Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Almost half of users think virus-writing contests are a good idea
Shocking survey results disappoint security experts. Nearly half of the respondents in a Virus Bulletin poll said they thought that virus-writing contests are a useful way of highlighting issues with anti-virus products – while 12 per cent felt that such contests are nothing but harmless fun. Last month, the organisers of the annual Defcon hackers’…
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MySpace wins record payout in case against spammers
‘Spam Kings’ Wallace and Rines fined maximum amount under federal law. Social networking site MySpace has been awarded a record $230 million in a lawsuit it filed against well-known spammer Sanford Wallace and his partner Walter Rines after the defendants failed to appear in court. MySpace brought the case against the spammers when it discovered…
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Yahoo! searchers to get McAfee site advice
SiteAdvisor data to help check security of search results. Search engine giant Yahoo! has announced a deal with McAfee to incorporate site security ratings from the firm’s SiteAdvisor system into search results. The deal will see Yahoo! searches accompanied by warnings if links are turned up to sites that are known to be suspect. Like…
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Security experts gather in Europe
Anti-malware insights pooled at AMTSO, CARO and EICAR meetings. Many of the world’s leading anti-malware and security experts came together in the past week, at a string of meetings and conferences being held in Europe. Global bodies the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organisation (AMTSO) and the Computer Anti-Virus Researchers’ Organization (CARO), and the pan-European experts group…
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Users divided about customer liability for online fraud losses
Many users worried about lack of knowledge. In a poll of more than 700 visitors to the VB website, users were divided on whether or not it is fair for online banking customers to be held liable for losses via phishing/online scams if they don’t have adequate protection on their PCs. While 46% of respondents…
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Cracked CAPTCHAs used to create malicious blogs
Blogs on Google’s blogging system redirect to spam sites. Spammers are using botnets to mass-create phony blogs on Google ‘s free Blogger system, with the phony entries redirecting to spam sites. According to research by security company Websense , a large botnet is used to surpass the CAPTCHAs used by Google in an attempt to…
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Mass attack infects over half a million web pages
United Nations and UK Government sites among those infected by SQL injection. Hackers have managed to insert malicious code into hundreds of thousands of websites, making their pages serve malware to users who have not patched their computers. Among the affected sites are various websites run by the United Nations as well as by the…
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More than 50% of users regularly double-check for false positive spam filtering
Only 12% of users trust their spam filter sufficiently not to bother sifting through spam folder. In a poll of more than 1,000 visitors to the VB website, 52% of users say they regularly check their spam folder for false positives, while only 12% of users said they never bother to check for legitimate messages…
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Phishing on rise, but anti-phishers fighting back
As UK banking body reports major increase in phishes, PayPal unveils blocking strategy. A report from the UK payments industry association APACS has shown a dramatic increase in phishing incidents, with the number of reports for Q1 of 2008 up 200% on the same period last year. Meanwhile major phishing target PayPal , the online…
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China-Tibet row spills over into malware attacks
Both sides of debate targeted to spread malicious code. With the political row over China’s involvement in Tibet continuing to make the headlines, cybercriminals have been as quick as ever to exploit the public interest in the topic, using the story as a hook for several malware attacks. The first was as wave of SQL-based…
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