Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

419ers try conspiracy tactic. The old 419 scam has adopted yet another guise, and another target audience. The lure of the latest batch of spams is the promise of insight into the death of JFK, always fertile ground for conspiracy theorists. The spammed message claims to originate from a dying KGB agent, desperate to pass…

Commwarrior alert reignites battle over mobile malware danger. An alert from F-Secure over a new version of the Commwarrior mobile worm has led to angry words from mobile operating system developer Symbian . While F-Secure admit the worm has not as yet caused major problems, and seems unlikely to spread widely, Symbian fear hype over…

Scammer made $2m, now behind bars in Lagos. The head of a 419 gang who made vast sums conning email victims out of their cash has been arrested in Lagos, Nigeria. The announcement is a sign that the long-running con trick is finally being addressed in the region it is most closely associated with. Read…

Web giant provides free Kaspersky AV to all. From Monday, ISP leviathan AOL began providing free security software for its customers and anyone else who cares to download it. The new product, entitled Active Virus Shield , is based on Kaspersky Lab ‘s Internet Security product, and incorporates web- and email-scanning, as well as standard…

Search engine starts flagging suspect sites. Search goliath Google has begun using a blacklist supplied by the Stop Badware Coalition to warn its users about sites known to be carrying malicious material. Clicking on a search link to a site on the badlist will take users to a warning page featuring a link to the…

More online customers get free protection. South African bank ABSA plans to give away security software from Trend Micro to its 650,000+ online banking customers. The move, intended to assuage worries over the safety of online banking, follows other banks such as Barclays in the UK, who are providing their online customers with software from…

Text message spam on the rise. More and more users of mobile phone SMS messaging are receiving spam, according to reports. The problem is especially serious in places like the US, where many cellphone users must pay a charge for every text received. Proposals to counter the problem include legal measures, preventing phone companies from…

As conference highlights security issues, MS dares hackers to find more. A tidal wave of new security flaws, and vectors for hacking and malware, has gushed out of the BlackHat conference, held last week in Las Vegas. Issues raised include the potential for exploiting RSS feeds , problems with Vista device drivers and AMD64 virtualisation…

eTrust, PC Tools suffer security bugs. CA’s WebScan has had several security holes discovered in its ActiveX control system, while PC Tools AntiVirus has been revealed to have suffered a vulnerability allowing privilege escalation. Both issues were announced last week by Secunia – read about the eTrust problems here , and the PC Tools issue…

Intel releases generic patches, urges users to seek specific fixes. Several security flaws have been exposed in Intel ‘s Centrino wireless technology, which could allow hackers to break into machines within wireless range, allowing remote code execution, privilege escalation and data disclosure. While Intel has released its own catch-all patches, the company is urging users…