Category: blog
-
Researchers find many popular sites serving drive-by downloads
10 million people exposed to malware served by 25,000 most visited sites alone. Researchers at Barracuda Labs have found that 58 among the 25,000 most popular websites were serving drive-by download exploits at some time in February. The researchers used Alexa to determine the 25,000 most visited websites and scanned these sites during February. On…
-
Microsoft Word for Mac exploit used in targeted attacks
Tibetan NGOs targeted. Researchers at Alienvault have discovered a targeted attack against Tibetan NGOs that uses a three-year-old vulnerability in Microsoft Office for Mac . The attack exploits vulnerability MS09-027, which was discovered and subsequently patched by Microsoft in 2009. On unpatched systems, a specially crafted malicious document allows for remote code execution, giving the…
-
AV-Test issues latest results summary
Bi-monthly stats released for 31 consumer and business products. Independent testing body Av-Test.org has published its latest round of results, covering some 23 consumer products and eight business solutions, all tested during January and February. All products featured in this month’s report qualified for AV-Test ‘s certification. The test scheme covers a wide range of…
-
Spam catch rates drop in latest VBSpam test
Catch rates significantly lower than in previous months. In the latest VBSpam comparative test, 20 solutions achieved a VBSpam award, but the majority displayed significantly lower spam catch rates than in other recent tests. Overall, products’ spam catch rates were significantly lower than in previous months, with many products seeing their rates of missed spam…
-
‘Unsubscribe’ URL in junk fax leads to malware
Trojan downloader behind .co.cc URL. Researchers at Vircom have discovered a junk fax with an ‘unsubscribe’ URL which contained a trojan downloader. Junk faxes (also known as ‘fax spam’), have been common since the late 1980s. Apart from being a nuisance, they are a waste of paper and ink. Many users would thus be happy…
-
New Zeus/SpyEye botnet does away with command-and-control servers
Increasing use of UDP to avoid communication tracking. Researchers at Symantec have discovered a new parallel build of Zeus (also known as Zbot) and SpyEye that appears to be entirely controlled through peer-to-peer communication. Most botnets are controlled through a number of command-and-control servers, that are used to control the behaviour of the thousands of…
-
‘Hotmail and Gmail have best spam filter’ says Cascade spam test
Comparative test did not take false positives into account. Researchers from Cascade Insights performed a comparative spam filtering test on the three major webmail providers and concluded that Hotmail performed best, shortly followed by Gmail , with Yahoo! a distant third. The researchers registered accounts at all three providers and, for comparison, a fourth one…
-
Hacktivists hijack DNS of popular websites
Security at registrars may be weak link. A hacktivist group has managed to redirect the traffic of two popular websites by hijacking their DNS settings, researchers at Internet Identity report. The sites belong to UFC , a mixed martial arts promotion company, and Coach , which produces luxury goods. Both companies had expressed their support…
-
New RFC describes best practices for running DNS-based lists
DNSBL users advised to avoid those lists that charge for delisting. A new RFC document has been published that describes the best operational practices for the use of DNS-based lists in email filters. DNS-based lists (somewhat confusingly called ‘DNSBLs’ in the document) include blacklists and whitelists of IP addresses, but also URIBLs and geographical-based lists.…