Dutch GPS and navigation software giant, Tom Tom, recently took what I consider to be a small privacy step for the company, but a giant privacy step for mankind.Faced with evidence that the Dutch police have been using anonymised trip data from Tom Tom users to assist in enforcing speeding laws, Tom Tom CEO Harold [...]
Archive | Antivirus
Tom Tom sounds the privacy drum – road safety or no road safety!
Posted on 02 May 2011.
Posted in SophosComments Off
Osama bin Laden dead – so watch for the spams and scams
Posted on 02 May 2011.
Google’s top-trending Anglophone search term right now is, understandably, “osama bin laden dead”. Google officially describes its hotness (you couldn’t make this stuff up) as volcanic.The short version, according to the LA Times, is that bin Laden was tracked to a “comfortable mansion surrounded by a high wall in a small town near Islamabad, Pakistan’s [...]
Posted in SophosComments Off
TDL4 rootkit is coming back stronger than before
Posted on 02 May 2011.
After some months since the last blog post about the TDL rootkit, we have to come back and write again about this nasty threat that is targetting both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of the Windows operating system, succesfully bypassing all the security countermeasures implemented in the 64 bit version of Windows that should [...]
Posted in PrevxComments Off
TDL4 revisited
Posted on 02 May 2011.
I just saw an article by Mathew Schwartz for Information Week focused on a series of articles by Aleksandr Matrosov, Eugene Rodionov and myself for Infosec Institute.The articles are actually based on previous analyses of TDL3 and TDL4 by Aleksandr and Eugene, but even if you’ve seen those, you might find the aggregation of older and [...]
Posted in ESETComments Off
Browser Updates
Posted on 02 May 2011.
Just a few days ago, two major web browsers have been updated to fix security vulnerabilities which may allow attackers to infect the computer with malware just by visiting a hacked website.Google released version 11 of the Chrome web browser. 18 of the more than 20 security holes which get closed with this release are [...]
Posted in AviraComments Off
Facebook comment-jacking? OMG! I Can’t believe JUSTIN Bieber did THIS to a girl
Posted on 30 April 2011.
It’s starting to seem like Facebook can’t win against those who wish to use their service to scam, spam and simply cause trouble. Over the last day or so, a new type of attack has been spreading using the phrase “OMG! I Can’t believe JUSTIN Bieber did THIS to a girl”.It leads to a page [...]
Posted in SophosComments Off
Firefox 4 gets its first security update
Posted on 30 April 2011.
Yesterday, five weeks after shipping Firefox 4, the Mozilla project published the new browser’s first-ever security update. The Firefox version number bumps up to 4.0.1.The update fixes 50-odd bugs in total, amusingly including three fixes listed as specific to OS/2. Ironically, the latest official release of the OS/2 port of Firefox, dubbed Warpzilla, hasn’t yet [...]
Posted in SophosComments Off
Malware authors: Don’t hassle the Hoff on F-Secure’s watch!
Posted on 30 April 2011.
A while back we noticed that malware authors seem to have a thing for Chuck Norris. And why not: Chuck Norris kicks ass! We have been monitoring the situation carefully and have found several malware that show some sort of interest or tribute towards Mr.Norris.We started thinking; if our automation can detect malware by looking [...]
Posted in F-SecureComments Off
The New York Yankees and DSLReports.com responsible for 30,000 more data loss victims
Posted on 29 April 2011.
This message may repeat. This message may repeat. For those of us old enough to have fond memories of the phonograph, the phrase “broken record” may come to mind.Yes, more user information has been leaked and in a totally preventable fashion. A season ticket sales representative for the New York Yankees accidentally emailed a spreadsheet [...]
Posted in SophosComments Off
Compromised ads leading to TDSS rootkit infections
Posted on 29 April 2011.
As we all know, compromised sites play an important role in web distributed malware, acting as the conduit, guiding user traffic to further malicious content. Sometimes, the attackers get lucky, and succeed in compromising a high profile, popular site. Another way to increase the number of users exposed to the attack is to compromise advertising [...]
Posted in SophosComments Off
Data thefts far more common than just Sony and Epsilon
Posted on 29 April 2011.
In the wake of the press reports concerning the recent data breaches at Sony and Epsilon, some organizations are getting the wrong idea about modern online attacks. The media largely chooses to cover mass-scale losses that affect large numbers of consumers from trusted brands.While it is important to raise awareness about keeping your data safe [...]
Posted in SophosComments Off
Why you shouldn’t reveal your Royal Wedding Guest name on Facebook
Posted on 29 April 2011.
In the absence of a genuine ticket to the real event, Facebook users are encouraging each other to reveal their Royal Wedding Guest name.Here’s a typical message that is currently being spread by well-meaning users across the social network: In honor of the big wedding on Friday, use your royal wedding guest name. Start with [...]
Posted in SophosComments Off
Royal Wedding or Royal hunt
Posted on 29 April 2011.
Instantly this news became? very fruitful? for all kinds of cybercriminals. Here is? some of the proof we found:1) SEO optimized Google image searches leading to a malicious site with the exploit for the “Help Center URL Validation Vulnerability“. The exploit drops into the system a malicious executable file which is a password stealer malware.?At [...]
Posted in KasperskyComments Off
Be Careful If Searching For Images of Kate Middleton’s Dress
Posted on 29 April 2011.
Real-world events occasionally generate a massive number of online searches. Japan’s recent earthquake and the subsequent tsunami that followed is a good example of a sudden event that turned the world’s attention to Google. And as topics trend in Google’s search results, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) attacks are attempted. Our March 11th post urged caution [...]
Posted in F-SecureComments Off
IME Injection Evolution
Posted on 29 April 2011.
Recently,we found many malwares using a smarter way to inject the specified dll into system related to IME management. Comparing to the old IME injection tricks, it is much more difficult to be discovered by users or anti-virus companies.As we known, at the beginning of last year, many Chinese users found they could not use [...]
Posted in AVGComments Off
The Royal Wedding and The Fake Antivirus
Posted on 28 April 2011.
The Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton that will be held tomorrow, on April 29, will attract the attention of many people around the world, and has become a trending topic on various websites, especially the social networking sites.No doubt, it also became an easy target for the malware authors to spread their [...]
Posted in EmsisoftComments Off
Cyber Crooks All Set to Crash the British Royal Wedding
Posted on 28 April 2011.
As we have seen with many major events in the past, news of the British Royal Wedding is currently being used by cyber criminals to bolster their spam campaigns and push rogue antivirus software through black hat search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Spam campaignsWe have blogged previously about “snowshoe” spammers targeting the upcoming British Royal Wedding [...]
Posted in SymantecComments Off
FBI takes on Coreflood botnet – but is this a step too far?
Posted on 28 April 2011.
Two weeks ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) obtained a court order in Connecticut, USA. This court order allowed the FBI to undertake an anti-cybercrime operation of a sort which had never been authorised before in America.Not only did the cops seize various US-based Command and Control (C&C) servers belonging the Coreflood botnet, but [...]
Posted in SophosComments Off
Free anti-virus for Mac named Best Anti-Malware solution at SC Awards
Posted on 28 April 2011.
Who would have thought it? A free anti-virus program for Apple Macs being named best anti-malware solution ahead of those security products for boring old Windows.Well, that’s exactly what happened at the SC Magazine Awards Europe 2011, held last week at the London Hilton on Park Lane.Over 530 of the industry’s top companies saw Sophos [...]
Posted in SophosComments Off
Sony says credit card details *were* encrypted, but questions still remain
Posted on 28 April 2011.
Sony has published a new blog entry, confirming that credit card details which could have been stolen in the recent hack of the PlayStation Network were encrypted.Sony reassured users of the PlayStation Network that “all credit card information stored in our systems is encrypted”, but underlined that it cannot rule out the possibility that the [...]
Posted in SophosComments Off
Malware spammed out as “FaceFacebook Support”.
Posted on 28 April 2011.
Another Facebook spam mail pretending that your password is not safe, currently circulating on Internet. The subject is: FaceFacebook Support. Personal data has been changed!ID55733. The email comes with an attachment called New_Password_IN33494.zip.The zip file (New_Password_IN33494.zip) contain New_Password.exe file, Quick Heal detects this file as a “Trojan.Menti.gen”.New_Password.exe tries to fool the victim as it seems [...]
Posted in Quick HealComments Off
Obama, birth certificates and Rogue AV
Posted on 28 April 2011.
You probably saw that whole “Obama birth certificate” thing yesterday.You’re also aware this means hunting around for pictures of his birth certificate is going to result in Rogue AV files popping up.The first page of Google Image Search:Click to EnlargeThat one in the middle was (until a little while ago) using a java exploit to [...]
Posted in GFI SoftwareComments Off
Modern Phishing: The Art of Warfare
Posted on 28 April 2011.
XBox Live currently has a warning issued in relation to “phishing attacks” in the Modern Warfare 2 game. However, information is frustratingly thin on the ground leading to much confusion as to what the attack is, how it takes place, what to avoid and so on.Things I have seen in the past:* Social engineering attempts [...]
Posted in GFI SoftwareComments Off
Sony PlayStationRNetwork under attack
Posted on 28 April 2011.
After discovering an external intrusion, the persons in charge took the worldwide network and the Qriocity services offline on April 20th 2011. Since then, none of the games can be played online anymore, some offline games can’t even be played offline due to the lack of network functionality, not to talk about the possibility to [...]
Posted in G DataComments Off
