Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Bulletproof hosting firm claims legitimacy

    Crime-laden Russian service threatens to sue detractors. A notorious Russian firm offering ‘bulletproof hosting’ – website hosting services with a guarantee that sites will not be taken down if found to be serving up illegal content, spam, malware, phishing sites etc. – has claimed in a media interview that its services are entirely genuine and…

  • Storm botnet evolution hints at spam and DDoS renting

    Latest change in tactics could mean zombie clusters for hire. The latest twist in the long-running ‘Storm’ saga, the use of encryption in communications between infected hosts and command-and-control systems, has led to widespread speculation that the ever-growing botnet being built up by the criminals behind the attack is being split into segments in preparation…

  • Five to six years for $1 million porn spammers

    Strong sentences for CAN-SPAM breaches, money laundering. Two US men found guilty in June of breaching the terms of the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act, as well as numerous other charges including money laundering and witness tampering, have been sentenced to spend over five years in jail for their crimes. They are the first to be convicted…

  • Online fraud fighters’ reputation targeted by crooks

    Joe Job attack aims to blacken good name of UK crimefighter Bobbear. In a smear attack against UK-based online fraud-fighting website Bobbear.co.uk , spammers have sent out email campaigns claiming to originate from the site, requesting donations to a phony e-Gold account set up by the criminals. Bobbear is a volunteer site battling fraud and…

  • Kaspersky fixes serious vulnerability in Online Scanner

    Exploitable ActiveX control replaced in new version. Kaspersky Lab has released an updated version of its popular free online scanner to remedy a vulnerability in an ActiveX control used by the scanning system. The format string flaw, in the ‘kavwebscan’ ActiveX control, could be exploited by a malicious web page to cause a buffer overflow…

  • Storm attack strikes back

    Cute kitten cards cover latest wave of malware. The Storm attack has returned with yet another wave of blended attacks, with links to the drive-by download sites of the initial trojan spammed out under cover of humorous kitten ecards. The ecard tactic has been a favourite of the gang behind the attack for some months…

  • Word for Mac exploit spotted

    Patch Tuesday flaw targeted by vulnerability. A vulnerability in the Apple Mac version of Microsoft Word , covered by a patch in this month’s Patch Tuesday security update, has been subject of an attempted exploit seen by researchers at Symantec . The exploit document was observed to crash most versions of Word on Windows ,…

  • 4 out of 5 critical issues fixed on Patch Tuesday

    Expected patch omitted from monthly security update. Microsoft has announced the contents of its monthly ‘Patch Tuesday’ security update release, with four ‘Critical’ and two ‘Important’ fixes pushed out to users of its operating systems and software. A fifth issue, labelled ‘Critical’ in the advance notification released last week, remains open as the expected patch…

  • McAfee invests in encryption firm

    SafeBoot acquired for $350 million. McAfee has announced the acquisition of encryption and device control specialist SafeBoot , which produces a range of security products for PCs and mobile devices. The privately-owned firm was bought in a cash deal worth $350 million. SafeBoot is a well-established company, set up in 1991, with a global customer…

  • Adobe acknowledges PDF flaw, issues workaround

    Registry hack provides temporary fix for vulnerability. Adobe has officially confirmed the vulnerability announced last month by researcher Petko Petkov, which could allow maliciously crafted PDF files to breach security and compromise systems. Limited details of the flaw were made public and led to widespread concern over the security of the widely used document format.…

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