Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Unsafe computing in abundance

    Reports and statistics on unsafe computing practices. Last month saw a flurry of reports and statistics on unsafe computing practices. To kick off, almost a quarter of Internet-connected users in the UK believe they have suffered from a virus attack in the past year, according to figures released by the Office of National Statistics. In…

  • Sony in more rootkit rows

    Accusations of sneakiness and unsafe practices hit media giants again. Sony has been tangled up in two separate rootkit scares in the past few days, with a brief outcry over hidden software installed by a PC game swiftly followed by more serious allegations about techniques used by a supposedly secure USB key system. The game…

  • YouTube latest Storm hook

    Fake video links aim to pull in yet more victims. The never-ending stream of ‘Storm’ attacks continued over the weekend with a new tactic – the latest spammed email campaign contained links claiming to lead to videos on highly popular entertainment site YouTube . The simple emails follow in the wake of several similar campaigns,…

  • FBI-led panel to provide insight into international fight against cybercrime

    International law enforcement agencies set to join forces at VB2007 in Vienna. International law enforcement agencies are set to join forces at the VB2007 anti-malware conference in Vienna next month to provide an insight into the work of the world’s police forces in the fight against organized online crime. The worldwide cooperation between international law…

  • Four charged with writing Fujacks

    Malware authors and sellers appear in Chinese court. Four men have appeared in a public court in Hubei Province, China, charged with writing, selling and spreading the W32/Fujacks virus and worm, often referred to as the ‘Panda burning joss-sticks’ virus in reference to the icon marking infected files in some variants. The W32/Fujacks family of…

  • String of vulnerabilities found in ServerProtect

    Several minor holes patched in Trend Micro corporate product. A series of security issues have been reported in Trend Micro ‘s ServerProtect server-level product, which could allow system compromise from within the local network but are not thought to expose servers to remote attack. Seven separate vulnerabilities, mostly boundary errors which could possibly be exploited…

  • Monster haul of data reaped from job site

    Trojan gathers 1.6 million sets of jobseeker records. Researchers at Symantec have reported discovering a server carrying 1.6 million entries from the popular jobseeking website Monster.com , gathered by a trojan using stolen login information. The trojan, dubbed ‘Infostealer.Monstres’ by Symantec , uses logins to Monster ‘s sites for recruiters, which allow information on millions…

  • AVK tops latest AV-Test charts

    Top four beat 99% in large collection scan. Testers at AV-Test.org have run 29 products over a massive collection of malware samples, with detection rates measured against 874,822 items including worms, trojans, bots and backdoors. The top two were multi-engine products, with GDATA ‘s AntiVirusKit ranked number one with 99.88% detection, and the Webwasher gateway…

  • Latest Storm barrage offers site memberships

    New tactic provides logins to special-interest sites. The ‘Storm’ attack has changed tactic yet again, with the latest set of spams providing login details to a wide selection of sites covering various interests. Once visited, the sites try to trick victims into downloading the latest version of the trojans used to infect more systems and…

  • Phish poses as Sophos malware alert

    Fake security alarm lures users to spoofed site. A phishing email recently spammed out uses the name of security firm Sophos to lend credence to a fake malware alert, designed to trick readers into visiting a spoof site and handing over sensitive login details. The email, claiming to originate from financial services giant Merrill Lynch…

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