This section covers security and privacy related topics, along with a comprehensive collection of articles ranging from the
latest security vulnerabilities, spyware detection, spyware removal, spyware alerts to online fraud, phishing scams, and
spyware legislation. Feel free to share your ideas and concerns with our research team and other Internet users by leaving a comment on any post. Take advantage of the tutorials, advice, and
other helpful anti-spyware information.
A security vendor’s demonstration video reveals how a malicious Twitter link can lead to the installation of malware.
Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple employee, venture capitalist, web site owner and book author, has spoken on many occasions about using Twitter as a social marketing tool. Kawasaki calls Twitter the most powerful marketing tool seen since television.
Unfortunately for this Twitter marketing professional and his followers, about 140,000 of them, had malware trolls attempt to get his followers to link to a rogue website that contained a fake sex tape involving “Gossip Girl” actress Leighton Meester. In addition to this, the domain prompted visitors to download malicious software in the form of video codecs which is a well-known tactic for spreading malware.
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Posted July 2nd, 2009 in the Category(ies) Internet Security | No Response »
An astounding amount of about 90.4% of all e-mail messages is considered to be spam.
According to MessageLabs, a security research firm, spam levels have remained the same since the month of May which is said to be 90% of all email traffic for the month of June. The majority of the spam messages are a result of botnets which accounts for about 83% of the spam messages. The remainder portion of spam remains to be sourced from compromised mail servers or hacked webmail accounts.
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Posted July 1st, 2009 in the Category(ies) Spam Alert | No Response »
The history of spamming will tell us that popular stories or hot-off-the-press news is gold for spammers.
In recent activities discovered by security researchers, spammers are using the popular Iran election stores and news about Apple’s newest iPhone 3.0 software or iPhone 3GS release to flood Twitter with misleading tweets.
No doubt that Twitter and the iPhone are some of the most talked about “things” of this year. Many times cyber criminals will uses these “popular items” to their advantage and that is just what they are doing.
Spammers are sending out a slew of Twitter messages that say things like, “iPhone OS 3.0 Just Launched. Here are 20 Things To Do With It”. In addition, Twitter messages similar to this, are being posted by hacked Twitter accounts. The messages are apparently popping up when the popular search terms related to the iPhone is entered. Then they message may redirect you to a malicious site that may ultimately prompt the download of a .Zip file that contains malware.
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Posted June 19th, 2009 in the Category(ies) Spam Alert | No Response »
Hundreds of UK government operated websites have been hacked in a recent attempt to include links and references to illegitimate websites that sell cialis, viagra and hardcore pornography.
This is not the first time something of this nature has taken place. Hackers have even compromised websites to capitalize on the Swine Flu in order to pitch bogus medications in the past. In the recent case, several UK based websites including those of schools, local government, Forestry Commission and others, were hacked via several exploits. Some of the exploits used to hack into the legitimate sites are comprised of site scripting and the exploitation of loopholes in sites using outdated or poorly designed software.
Computer users who may use a search engine to seek information on cialas, Viagra or the entertainment of pornography, may be infected with malware if they visit a UK based web page that has been compromised. Recent hacking occurrences are aimed at these websites that hackers use to flood Google search results, which could ultimately lead computer users to dangerous links or malware downloads.
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Posted June 11th, 2009 in the Category(ies) Internet Security | No Response »
The latest update to Microsoft’s Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool or MSRT, enables the program to remove the rogue anti-spyware program Internet Antivirus Pro.
Internet Antivirus Pro is known as a rogue anti-spyware program that sets out to take your money through various deceiving tactics. Like other rogue applications, Internet Antivirus Pro alerts of an imaginary computer infection you through fictitious system scans and popup messages. Internet Antivirus Pro is also able to download password-stealing malware that seeks out FTP usernames and passwords so the creators can install malware onto web servers.
Microsoft has targeted the Internet Antivirus Pro rogue application through a recent update to the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT). Not only can computer users use the Microsoft security tool to eliminate threats from some older malware threats, but they can remove a few targeted rogue applications due to Microsoft’s diligent actions to take aim at rogue antispyware programs.
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Posted June 10th, 2009 in the Category(ies) Internet Antivirus Pro | No Response »
A recent data breach at the insurance company Aetna may have lead to thousands of employee social security numbers being compromised.
Aetna, a large insurance company, found out about a website breach earlier this month when several people started to receive spam messages that appeared to have come directly from Aetna and complained to the company. The spam messages resembled a response to a job inquiry asking for additional personal information from the recipient.
Since the discovery of the breach, Aetna has contacted 65,000 current and former employees whose social security numbers could have been stolen. In addition to those 65,000 persons contacted, 450,000 applicants who utilized the Aetna job application web site may have had their phone numbers, e-mail addresses and mailing addresses compromised. Aetna’s spoke person, Cynthia Michener, said that the social security numbers for the 450,000 applicants were not stored on the website because it was handled by an outside vendor.
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Posted May 28th, 2009 in the Category(ies) Internet Security | No Response »
Everyone, including the media, has passed over Conficker as if it was dead. The infection of 50,000 PC’s a-day should be enough proof that Conficker Worm is still far from being dead.
According to security researchers, Conficker worm is managing to still infect systems at a rapid rate which includes systems in Fortune 1000 companies. Researchers at Symantec have said Conficker is infected about 50,000 new PC’s each day. Systems located in the U.S., India and Brazil have been hit the hardest which was confirmed in the same report from researchers at Symantec.
The hype that circulated Conficker worm over two months go, has died down and is almost non-existent. The fact of the matter is, Conficker is still a viable threat and remains to be very active.
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Posted May 26th, 2009 in the Category(ies) Conficker Worm | No Response »
There has been an increase in the number of Casino related spam messages designed to infect computers with a malicious downloader application.
Just in the past few days, security researchers have noticed a high volume of Casino related spam emails that are designed to trick computer users into subscribing or joining Casino websites. After the user joins the Casino site they are asked to download an executable program that is identified as RoyalClubCasino.exe, which is recognized as a malicious file by many antivirus and antispyware detection tools.
The emails identified as spam messages related to Casinos, use attractive subjects promising money to the computer user if they play an online Casino game. Included in the spam email messages are links to various websites that may be associated with the creators of this scam.
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Posted May 21st, 2009 in the Category(ies) Spam Alert | No Response »
Is it possible for hackers to over-take legitimate web-search results for the “swine flu” term?
While the Swine Flu continues to spread, security researchers from Websense Security Labs Threat Seeker Network have noticed thousands of new websites related to the swine flu. Details of this new discovery indicate that most of the new swine-flu-related sites are used for advertising, spamming, selling products and spreading malware.
What is the purpose of these malicious sites?
Security researchers believe that these sites were setup to hijack search results when a computer user searches for the term “swine flu”. When using Google to search for “swine flu”, some of these malicious sites are returned as high as the fifth result on the search results.
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Posted May 11th, 2009 in the Category(ies) Cybersecurity | No Response »
A recent botnet hijack discovered that a hacker group made off with millions of data items.
10-days worth of information containing 10,000 bank accounts and credit card numbers worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, was discovered by security researchers at the University of California, Santa Barabra. The discovery came about when the security researchers at the University broke into the Torpig botnet, associated with Mebroot or Sinowal.
The Torpig or Sinowal botnet, is one of the more sophisticated networks because it uses malicious software to infect computers in an effort to harvest information such as banking accounts, credit card numbers and email passwords. The researchers from the University were able to monitor more than 180,000 infected or hacked computers by exploiting a weakness within the hackers network that controlled the group of infected computers.
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Posted May 5th, 2009 in the Category(ies) Hackers | No Response »
