Malware, spam, information security and data recovery news.
Microsoft’s announcement that it intends to shut down its long-running MSN Messenger service and replace it with Skype has inspired enterprising malware developers to start offering fake installers. The original announcement came late last year, but only recently as the cut-off date of April 8 (April 30 in Brazil) approaches have these attacks appeared in […]
Publicity photos of Prince William covering his day-to-day work as a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot were released with computer passwords visible in the background. In at least one photo, login information is shown printed on a sheet of paper tacked to the wall behind the prince’s head. Sophos’ Naked Security blog has a good write-up with […]
A hacker seems to have broken into a Montana television station’s systems and used that access to issue a fake emergency alert that the dead were rising from their graves. According to this article from ComputerWorld, a standard Emergency Alert System message appeared along the top of viewers’ TV screens. After the warning sounds, a male voice […]
Following another recent attack in which the loosely-organized Anonymous hacking collective released the credentials of over 4000 American bank executives, it is now being reported that Anonymous has published additional documents indicating that they have penetrated much further into the US Federal Reserve’s computer systems than previously revealed. ZDNet reports that the documents, obtained as […]
In response to two zero-day vulnerabilities, Adobe has released out-of-band emergency updates for their Flash Player. Since last fall, Flash has formally been on a regular update schedule like many large software projects, but InfoWorld reports that this emergency fix constitutes the first patch since the schedule was established. Adobe identifies the update as “critical” […]
Twitter has reported that encrypted password data for 250 000 users has been compromised. It appears that the attack was highly sophisticated, but engineers were able to stop it while it was still in progress. Ars Technica reports that the affected users have been notified by email and their passwords automatically reset as a precaution. In […]
The popular smartphone instant messaging app WhatsApp has been the subject of a joint Dutch-Canadian probe into breaches of the privacy laws of both countries. Sophos’ Naked Security reports that this is the first time two countries have worked together to investigate privacy breaches. Linked from the article is the Canadian report from the Office […]
Three men from Russia, Latvia, and Romania have been indicted in the United States for creating and spreading the Gozi virus, designed to steal banking information from victims. The LA Times reports that Nikita Kuzmin, Deniss Calovskis, and Mihai Paunescu are accused of programming the virus, creating various “injects” such as fake bank login pages, […]
This basic Internet scams primer appeared on The Next Web today. It goes over four (five if you include the Nigerian Prince scam) methods scammers use to trick their victims, concentrating on email as the vector of choice to reach their marks. Focusing on email makes sense; many, if not most, malware infections come from email […]
The Ethiopian Red Cross’ web site appears to have been compromised and is being used in a phishing attack targeting Google login credentials. Sophos’ Naked Security reports that they received an email directing the reader to click on a link taking them to a fake Google Docs login page, designed to harvest usernames and passwords. […]
