This Black Tuesday was different as anticipated – Microsoft releases only one security bulletin, but other companies “jumped in” and deliver updates now as well. For the windows operating systems, only one Security Bulletin was released. MS10-001 deals with a vulnerability in the decompression routines of the Embeded OpenType Font Engine. This means that especially…
McColo (Nov. 08), Torpig (May 09), MegaD (Nov. 09), Lethic (Jan 10) The Darkreading.com site is reporting that researchers with communications security firm Neustar, of Sterling, Va., working with ISPs has taken over the command-and-control servers and shut down the Lethic botnet. The owners of the Lethic network specialized in diploma, pharmaceutical and replica spam….
The spammers and malware authors profited of the holiday time when a lot of people are at home and sent a large amount of emails just before the official free days. As can be seen in the graphic below, we registered a higher activity in the two days before the holidays and immediately after them….
I received an interesting IM from a friend via BlackBerry Messenger [BBM] this weekend. She was worried that it could do damage to her shiny new BlackBerry and, as she knew I work for [a security company], she forwarded it to me for my opinion. As soon as I read it, I knew it was…
Google’s Android mobile operating system has been out for a while and is generating more and more interest. Now there has been some buzz about fraudulent applications being posted on the Android Market. See these postings: Both of these apps were written by an anonymous developer known as 09Droid. In fact, he had a whole…
As any reader of this blog knows, cybercriminals can steal your money not just by putting malware on your machine, but by phishing attacks too. Phishing attacks don’t just target online banking and e-payment systems, but almost any site which asks the user to input sensitive data. Sites run by national government agencies are a…
It’s the time of year to make predictions. I only have one: in 2010, governments around the world will BEGIN to increase their efforts to do something about the massive malware threat that every Internet user on the planet faces. It’s going to be controversial and difficult legally and technically. It’s going to cost serious…
Jerome Segura, a Security Analyst at ParetoLogic of Victoria, B.C., Canada, just posted a nice piece on computer security practices with a different perspective in his “Malware Diaries” Blog. He begins his list of security tips by considering four classes of users: the pre-baby boomers: These folks rarely touched a computer in their lives and if…
Activities associated with Koobface have increased during the month of December. Often it is for the sending of traffic to compromised servers in order to obtain more servers. Other times the activity centers around using those same compromised servers to proxy users to malicious domains that are then used for further distribution of malware or…
Hopefully, the holiday season has found you spending a good amount of time offline: enjoying moments spent with friends and family, keeping long-standing traditions or creating new ones to follow for seasons to come, or just relaxing due to some downtime from work or school. It wouldn’t come as much of a surprise, though, if…