When criminals break into your home or business you don’t expect them to leave their name behind, so you wouldn’t expect computer viruses programs to be digitally signed. But one of our earliest discoveries when studying viruses was that cyber criminals digitally sign the viruses that make them illicit millions.

Why are viruses digitally signed? To fool all major browsers such as IE, Firefox, and Chrome that take the presence of a digital signature as a sign that the program is legitimate.

Because all PC Matic-protected computers are connected to the cloud, they can all share an up-to-the-second list of signatures used by confirmed virus writers and block those programs. The graph above shows how our approach is a significant improvement over traditional security products.

Unfortunately, many digital signatures on viruses come from legitimate businesses, like Versign, Comodo and GoDaddy. Read more.