Purveyors of rogue anti-virus, a.k.a. “scareware,” often seize upon hot trending topics in their daily efforts to beef up the search engine rankings of their booby-trapped landing pages. So it’s perhaps no surprise that these scammers are capitalizing on search terms surrounding McAfee, which just yesterday shipped a faulty anti-virus update that caused serious problems for a large number of customers.
A fire alarm company in Arkansas lost more than $110,000 this month when malicious hackers stole the firm’s online banking credentials and drained its bank account.
McAfee’s anti-virus software is erroneously detecting legitimate Windows system files as malicious, causing reboot loops and serious stability problems for many Windows XP users, according to multiple reports.
Internet hosting provider Network Solutions is once again trying to limit the damage from a hacking incident that has left a large number of customer Web sites serving up malicious code.
Oracle Corp. has shipped a new version of its Java software that nixes a feature in Java that hackers have been using to foist malicious software. Java 6 Update 20 was released sometime in the last 24 hours, and includes some security fixes, although Oracle’s documentation on that front is somewhat opaque. Most significantly, the update removes a feature that hackers have started using to install malware.
Last week, a Google security researcher detailed a little-known feature built into Java that can be used to launch third-party applications. Today, security experts unearthed evidence that a popular song lyrics Web site was compromised and seeded with code that leverages this Java feature to install malicious software.
Many anti-virus products — particularly the “Internet security suite” variety — now ship with various Web browser toolbars, plug-ins and add-ons designed to help protect the customer’s personal information and to detect malicious Web sites. Unfortunately, if designed poorly, these browser extras can actually lower the security posture of the user’s system by introducing security and stability issues.
A large number of bloggers using Wordpress are reporting that their sites were recently hacked and redirecting visitors to a page that tries to install malicious software.
A rash of home foreclosures and abandoned dwellings had already taken its toll on the tax revenue for the Village of Summit, a town of 10,000 just outside Chicago. Then, in March, computer crooks broke into the town’s online bank account, making off with nearly $100,000.
Microsoft has issued a stopgap fix to shore up a critical security hole in older versions of its Internet Explorer browser. Meanwhile, exploit code showing would-be attackers how to use the flaw to break into vulnerable systems is being circulated… Read More »
