Tag: Zeus

A video thunderbolt hits Asus partners mispronouncing its name

zeus-personality-traits_55ac40ddd60b6667Taiwanese vendor Asus has released a video because it has had enough of its partners mispronouncing its name.

Most of them default to the classic “eh-sus” when it should be the more mythological pronunciation ‘Ay-Zeus.’

In a post on Linked In linking to the video, AZEUS’s UK marketing director John Swatton said he had “lost count” of how many people have asked him how to pronounce its brand over the past year.

This is despite Taiwan-based ASUS now being EMEA’s third-largest PC manufacturer, behind only HP and Lenovo, but people never get the pronunciation right.

“So our designers created a video using a radio ad that we ran last year. Hopefully the next time I’m cold-called, the caller might pronounce our brand correctly,” Swatton said.

“Originally named after Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology, but now sounds like Zeus, the God of storms and thunder,” the video says.  Maybe they should have spelt it with a Z in the first place. Zeus might not be that impressed either, which is why our last Asus developed a sudden electrical fault which caused it to be packed off to Hades early.

SMEs targeted by malware

skullkSmall and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are under attack by malware crooks, according to antivirus firm Bitdefender.

Bitdefender said that some SME employees in the UK are being hoodwinked into downloading trojans by suggesting the people have violeted company policy.

Apparently, the attacks grew last week, with .ARJ compressed files using the Zbot or Zeus malware.  British companies affected appear to be companies that offer military clothing or products to the defence or security industry.

Zbot/Zeus has a password stealing component intended to grab user names and passwords, email and FTP credentials.

The attack comes with a malicious email that opens an .rtf document that has information about policy violation.  In the background, the malware attempts to connect to Zbot infected websites.

Bitdefender has supplied a screen shot of a typical email.
zbot