One of my Twitter account followers whose tweets I also follow — @spacerog — shared with me the following image, which he recently snapped with his phone while waiting in line at the Philadelphia Federal Credit Union. It’s an excellent public awareness campaign, and one that I’d like to see replicated at bank branches throughout the country.
Nearly every time I write about a small to mid-sized business that has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars after falling victim to a malicious software attack, readers ask how the perpetrators broke through the victim organization’s defenses, and which type of malware paved the way. Normally, victim companies don’t know or disclose that information, so to get a better idea, I’ve put together a rough profile of the top daily email-based malware attacks over the past month.
Facebook is attempting to dismantle a new social networking worm that spreads via an application built to run seamlessly as a plugin across multiple browsers and operating systems. In an odd twist, the author of the program is doing little to hide his identity, and claims that his “users” actually gain a security benefit from installing his software.
At issue is a program that the author calls “LilyJade,” a browser plugin that uses Crossrider, an emerging programming framework designed to simplify the process of writing plugins that will run seamlessly across multiple browsers and operating systems, including Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox. The plugin spreads by posting a link to a video on a user’s Facebook wall, and friends who follow the link are told they need to accept the installation of the plugin in order to view the video. Users who accept the terms of service for LilyJade will have their accounts modified to periodically post links that help pimp the program.
Twitter bots — automated accounts that auto-follow and send junk tweets hawking questionable wares and services — can be an annoyance to anyone who has even a modest number of followers. But increasingly, Twitter bots are being used as a tool to suppress political dissent, as evidenced by an ongoing flood of meaningless tweets directed at hashtags popular for tracking Tibetan protesters who are taking a stand against Chinese rule.
It’s not clear how long ago the bogus tweet campaigns began, but Tibetan sympathizers say they recently noticed that several Twitter hashtags related to the conflict — including #tibet and #freetibet — are now so constantly inundated with junk tweets from apparently automated Twitter accounts that the hashtags have ceased to become a useful way to track the conflict.
Want more friends and followers? Emerging enterprises will create them for you — for a price. An abundance of low-cost, freelance labor online is posing huge challenges for Internet companies trying to combat the growing abuse of their services, and… Read More »
The unceasing barrage of targeted email attacks that leverage zero-day software flaws to steal sensitive information from companies and the U.S. government often are characterized as ultra-sophisticated, almost ninja-like in their stealth and anonymity. But according to expert analysis of several recent zero-day attacks – including the much publicized break-in at security giant RSA — the apparent Chinese developers of those attack tools left clues aplenty about their identities and locations, with one actor even Tweeting about his newly discovered vulnerability days in advance of its use in the wild.
RSA and others have labeled recent zero-day attacks as the epitome of an “advanced persistent threat” (APT), a controversial term describing the daily onslaught of digital assaults launched by attackers that are considered to be highly-skilled, determined and have a long-term perspective on their mission. Because these attacks often result in the theft of sensitive and proprietary information from the government and private industry, the details surrounding them usually become shrouded in secrecy as law enforcement and national security officials swoop in to investigate.
But an investigation of some of the open source information available on the tools used in recent attacks labeled APT indicates that some of the actors involved are doing little to cover their tracks, and that not only are they identifiable, but that they’re not particularly concerned about suffering any consequences from their actions.
“Firesheep,” a new add-on for Firefox that makes it easier to hijack e-mail and social networking accounts of others who are on the same wired or wireless network, has been getting some rather breathless coverage by the news media, some… Read More »
Criminals have launched an major e-mail campaign to deploy the infamous ZeuS Trojan, blasting out spam messages variously disguised as fraud alerts from the Internal Revenue Service, Twitter account hijack warnings, and salacious Youtube.com videos.
A faulty update is being blamed for incapacitating an untold number of Microsoft Windows systems running anti-virus software from BitDefender. BitDefender says the problem occurred Saturday morning with a faulty update for 64-bit Windows systems that caused multiple Windows and… Read More »
Pictured below is what’s known as a skimmer, or a device made to be affixed to the mouth of an ATM and secretly swipe credit and debit card information when bank customers slip their cards into the machines to pull out money. Skimmers have been around for years, of course, but thieves are constantly improving them, and the device pictured below is a perfect example of that evolution.
