Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
-
South Korea to ask ISPs to block port 25 traffic
Experts sceptical about long-term effects on spam levels. South Korea intends to require ISPs to block all outbound traffic on port 25 from anything but the “official” mail servers, hoping to help the global fight against spam and to improve the country’s reputation as a spam-friendly country. The blocking of port 25 has long been…
-
Most free Android anti-virus ‘useless’, find testers
AV-Test comparative sees minimal value in free mobile protection. In a comparative test run by independent anti-malware testing specialist AV-Test.org , the majority of free Android anti-malware apps were unable to detect the bulk of samples tested against. In a report entitled ‘Are free Android scanners any good?’, the simple answer the testers came up…
-
‘Largest takedown ever’ sees six arrested
Millions made through ‘DNSChanger’ malware. Six Estonian nationals have been arrested for taking part in a cybercrime ring that made money through DNS-changing malware that had infected as many as four million computers. The ‘DNSChanger’ malware, of which versions exist for both Windows and Mac , usually spreads via fake codecs. The malware modifies the…
-
Significant rise in Chinese phishing sites
Phishers shown to care little about domain names. In its latest ‘Global Phishing Survey’, the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) reports a significant increase in phishing sites targeting Chinese Internet users. The report mentions 112,000 different phishing attacks in the first six months of 2011, compared to just 42,000 in the previous six months. This rise…
-
Support scammers up their game
Websites and Facebook accounts created to make callers appear more legitimate. ‘Support call scammers’ have started to use professional-looking websites and social media accounts to make themselves appear more legitimate. In these scams – which have been prevalent in many English-speaking countries for some time – victims are telephoned and told that their computer has…
-
DNS poisoning attack targeting Brazilian customers
ISP employee suspected of changing DNS cache. Millions of Internet users in Brazil may have been exposed to malware after the DNS caches of their ISPs were modified to redirect them to servers controlled by cybercriminals. DNS (Domain Name System) is the system used by computers on the Internet to resolve domain names (e.g. www.virusbtn.com…
-
‘Meta-phish’ uses attached form to evade web filters
Landing page contains clear warning. A phishing email targeting Austrian credit card users evades web filters by using an attached HTML form, but thankfully the landing page on the real website has a clear warning. The email, written in far from fluent German, claims to be sent from PayLife , Austria’s largest facilitator of financial…
-
‘Son of Stuxnet’ trojan found
‘Duqu’ used in targeted attacks to steal specific information. Researchers at both Symantec and McAfee have discovered a new Remote Access Trojan (RAT) with strong links to Stuxnet being used in some highly targeted attacks. The trojan, which has been named ‘Duqu’ after the files with prefix ~DQ it creates, shares source code with Stuxnet…
-
Dutch ISP sues Spamhaus for ‘extortion’
Blacklist entries ‘unfair and illegal’. Dutch ISP A2B Internet has sued The Spamhaus Project , claiming the project unfairly blacklisted its IP range. A2B provides the upstream connection for a number of data centres. Recently, Spamhaus , which runs a number of widely used IP- and URL-based blacklists, asked the provider to block traffic of…
-
Google AdWords phishing campaign spreads
Users urged to login because of ‘issues’. A new phishing campaign that targets users of Google AdWords looks worryingly real, GFI reports. The phish begins with an email claiming the recipient’s Google ads have stopped running because of ‘a number of issues’. A link in the email can be clicked for more information, which sends…
Got any book recommendations?