Computer Security Articles

At some point in your life, one or several of the Facebook scams out there might affect you enough to look for ways on how to report them and go on a vendetta rampage against the scam creator.  In fact, one of the most effective tools against the prolific scammers on Facebook is to report their rogue applications, fake events, wall postings, etc. If enough people take the time to report the Facebook scam, then hopefully, eventually, Facebook will take action and shut them down! 

So here goes.  How exactly do you report a Facebook scam? 

Tell Mark Zuckerberg 

 .or at the very least tell it to the people in his company tasked with monitoring and responding to Facebook scam complaints.  Be on the lookout for that report button that’s hidden somewhere on the page like those hidden Mickeys on Disney channel.  

1.  Reporting a Link:  Most Facebook scams propagate through the newsfeed.  Here, you can already take action and report the scam link.  Just hover your cursor over the post and you will see an X button appear on the right hand corner.  Clicking this X button will then give you the option of marking that particular post as spam. 

 Doing so will replace the post with this text:

Thanks for Your Help

Your feedback helps us keep News Feed clear of spam. Undo Spam Report

File a more detailed report 

Clicking the “file a more detailed report” gives you the option of classifying the post as: 

. Spam or scam

.   Contains hate speech or attacks an individual

.   Violence or harmful behavior

.   Nudity, pornography, or sexually explicit content 

2.  Reporting an Application:  Applications are popular scam vehicles because of the fact that they can legitimately mine your profile information.  Of course, they can also convince you to do some other nifty and ultimately stupid things like answer a senseless survey about what type of werewolf are you, or what other things you do with your toothbrush aside from brush your teeth.  It’s understandable how these mindless surveys can induce rage from people who are expecting a free iPad. 

To report an application you must scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for the “report App” link which, interestingly enough is right above the share link.  Clicking this link will then give you more options on how to categorize your complaint: 

* Privacy issue

* Inappropriate or pornographic content

* Advertising issue

* Spam

* Bullying/Harassment

* Other

You can opt to send a copy of your complaint to the developer and you can also upload a screenshot to give the Facebook security team more info from which they can base their decision.

Another option to report a rogue application is on the familiar application installation screen:

3.  Reporting an Event or a Group:  The report link for an event or a group can be found way down on the page after the messages.  As with the report a page link, the options available here are: 

* Spam or scam

* Contains hate speech or attacks an individual

* Violence or harmful behavior

* Nudity, pornography, or sexually explicit content

The wall automatically loads older posts as you scroll down so you may have to scroll down for quite a bit before you get to the report link at the very bottom of the page – which is a weird place to set a report button for a company that claims utmost vigilance in protecting its members against scams.

 4.  Reporting a Message:  The report button for Facebook users with the old messaging system can be found at the top bar before the message much like on yahoo mail, Gmail, etc.  Just click the report as spam button and voila! The report is sent. 

Things get a little more complicated for Facebook users having the new Facebook email.  Here, you have to click the actions dropdown button and choose report as spam.  Facebook will then ask you to confirm if it’s indeed spam.  If yes, it will then move the message to the junk folder – presumably so you can peek at it again should you changed your mind later.  The good thing in the new Facebook email is that you can also report or block the user who sent the spam message right from the dropdown. 

5.  Reporting a Photo or a Video:  The report button for Photos and Videos can be found on the right-hand sidebar of the item.  The options made available when you click the report link on a photo are: 

Photo:

* Spam or scam

* Nudity or pornography

* Graphic violence

* Attacks individual or group

* Hate symbol

* Illegal drug use

For a video, the options that appear upon clicking the report link are:

 Video 

* Spam or scam

* Contains hate speech or attacks an individual

* Violence or harmful behavior

* Nudity, pornography, or sexually explicit content

 A caveat from Facebook Help though:

 ”It is not a violation of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to post a photo that is unflattering, so please don’t report a photo just because you don’t like the way you look in it.” 

So if someone posts a picture of you drooling in your sleep while you scratch your exposed tummy or laughing out loud with an extra large booger in your nose – don’t get your hopes up that it will be taken down.  But wait, the important thing is that you can report scams and spam right? 

6.  Report a Facebook User:   In the event of a 419 scam, a cyberbullying scam or a case of identity theft, you can also report a Facebook user profile to the Facebook security group.  Identity thefts and cyberbullying cases are pretty easy to recognize.  419 scams on the other hand may be a bit harder to identify since you never know when you are talking to a real Nigerian prince or a friend who got mugged in London and lost much of his or her English writing skills along with their wallet. 

In any case, the report button for Facebook profiles can be found near the bottom of the left-hand sidebar – below the profile links, the friend list, the family list, the share profile link.. In fact the report link is the bottom-most link -  it’s almost like scrolling down has become the digital version of Government red tape. 

Upon clicking the report link, the following options are then made available to you: 

Please select one of the following options: 

* This is my profile, but I no longer have access to it

* This profile is pretending to be someone or is fake

* Inappropriate profile photo

* Inappropriate profile information

* This person is bullying or harassing me 

Select the option below if you would like to block this person:

* Block “user name” 

Blocking means you won’t be able to see or contact each other on Facebook. 

7. Report to Facecrooks – Last but not least, be sure to report any scam you run across to us, so we can alert the Facecrooks community! 

Reporting Facebook scams is definitely a very important part in keeping the whole social network secure.  Security experts say that fighting Facebook scams is an uphill battle because it’s almost as easy for scammers to change scam links or create new profiles as it is for Facebook users to report these scams.  You may be only one of the 600 million users on Facebook, but taken as a whole, it’s people who take the time to report scams, security issues and bugs that make this digital social frontier a safer place. 

With the globalization of organized crime via the Internet, increasing numbers of people are being subjected to crime. The resources available to local law enforcement organizations to respond to these crimes is often limited. If you would like to report a crime, the following list may be helpful:

Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section
United States Department of Justice:
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/reporting.htm

The Internet Crime Complaint Center:
http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx

Your Local FBI Office:
http://www.fbi.gov/contact/fo/fo.htm

National Association of Attorney General’s Computer Crime Point of Contact List:
http://www.naag.org/issues/20010724-cc_list_bg.php

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children:
http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PublicHomeServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US

United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (for technicians):
http://www.us-cert.gov/

Regardless of whether you expect a successful resolution, it is beneficial to report a crime because it enables these organizations to better evaluate the extent of the problem.

James McQuaid
2-27-2010

Last month Sophos published its annual threat report, looking back over the biggest security stories of 2010 and ahead to some of the challenges companies may face in protecting their systems in the year ahead.

I was lucky enough to do an hour long web seminar with the folks from Dark Reading about the threat report, and answer some questions from listeners. That talk is now available online if you want to check it out.

Also, be sure to download your own free copy of the Sophos Security Threat Report 2011 to learn much more.

Download the Sophos Security Threat Report 2011

Federal authorities are investigating a computer intrusion at the company that runs the Nasdaq stock exchange, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Full story: Network World on Security

The ease with which cloud computing services can be deployed heightens the security and management risks, according to a National Institute of Standards and Technology report.

Full story: Network World on Security

AP – The control systems of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant have been penetrated by a computer worm unleashed last year, according to a foreign intelligence report that warns of a possible Chernobyl-like disaster once the site becomes fully operational.

Full story: Yahoo! News: Security News

AFP – Stock exchanges in Britain and the United States have enlisted the help of the security services after finding out they were the victims of cyber attacks, The Times newspaper reported Monday.

Full story: Yahoo! News: Security News

The amount of spam in email traffic increased by 0.3 percentage points compared to November and averaged 77.1%.

Full story: Securelist / All Updates

A survey of cyberspace says that the United States enjoys the honor of being the world’s “top attack traffic source,” accounting for 12 percent of all such malicious data—eight percent of the globe’s in the third quarter of 2010.

This could represent the activities of “infected hosts that are looking for other hosts to spread to, or it may represent brute force attempts to log in to other systems,” according to the Akamai Corporation’s David Belson. It’s all in the server maker’s latest State of the Internet report (registration required).

Read the comments on this post

Full story: Security

Sophos has today published its annual Security Threat Report, looking back at the last twelve months and ahead to the threats we can expect to encounter during 2011.

Inside you’ll find a wide variety of threats discussed including:

• Social networking threats
• Fake anti-virus
• Stuxnet
• SEO poisoning
• Data loss and encryption
• Web threats
• Email threats
• Spam
• Malware trends
• Windows 7
• Apple Macs
• Mobile devices and smartphones
• Cybercrime
• Hacktivism

One of the key findings is that reports of social networking spam and malware attacks have risen once again.

By mid-2010, Facebook recorded half a billion active users, making it not only the largest social networking site, but also one of the most popular destinations on the web. Unsurprisingly, this massive and committed user base is heavily targeted by scammers and cybercriminals, with the number and diversity of attacks growing steadily throughout 2010 – malware, phishing and spam on the various social networks have all continued to rise in the past year.

Sophos polled users asking if they had received spam, phishing or malware attacks via social networks. This is how they responded:

To explain that graph another way:

• 40% of social networking users quizzed have been sent malware such as worms via social networking sites, a 90% increase since April 2009
• Two thirds (67%) say they have been spammed via social networking sites, more than double the proportion less than two years ago
• 43% have been on the receiving end of phishing attacks, more than double the figure since April 2009

This isn’t just a problem for home users. Many people check their social networking accounts from the workplace, making the sites a potential vector for attacks against businesses.

There’s no doubt that cybercriminals are showing a much higher level of interest in the social networks than ever before, with Facebook being the site they are targeting the most.

Facebook’s recently clumsy introduction of a feature which would allow rogue application developers to access users’ mobile phone numbers and home addresses (and its subsequent temporary withdrawal while it rethinks its approach) makes me question whether privacy and security are part of the company’s DNA.

I see two possibilities.

Either Facebook simply doesn’t “get” security and privacy. Or it just don’t care.

I really hope it’s the former. Because if it is, there’s still a chance that Facebook can build a network that is secure for its users and will make its users’ privacy a top priority.

There’s a real problem, though, if Facebook just doesn’t care that much about privacy and security. Because 500+ million users are going to find it very difficult to wrench themselves away from the world’s most popular social network.

Download the Sophos Security Threat Report 2011

Download your free copy of the Sophos Security Threat Report 2011 now and learn more about not just social networking dangers, but also the many other security threats faced by businesses and computer users.

Full story: Naked Security – Sophos

The Stuxnet worm that disrupted Iran’s ability to enrich uranium into bomb-grade nuclear fuel was reportedly created by Israel and the U.S.

Full story: Computerworld Security News

AFP – US and Israeli intelligence services collaborated to develop a destructive computer worm to sabotage Iran’s efforts to make a nuclear bomb, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Full story: Yahoo! News: Security News

A new report by Sophos has revealed the top twelve spam-relaying countries – and, once again, it’s bad news for the United States.

Many members of the public still don’t understand the vital role that they can play in fighting spam – preventing their home PC from becoming infected.

What many people haven’t learnt is that the spammers don’t use their own computers to send spam – instead they create botnets of compromised PCs around the world (also known as “zombies”), which they can remotely command to spew out unwanted marketing messages, malicious links and even launch distributed denial-of-service attacks.

SophosLabs has just published its latest report into the top countries relaying spam around the world.

The top twelve spam relaying countries for October – December 2010

In all, we counted spam being sent from an astonishing 232 countries around the world during the last quarter of 2010. So everyone, no matter where they are on the planet, should be taking more care of their personal computer’s protection.

Spam takes a dip?
One aspect of the spam problem which has caught the attention of security reporters in the last few weeks is what appears to have been a drop in spam levels since Christmas.

It appears that some of the botnets used to send a lot of the spam (Rustock is the most notable one) may have stopped pumping out unwanted messages in the last few weeks. That doesn’t mean that computer users have cleaned-up their home computers, but rather that the bad guys are now using the botnet for other activities. For instance, installing revenue-generating pop-up adverts or identity theft from unsuspecting home users.

Maybe the cybercriminals wanted to see if they could make a better return that way.

Whatever the reason, the dip appears to have been short-lived, as yesterday the amount of spam appearing in the SophosLabs feeds has spiked back up again.

Don’t add to the statistics, do your bit in the fight against spam and don’t allow your computer to become a zombie. Keeping your security patches up-to-date, your anti-virus defences in place and having a good helping of common sense can help avoid your computer from becoming infected, and silently turned into a spam-relay machine for the bad guys.

Full story: Naked Security – Sophos

PC World – Internet security company Trusteer has managed to get access to the log files of Web servers that hosted phishing Websites. Their conclusion? Cell phone users are idiots compared to their desktop computing counterparts. Well, they don’t say it as bluntly as that, but their data is damning.

Full story: Yahoo! News: Security News

2011 has just started, so it is time to look back at what has happened in the last year. Today we publish the 2010 Annual Security Report covering an extremely interesting year with regard to cyber-crime, cyber-war and cyber-activism.

In 2010, cyber-criminals have created and distributed a third of all existing viruses. That is, in just 12 months, they have created 34 percent of all malware that has ever existed and has been classified by the company. Furthermore, the Collective Intelligence system, which automatically detects, analyzes and classifies 99.4 percent of all malware received, currently stores 134 million unique files, out of which 60 million are malware (viruses, worms, Trojans and other computer threats).

Trojans still dominate the ranking of new malware that has appeared in 2010 (56 percent of all samples), followed by viruses and worms. It is interesting to note that 11.6 percent of all the malware gathered in the Collective Intelligence database is rogueware or fake antivirus software, a malware category that despite appearing only four years ago is creating much havoc among users.

The list of countries with the most infections is topped by Thailand, China and Taiwan, with 60 to 70 percent of infected computers (data gathered from the free scanning tool Panda ActiveScan in 2010).

Regarding infection methods, 2010 has seen hackers exploit social media, the positioning of fake websites (BlackHat SEO techniques) and zero-day vulnerabilities.

Spam has kept its position as one of the main threats in 2010, despite the fact that the dismantling of some botnets (like the famous Operation Mariposa or Bredolab) has prevented many computers from being used as zombies to send spam, which has had a positive effect in spam traffic worldwide. Last year, around 95 percent of all email traffic globally was spam, yet this figure dropped to an average of 85 percent in 2010.

2010: A year marked by cyber-crime, cyber-war and cyber-activism

Besides the above data, this has been the year of cyber-crime, cyber-war and cyber-activism. Cyber-crime is nothing new, as the security industry has been warning against it for many years now: Every new malware specimen is part of a business aimed at financial profit.

As for the second protagonist of the year, we have seen many examples of cyber-war in 2010, the most notorious being Stuxnet. This was a new worm that targeted nuclear power plants and actually managed to infect the Bushehr plant, as confirmed at least by the Iranian authorities. Simultaneously, a new worm appeared –“Here you have”–that spread using old-school methods and was created by a terrorist organization known as “Brigades of Tariq ibn Ziyad”. According to this group, their intention was to remind the United States of the 9-11 attacks and call for respect for the Islamic religion as a response to Pastor Terry Jones’ threat of burning the Quran.

And even though some aspects are still to be clarified, Operation Aurora has also been in the spotlight. The attack, allegedly launched from China, targeted employees of some large multinationals by installing a Trojan on their PCs that could access all their confidential information.

The year 2010 has also seen the appearance of a new phenomenon that has forever changed the relationship between society and the Internet: cyber-protests or hacktivism. This phenomenon, made famous by the Anonymous group, is not actually new, but has grabbed the headlines in 2010 for the coordinated DDoS attacks launched on copyright societies and their defense of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Social networks, in the spotlight

Besides offering information about the main security holes in Windows and Mac, the 2010 Annual Security Report also covers the most important security incidents affecting the most popular social networking sites. Facebook and Twitter have been most affected, but there have also been attacks on other sites like LinkedIn or Fotolog, for example.

There are several techniques for tricking users: hickjacking Facebook’s “Like” button, stealing identities to send out messages from trusted sources, exploiting vulnerabilities in Twitter to run javascript code, distributing fake apps that redirect users to infected sites, etc.

The full report is available at http://press.pandasecurity.com/press-room/reports/.

Full story: PandaLabs Blog

The December ThreatSense report, being the last report of the year, is a little bigger than usual, and takes a longer view. It includes:

A feature article by Pierre-Marc Bureau and Alexis Dorais Joncas on the Bflient.K malware kit.
A feature article by Urban Schrott on "The Wikileaks Affair and the Cyberworld"
ESET researchers across the globe putting … Read More.

Full story: ESET ThreatBlog

The Pushdo/Cutwail and Bredolab botnet command centers have been shut down; the SpamIt partner program went out of business; and a criminal case has been brought against Igor Gusev who is believed to be the world’s No.1 spammer. – on Securelist / All Updates

European regulators are looking closely at Intel’s planned McAfee acquisition and may hold up the deal with an investigation, according to a report published Friday. –
James Niccolai on Network World on Security

Girls Aloud pop star Cheryl Cole, famous in the UK for her role as a judge on top TV show “The X Factor” which had its grand final last night, is being exploited by scammers on Facebook.

Scammers are using a clickjacking technique to trick users into “liking” a webpage without their knowledge, believing it to be a BBC News report about paparazzi photographs that have exposed the popular celebrity.

Using the familiar banner of the BBC News website, the story beneath is not exactly the err.. content you would normally associate with the British Broadcasting Corporation. Instead it shows a typically tabloid pararazzi photograph of Cheryl Cole getting out of a car while wearing a short skirt.

Hardly the most convincing replica of the BBC website I’ve ever seen, but if you are tempted to click on the page uses a clickjacking technique to invisibly “like” the webpage, sharing it with all of your Facebook friends and buddies.

BBC News: Cheryl Cole Exposed Paparazzi Photos !

You won’t realise, however, that your Facebook page has been updated unless you specifically look at your feed.

Instead, chances are that some fans of Cheryl Cole will venture further, seeing another page which looks distinctly unlike those normally produced by the BBC – and ultimately a picture that is often printed in the more lowbrow British newspapers.

So, what’s all the purpose of all this? Well, it appears that once again scammers are abusing Facebook users to drive traffic to online surveys – designed to earn them commission for every survey completed.

It’s really time that something more serious was done about spam like this, which has been exploiting Facebook users for far too long.

If you have been hit by a scam like this, delete the messages from your newsfeed and remove the “like”s from your profile.

If you want to get earlier warning about security threats on the social network and elsewhere on the internet, you could do a lot worse than join the Sophos Facebook page.

Forrester has made a set of predictions for NAC technology in 2011 – on Computerworld Security News

AFP – A 23-year-old Russian man charged with operating one of the world’s largest spam e-mail generators has been ordered held without bond, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

– on Yahoo! News: Security News

As we wrote in last month’s report , at the end of September law enforcement agencies arrested a number of members from the criminal group behind ZeuS. – on Securelist / All Updates

The IRS refunded $ 43.5 billion to tax filers last year, 72% of whom filed electronically (GAO report here). That much money and sensitive information flowing over the network attracts the attention of online thieves who move in like grizzly bears during a salmon run. Today I will share a few tips on how you can avoid being snatched up by the bad guys while you do your annual patriotic duty to help fund Uncle Sam.

First it is worth noting that dollars lost to Internet crime doubled from 2008 to 2009, topping half a billion dollars in the US. The 2009 Internet Crime Report released on Friday listed average losses at over $ 5,000 per incident with a mean loss closer to $ 500. The report pointed out that prosecution of online crimes is difficult because the victim and perpetrator “may be located anywhere in the world.”

The same convenience that electronic tax preparation and filing presents to the tax payer can also work for the criminal. Simply having an electronic copy of your tax return on your computer can expose you to risk. Last August a Seattle man was convicted of fraud when a lucky break allowed authorities to catch him with tax returns, financial aid applications and other documents pilfered over the Internet from family computers across the country. Frederick Wood used file-sharing programs to search for keywords like “tax return” and find documents on personal computers thousands of miles away. He used information in these documents to commit financial fraud.

Tips for Safe Tax Filing

1. Start with a clean machine: don’t use the same computer to prepare your taxes that you use for social networking like Facebook and Twitter. Online criminals use these services to spread malware via links that appear to come from friends, or even through display ads that can infect your computer even if you don’t click on them.
2. Turn on WiFi Encryption: if your home network uses WiFi, make sure it is encrypted with WPA or at least WEP. Consult your wireless router manual or the manufacturer’s website for setup instructions. Unencrypted wireless networks can allow thieves to connect to your network and gain access to sensitive documents on your computer even when you are not at home.
3. Run a full antivirus scan: antivirus can’t catch everything, but running a full scan before performing sensitive work like tax filing will give you the best chance for privacy. These scans can take an hour or more to run, so plan ahead and let the scan run overnight before your marathon tax session.
4. Use unique passwords: if you are signing up for a new online tax filing service, resist the impulse to use that same password you use for everything else. Create a password that is memorable only to you–use something you can see from your computer, like “Green Vase” but mix it up with some punctuation and other characters: “Green–Vase:)” Just don’t break the vase!
5. Remove dangerous programs: if you have a file-sharing program like LimeWire, remove it or carefully review the files it is sharing. Latest versions of LimeWire will no longer share documents by default, but many users do not update software and may be running with an older version. If you want to keep your file sharing program but be really sure you are not sharing sensitive files, ask a friend to connect to your library and see what you are sharing (see LimeWire’s “Direct Connect” feature). You should know, however, that file sharing programs are a major source of malware infection.

While the Clean Machine is the best bet for safe filing, you may be planning on using your tax refund to buy your new laptop–this puts you in a bit of a chicken-egg situation. For you, we have SafeCentral. SafeCentral creates a “clean desktop” on your existing computer, shielding you from keyloggers and other nasty programs that try to steal your sensitive information. You can give it a try free for 14 days here on the website. That should be plenty of time to get your taxes filed and decide whether a small piece of your refund is worth the price of protecting you online all year with SafeCentral.

– on SafeCentral Blog

AFP – The United States is preparing to boost efforts to police Internet privacy, with a push for new laws and a new office to manage the effort, the Wall Street Journal said Friday.

View full post on Yahoo! News: Security News