(CNN) (CNET) — Facebook this week was awarded a patent pertaining to streaming “feed” technology — more specifically, “dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network,” complementing another patent filing that has been published but not yet approved. The implications for this, as AllFacebook.com pointed out earlier on Thursday, are far-flung: Facebook…
Herndon, Va., forensics firm NetWitness has said that the Zeus botnet has breached the networks of nearly 2,500 organizations in nearly 200 countries, including 10 U.S. federal agencies. NetWitness researchers said many victims are Fortune 500 companies in energy, finance and high tech sectors. NetWitness based its conclusions on information from a 75-gigabyte collection of…
Fraudsters never seem to rest. They have now turned their attention towards phishing using the Indian Income Tax Department’s name and branding. It is the season of tax returns in India and it is well known that people will file their income tax returns for the end of the fiscal year in India. Hence, phishers…
Symantec has recently observed phishing scams targeting Apple iPhones in order to gain serial numbers, IMEI, model, and capacity, etc. What is an IMEI? An IMEI (international mobile equipment identity) is a 15-digit unique number used by GSM networks to identify valid devices. Every GSM, WCDMA, or iDEN mobile phone (and even the odd satellite…
A survey of 54,000 households (129,000 people) commissioned by National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) last year found that 30 percent of U.S residents did not use the Internet at home or at work. The study, based on Census Bureau work, found that 64 percent of households had connections. In 2007, only 51 did. The…
Evgeny Legerov, founder of Intevydis in Moscow, has created an exploit that hits a previously unknown heap-corruption vulnerability in the Firefox browser. The code isn’t readily available though, since he’s put it in a module to the automated exploitation system he sells (reportedly at a considerable price.) Legerov has not provided information on the vulnerability…
Symantec recently upgraded their scanner on VirusTotal to include their new reputation-based security engine. That has caused a spike in their detection rates, in particular Suspicious.Insight detections, and so I thought I’d take a few minutes to explain some of the background and what is going on. So what exactly is a Suspicious.Insight detection? These detections are derived from…
First, make a note: after Adobe updates, restart your machine immediately to remove the Adobe Download Manger – it can be a vector for malcode. Now, back to our story. Aviv Raff has discovered a vulnerability with Adobe’s web site in combination with its Download Manager, an ActiveX script that is used to download updates…
“Dammed thieves. Stole our logo. I suppose we should be flattered, though.” — A.E. Old rogue, new package: AntivirusProtectionCenter \ av2009.exe : \ crc6:7f3d73762762 \ crc8:003091628c68decc \ md5:d71d1e303ab963fdae76936ba52a05b7\ AMC.exe : \ crc6:1d6922972762 \ crc8:003005cfbb91b729 \ md5:e5555754fd758fc2be1374796f9433e2\ Hash’s different from their PersonalAntiMalware added 2/16/2010 opener_.exe : \ crc6:8ee75c08081d \ crc8:00dc55e5aaa82efa \ md5:5bb290cd1eb419ca98ca1f31273f7219\ “It’s the same gang…
Representatives of computer companies and governments meeting at the EastWest Institute security meeting in Brussels said that an industry culture of obscure jargon is preventing the world’s two billion Internet users from putting security measures in place to protect themselves. The group met to figure out how to protect computer users from massive abuse, fraud,…