Trojans that have been successfully planted on a computer system can perform a variety of operations, depending on what they have been programmed for. From spying on users, over turning the computer into a zombie PC to online banking and shopping attacks. Especially the latter can have a devastating effect on the user’s financial situation.
HitmanPro Alert is a new free security program by the makers of HitmanPro that attempts to mitigate browser-based attacks by known and new trojans. According to the makers of the products, it is able to “instantly detect over 99% of all known and new banking trojans”. If true, this would be an exceptional high number.
The program supports all major web browsers, that is, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari, as well as most browsers that use the rendering engines of those browsers. This includes Maxthon, TorBrowser and Pale Moon among others.
The program for the most part is a background process that analyzes critical system functions that the majority of banking trojans hook into to position themselves between the Windows operating system and the web browser. What’s interesting in this regard is that it is not a browser plugin or add-on, but a Windows Service that can be run alongside third party antivirus software and security related browser extensions.
HitmanPro Alert displays flyouts that act as notifications. It will for instance spawn a notification when you start a browser that informs you whether an anomaly has been detected. You can disable the flyouts, but only for a browsing session and not completely.
The security program detects major banking trojans like Zeus, SpyEye, Ice-IX, Citadel, Cridex, shylock or Sinowal and many other existing and future ones. If it finds a trojan or malicious software, it will displays a notification message on the screen to warn you that something fishy may be going on.
You can click on details to get additional, technical, information about the threat. The program recommends not to enter personal information or do Internet banking or other transactions while the threat is active.
The scan computer button will scan the system with HitmanPro which needs to be downloaded first before it can be used for that. It is naturally possible to use other security software to scan the system and remove the threat.
HitmanPro Alert is currently available as a beta version. You can download the 32-bit and 64-bit edition here. The developers plan to integrate the new program into HitmanPro.
If you are particularly fearful of banking trojans, for instance because you fell prey to one in the past, you might want to install the program as additional protection on your system to make sure that this never happens again. You can read more about the program here on the Surfright website.
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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Friday June 1, 2012 -
Tags:hitman pro, security-software, windows software
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