Category: blog
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Tsunami response quick among cybercriminals
Miscreants releasing scams, phishing, scareware… within a matter of hours. As most of the world reels in shock at the devastation caused by this morning’s massive earthquake in Japan, it comes as little surprise that cybercriminals are already making the most of the news story the rest of the concerned population wants to learn about.…
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Cybercriminals frustrated with botnet trackers
Drastic measures discussed by users of online forum. Russian cybercriminals are willing to go to great lengths to frustrate services that hinder botnets created with the ZeuS and SpyEye exploit kits, according to security journalist Brian Krebs. Krebs managed to gain access to an exclusive Russian language forum that caters to cybercriminals. The forum’s users…
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ENISA calls for revised botnet measurements
EU agency says current measures of botnet threat are misleading. European cyber security agency, ENISA (the European Network and Information Security Agency) has called for a review of how botnets are assessed and measured. Two studies by the agency are due to be published at a botnet workshop in Cologne today, evaluating both the botnet…
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Spammers exploit internationalized domain names
Non-Latin characters in URLs used to trick filters. By using internationalized domain names (IDN), spammers manage to avoid detection of URLs in their messages. IDNs were introduced in 2003 and allow for domain names in non-Latin alphabets, such as Russian, Chinese and Arabic, as well as in Latin with diactitics. On top of that, last…
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Google acquires Zynamics
Internet giant buys into security. Internet giant Google has acquired software analytics firm Zynamics , it was announced yesterday. The German company, which was founded in 2004 by CEO Thomas Dullien (aka Halvar Flake) to research the automation of reverse engineering and code analysis, now produces four reverse-engineering tools: BinDiff , VxClass , BinNavi and…
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Welsh 419 scam
Email from Welsh-speaking Kuwaiti widow indicative of more targeted spam. Email users in Wales who received a recent 419 scam will have been surprised to find the message – purportedly from the widow of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the Ivory Coast – written in Welsh. A lesser known aspect of spam and phishing is that…
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Dutch most protected Europeans online
Bulgarians most likely to have become infected; financial losses most prevalent among Latvians. For the occasion of Safer Internet Day on 8 February, Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, published a report providing various statistics on Internet security. One of the report’s findings was that the use of IT security software (e.g. anti-virus software or a…
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Mrs Mubarak’s IP addresses used by spammers
Spammers finding new ways to obtain non-blacklisted addresses. While not necessarily related to the current unrest in Egypt – which, among other things, led to the cutting off of most the country from the Internet – over 5,000 IP addresses belonging to the wife of the country’s president have been hijacked by spammers. The range…
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UK government sites warned to brace against attack
GovCertUK issues warning in aftermath of arrests of Anonymous gang members. UK government websites have been warned that they may find themselves subject to attack following the arrest of five Britons as part of an investigation into the Anonymous hacking group earlier this week. The hacking group that calls itself ‘Anonymous’ has been under investigation…
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‘Job application’ contains malicious attachment
$150,000 lost via banking trojan. An unidentified US company has learned the hard way that email attachments – even to those that appear to be solicited – may contain malware. The company in question had posted a job advertisement on an employment website, to which it received a response with what appeared to be a…