Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

APWG releases phishing figures for January. Phishing attacks and password-stealing applications both reached record levels in January 2007 according to the latest report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). The APWG recorded 29,930 unique phishing reports in January 2007 – an increase of nearly 5% from the previous high, which had been recorded in June…

Social site takes on notorious junk mail merchant. Serial spammer Sanford ‘Spamford’ Wallace faces yet another lawsuit, this time from hugely popular social networking site MySpace , which alleges he used vast numbers of user logins to the site, created by automated systems, to bombard genuine users with junk messages carrying advertising and phishing attempts.…

Trojans sneaking in through animated cursor flaw. A vulnerability has been discovered in the handling of .ani files, used for animated cursors on web pages and in HTML emails, and has been spotted as a proof-of-concept exploit on malware writers’ discussion boards and in use for attacks. The exploit involves maliciously crafted .ani files, implanted…

PHP flaws used to lend legitimate air to spam content. Webmasters are being warned to ensure their sites are properly protected, after a wave of spams have been spotted using links pointing to hacked genuine sites, redirecting to their own nefarious pages, to lure recipients into trusting the content of the bulk messages. Vulnerabilities in…

Virus creator’s anti-virus not up to scratch, says Symantec. A cleanup tool created by the writer of the Fujacks virus, also known as the ‘Panda burning incense’ virus in reference to the icon used by infected files, has been criticised by researchers at Symantec as ineffective at removing the man’s own creations. Fujacks gained much…

Zombies in corporate networks spotted pumping out spam. Network security company Support Intelligence has found evidence of bot-infected zombies sending spam from within many of the leading corporations on the US Fortune 1000 list. Monitoring systems are said to have detected spam originating from within networks belonging to database giant Oracle , hardware and software…

Over 45 million card numbers gathered in massive breach. A report into a security breach at major US retailer TJX has revealed a lengthy and sophisticated attack which scooped vast amounts of sensitive personal data on users of the company’s chains of clothing and home stores, believed to be the largest ever haul of information…

Retail chain set to issue own-label software range. Major UK high street retailer Woolworths is set to follow supermarket giant Tesco in releasing its own-brand range of software at budget prices, including an anti-virus product and an Internet security suite. The range will be licensed from the same source as the Tesco range released last…

Blogs, social sites and search results rivaling email for junk ads. Email, long the most popular and lucrative means of getting advertising in front of computer users, is being challenged by other online techniques, as ‘Web 2.0’ and complex click-through advertising systems leave the Internet open to a deluge of online advertising. Links on popular…

Symantec, FBI reports show general increases in money-driven threats. Two major new reports on computer security issues have shown a steady rise in just about every aspect of security risk, with increased danger from each vector in some way linked to financial motives. According to Symantec ‘s report on the threat landscape in the second…