Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

One year, two years for worm writing duo. Courts in Morocco have convicted two men accused of having a hand in the creation and distribution of the ‘Zotob’ worm, which struck worldwide a little over a year ago. Farid Essebar, a 19-year-old Russian-born student believed to have been involved with several other viruses, was sentenced…

MS patches previous patches, but not Word exploit. Microsoft ‘s monthly ‘Patch Tuesday’ release of security fixes has been relatively quiet, with only three new bugs repaired, in addition to re-released patches to replace defective ones issued last month. However, the recently exploited MS Word 2000 vulnerability is not fixed by the release, and users…

Celebrities bigger lure than sex, says McAfee. A report on adware and spyware from McAfee has stated that celebrity sites, rather than those pushing pornography or other widely distrusted content, are the ‘most prolific distributors of adware’. Over 16% of sites blacklisted by McAfee ‘s SiteAdvisor web filtering software were dedicated to celebrity worship, compared…

Auction losers tempted by second-chance phishes. As part of the general trend of more focused phishing , users of online auction house eBay are reporting phishes directly targeting losing bidders. When an auction ends and someone has been outbid, they are contacted, either by a private email claiming to be the seller or by a…

Conspiracy warning spam points to exploit web page. A spam campaign is directing Australian readers to a faked news site designed to drop a trojan. The initial mails carry a stark warning that Australian banks are due to close, and a link appearing to take them to the NEWS.com.au website. Using some clever reverse psychology,…

Highest ever numbers of phishing sites and brands, reports APWG. 154 brands were recorded as targets for phishing attempts in July, according to the Anti Phishing Working Group ( APWG ), a global coalition dedicated to fighting online fraud, in its report of statistics for the month. The figure is the highest since the APWG…

Zombie herder makes $430 per day from single piece of adware. According to research by the German Honeynet Project , a botnet controller who installed adware including DollarRevenue on compromised machines earned over $430 in a single day, just from the DollarRevenue software. The zombie net in question was mostly created using the recently-patched MS06-040…

Vulnerabilities found in AntiVir and avast!. Security defects in two anti-virus products have been reported by security watch company Secunia in the last week. While the AntiVir flaw involved data gathered by the update process, avast! ‘s problem was an overflow issue in the detection engine. Avira ‘s AntiVir PersonalEdition 7.0 build 151 (Classic) is…

More scams hitting fewer targets, says report. According to RSA Security ‘s August report on online fraud, the number of brands attacked by phishing scams fell by 20% last month, despite an overall rise in the level of phishing attempts seen. The number of targets outside the US rose slightly, but US-based companies are still…

Websense reports trojans found on electronics giant’s servers. A US-hosted website belonging to Samsung Telecommunications America , a subsidiary of South Korean electronics giant Samsung , has been playing host to numerous items of malware for some time, according to web security firm Websense . It is believed the site has been compromised in some…