Monthly Archives: June 2009

Jackson/Fawcett Malware is Extortion-ware

June 26, 2009 – 12:12 pm

By Andrew Brandt As I reported yesterday, searches for information about the deaths of Michael Jackson or Farrah Fawcett were turning up links to malware. This came as no surprise to anyone, though the speed with which the links spread was astonishing: Within minutes of the first confirmation that Jackson had succumbed to a heart [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in adware, Blackhat SEO, Firefox, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments (4)

Our Cup Runneth Over with Farrah Fawcett Files and Michael Jackson Malware

June 25, 2009 – 4:42 pm

By Andrew Brandt With the sad news circulating the globe that 70s sex symbol, TV pitchwoman, and former Charlie’s Angel Farrah Fawcett passed away this morning, it didn’t take long for the malware vultures to execute their attack. Beginning in the afternoon, our Proactive Research team began finding tons of pages that purportedly offered a [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Blackhat SEO, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments (18)

Drive-by Downloads Still Pack a Punch – If You Click

June 24, 2009 – 9:25 am

By Andrew Brandt In the course of surfing around, looking for ways to get infected, I stumbled upon a site that offers visitors downloads of key generators, cracks, and other ways to circumvent the process used by most legitimate software companies to prevent people who didn’t pay for the software from registering or using it. [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Phishing Trojans, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Gamers: Fight the Phishers

June 17, 2009 – 1:01 pm

By Andrew Brandt Last week, I posted a blog item that explained how gamers face a growing security threat in phishing Trojans — software that can steal the passwords to online games, or the license keys for offline games, and pass them along to far-flung criminal groups. We know why organized Internet criminals engage in [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Keyloggers, PC gaming, Phishing Trojans, Stupid malware tricks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

If You’ve Got Game, Phishers Want Your Stuff

June 12, 2009 – 10:26 am

By Andrew Brandt Since the beginning of the year, my colleagues in the Threat Research group and I have been researching an absolutely astonishing volume of phishing Trojans designed solely to steal what videogame players value most: the license keys that one would use to install copies of legitimately purchased PC games, and/or the username [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Keyloggers, Phishing Trojans, Threat Research | Tags: , , , , , , | Comments (2)

May Threat Trend: Misleading Malware

June 9, 2009 – 11:11 am

By Andrew Brandt The latest data from our customers indicate that, at least in the month of May, we were blocking and removing some of the nastiest threats on the Web. Among the spies we took out, we hit Fakealerts and Rogue Security Products hard. These spies simply try to fool you into making purchases [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Phishing Trojans, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a Comment

5 PC Gaming Threats and How To Beat Them

June 3, 2009 – 10:17 am

By Mike Kronenberg E3, the annual trade show for the computer and video games industry, kicked off in Los Angeles yesterday, not long after the unofficial start of summer on Memorial Day. These events got me thinking about what many students might do with their free time over the next three months. I imagine that [...]

By Mike | Posted in Gaming threats, Keyloggers, PC gaming | Tags: , , , , | Comments (5)
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