[malware] Forum Topics

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr got together for a rare live performance, and according to [URL="http://www.scmagazineus.com/Paul-McCartneys-website-hacked-to-distribute-malware/article/130330/"]reports[/URL] it would seem the bad guys thought that a spot of media friendly Beatle-mania presented [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3824.html"]the ideal time to target[/URL] McCartney's website. Security specialists ScanSafe told me that its 24/7 Web security scanners first …

Adobe has yet to patch a critical zero-day vulnerability in Acrobat and Reader applications which is in the wild and being exploited by malicious types using malformed PDF files. Now, more than two weeks after the exploit was reported by The Shadowserver Foundation and before Adobe can get the patch …

Early this morning, people using the Google search engine got a strange surprise. Nearly every result for every search was marked with the alert message, "This site may harm your computer." If you clicked on a search result, instead of being directed to a Web site, you were automatically taken …

Heartland Payment Systems, one of the biggest card payment processors in the US, has been the victim of what could well be the biggest security breach of its kind. Malicious software installed onto the Heartland network could have compromised as many as 100 million transactions according to numerous emerging reports. …

If you are a Windows user and have not installed the [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx"]MS08-067 patch[/URL] from last October, then perhaps you had better pull your finger out. Of course, it could well be too late, and you could well be one of the nine million or so users who have already fallen …

[URL="http://www.messagelabs.com"]MessageLabs[/URL] Intelligence data reveals that, in an announcement that will probably come as no shock to anyone who actually uses the Internet, the average [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2459.html"]spam[/URL] level for the year managed to hit 81.2 percent. Perhaps a little more surprisingly, especially given the number of security vendor [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3419.html"]warnings[/URL] throughout 2008, [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/18997/53/"]malware …

Although you might think that your personal information, including your financial data, is hugely valuable to the cyber-criminal fraternity the truth would appear to be somewhat different. Security vendor [URL="http://www.trendmicro.co.uk"]Trend Micro[/URL] has published research which shows that at this time of the year, as we fast approach the climax to …

Ever had some computer malware spit a bunch of porn onto your screen? Now imagine it happening in a roomful of schoolchildren. Now imagine it could send you to jail -- for forty years. That's what happened to Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Conn., in 2004. Using a …

The United States holds many titles, some of them causes for joy while others are reason for shame. The latter category has long included 'King of Spam' being the country from which the majority of the spam on the planet originates. However, thanks to the [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2008/11/20/spammers-are-in-a-world-of-hurt/"]closure of just one spam …

We all knew it was going to happen, and that there was nothing we could do to stop it. In fact, it was only a matter of time until the polls had closed and Barack Obama had officially become the President-elect of the United States of America. It is not …

Here we go again. It seems like only last week (there's probably a reason for that) that I was at my desk talking about the amount of alarmist stuff about malware that's out there on the Internet. You know how it goes; someone proves in a lab that something can …

This is just what we needed to make us comfortable as the recession (I think we can stop calling it the credit crunch as we've been doing in the UK) starts to bite uncomfortably. Mobile devices are becoming vulnerable to malware attacks. It must be true, I've read it on …

I was privileged to attend the 5th [URL="http://www.kaspersky.com/"]Kaspersky[/URL] Lab forum, held in the city of London, yesterday. It was actually a Cybercrime Forum (I have no idea if the other forums were as well, as this was my first), and so the main focus was – yeah, you guessed it …

Paris Hilton is 27 years old and pretty much made her name for two things: being the heiress to the Hilton Hotel fortune, and starring in a home made porno flick that ended up on the Internet. OK, make that famous for one thing, being the heiress to the Hilton …

Security researchers within the Marshal TRACE Team have [URL="http://www.marshal.com/trace/traceitem.asp?article=714"]warned[/URL] that malicious spammers are using fake United Parcel Service invoices in order to deliver a malware payload. Always looking for a new and convincing hook to snare the unsuspecting user into downloading malicious components from the web, this new attack utilises …

The story exposing how some TomTom satnav units had been sold complete with no less than three pieces of malware pre-installed which [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1276.html"]broke right here[/URL] in the DaniWeb blogs last year was yesterday named 'Best Information Security News Story' at a prestigious awards ceremony held at the Haymarket Hotel in …

The [URL="http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/53/34/40724457.pdf"]Malicious software (malware): a security threat to the Internet economy[/URL] report published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development over the weekend suggests that the PC malware infection rate in the US has hit 25 percent. These OECD cybercrime infection findings are highly disturbing, admits Geoff Sweeney, CTO …

Threat statistics just released by managed security company [URL="http://www.network-box.com"]Network Box[/URL] reveals that phishing attacks now account for 67 percent of all malware by volume. This compares with just 24 percent in February and 48 percent in March, suggesting that the phishers are continuing to be successful where other distribution and …

How stupid do you have to be to get caught by spam email with the subject line of 'we caught you naked [your name] - check the video' is a question I have been asking myself today. Not because I have been caught naked, and if I had my only …

Rather surprisingly, Kaspersky Lab has forecast that the security threat landscape will increase by more than 20 million programs by the end of 2008 when compared to the 2007 year-end figures, a ten-fold increase no less. That is worth repeating: the number of [B]new[/B] malicious applications in circulation by the …

[URL="http://www.fortiguardcenter.com"]According to unified threat management specialist Fortinet[/URL] Facebook users had better start paying attention to the postings that appear on their message wall within the popular social networking site. It appears that spammers are moving away from targeting third party applications, as evidenced in the recent 'Secret Crush' case, and …

Security provider Webroot has today published its [URL="http://www.webroot.com/En_GB/land-sois-home.html"]State of Internet Security: Protecting Business Email[/URL] research report and estimates that every single business email account will receive some 42,000 spams during the course of 2008. Or 116 junk messages every single day if you prefer. That is an increase of some …

[URL="http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/180843/mozilla-boss-attacks-apple-over-autoinstalling-safari.html"]According to UK IT magazine PC Pro[/URL] the Mozilla CEO has accused Apple of coming close to using malware tactics to install the Safari browser on Windows PCs via the iTunes updater. It reports that the latest version of the Windows iTunes updater, designed to make upgrading to the latest …

Unified threat management specialists Fortinet has [URL="http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/reports/roundup_feb_2008.html"]announced[/URL] the most reported high-risk threats during the course of the last month, and it makes interesting reading. According to Fortinet it proves that birds of a feather do flock together as the most definable malware trend was most definitely the fact that the …

Today sees the official formation of the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization ([URL="http://www.amtso.org"]AMTSO[/URL]) which has come about following an industry wide concern about the lack of any real-world standards that apply to anti-malware solutions when it comes to testing. Why is this important? Because unless the testing methodologies used to evaluate …

IT security professional Didier Stevens has been conducting an experiment into computer user stupidity by running a Google Adwords campaign which offers to infect your PC for free. The advert actually read: [B]Drive-By Download Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here![/B] Which should be enough to stop all but …

As if Microsoft did not have enough on its security plate, what with the launch of Vista followed by the chorus of ‘it is not quite as secure as you would have us believe is it’ from the worlds media, things only go from bad to worse for the Seattle …

The [URL="http://www.finjan.com/SecurityLab.aspx?id=547"]Finjan Malicious Code Research Center[/URL] (MCRC) has set itself something of a Herculean task with a goal of staying not just one, but many steps ahead of those hackers who would exploit open platforms and technologies to develop spyware, Trojans, phishing attacks, worm and viruses. But, working alongside some …

[URL="http://www.kaspersky.com/"]Kaspersky Lab[/URL] has released its latest Malware Evolution [URL="http://www.viruslist.com/en/analysis?pubid=204791907"]report[/URL], covering the period between June and September 2006 and, as usual, it makes for interesting reading. Alexander Gostev, Senior Virus Analyst, Kaspersky Lab comments that the first six months of 2006 was “notable for the complexity of the technologies which antivirus …

The bad news for the US is that it is now responsible for more than a fifth of the world’s spam. That is 21.6 percent if you prefer, although whichever way you say it there is no escaping the nasty smell it leaves behind. The team of experts at IT …