems and data, and smooth the way for ground troops to dominate their Ukrainian counterparts.

In reality, the impact of offensive cyber operations appears to have been far more muted.

While the initial invasion did, in fact, come with a flurry of hacking campaigns against many of these targets as Russian troops crossed the border, the cadence of those campaigns have dropped markedly in the months following and have seemingly failed to provide Moscow with any meaningful advantage on the ground.

The experience has some U.S. observers advising that we collectively pump the breaks on the idea — formally endorsed by the U.S. military and others governments — that cyberspace is now a fully fledged domain of war, comparable to land, air, sea and space. That’s one of the chief conclusions reached by Jon Bateman, a former cyber specialist at the Pentagon who has served as an advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense on military and cyber strategy, in a paper released shortly before the new year.

“I think it’s fair for U.S. military and NATO and others to define cyber as an operational domain. That can be a helpful doctrinal concept. I think where it becomes misleading is when military and civilian leaders then assume that cyberspace is as consequential or major as…

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Russia responsible for satellite hack causing chaos across Europe


Russia was behind a cyber attack which caused chaos across Europe hours before it invaded Ukraine, British officials have confirmed.

Kremlin cyber spies hacked a Viasat communication satellite intending to target the Ukrainian military but also knocking thousands of users offline including a wind farm in Germany.

The attack was the first digital salvo fired by Russia and triggered fears of an all-out online war.

Information pointing to Russian agents was previously released by the satellite’s operator Viasat. The Foreign Office has now said that the Kremlin’s military intelligence bureau, the GRU, was behind the attack.

Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, said: “This is clear and shocking evidence of a deliberate and malicious attack by Russia against Ukraine which had significant consequences on ordinary people and businesses in Ukraine and across Europe.”

Viktor Zhora, a senior official at Ukraine’s cybersecurity agency, said in the immediate aftermath of the hack that it was “a really huge loss in communications in the very beginning of war”.

The European Union joined Ms Truss in condemning Russia for the hack, which affected member states across the east of Europe and shut down 5,800 German wind turbines operated by power company Enercon.

The attack consisted of a malicious software update sent by Russian military intelligence to customer terminals for Viasat’s KA-SAT satellite.

Tens of thousands of terminals were damaged by the Russians’ efforts to force the satellite offline, the Foreign Office said. It is understood the terminals need to be returned to Viasat to be reprogrammed for normal use.

Viasat’s satellite service is used by businesses for general internet connectivity and for monitoring internet-connected industrial systems.

Cyber security company SentinelOne said in a March analysis that 5,800 turbines in Germany all vanished offline at the same time in late February, the first indication that something was amiss.

The UK has sanctioned the GRU after its appalling actions in Salisbury.

Previous UK sanctions froze around £940bn worth of bank assets and £117bn in personal net worth of oligarchs and their family members, whom the Government says…

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