Monthly Archives: February 2010

Botnet Trojan Adds “Gootkit” Code to Web Pages

February 26, 2010 – 2:51 pm

By Andrew Brandt An insidious new Trojan that finds its way onto Windows PCs in the course of a drive-by infection employs a novel method to propagate: It connects to Web servers using stolen FTP credentials, and if successful, modifies any HTML and PHP files with extra code. The code opens an iFrame pointing to [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Keyloggers, Passwords, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

Twitter Phish Floods Network with Short URLs

February 24, 2010 – 4:15 pm

By Andrew Brandt All day, I’ve been getting reports from my Twitter-using friends and acquaintances that they’ve been receiving tweets of short URLs. I took a look and it looks like another phishing campaign aimed at users of the social network is underway. The short URLs, prefaced with the message “This you???” lead to a [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in phishing, social engineering, Threat Research | Tags: , , , | Leave a Comment

New Research: IT Pros Sound Off On 2010 Security Concerns

February 17, 2010 – 12:31 pm

Research from the enterprise security experts at Webroot With the explosion of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook in 2009, it’s no surprise cybercriminals have set their sights on these Web sites for new victims. Facebook now has over 400 million active users and Twitter has over six million — a sizeable pool of potential targets. [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Enterprises, social engineering, social networks | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Phishing Campaign Targets Frequent Fliers

February 16, 2010 – 1:21 pm

By Andrew Brandt A variation of a phishing scam aimed at members of American Airlines’ AAdvantage program is circulating again. With links to a phishing Web site embedded in a spam message, the scampaign promises (in characteristically broken English) that all participants in a survey will receive, depending on the campaign, either $100, or “$50 [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in phishing, social engineering, spam | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

British Music Awards Draws Web Scams

February 15, 2010 – 12:01 am

By Andrew Brandt Music fans may already be aware that next Tuesday the British music industry will honor the top acts of the year at a ceremony known simply as The BRITs. What they may not know is that common Internet criminals have begun to target people searching for information about the artists and the [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Rogue Security Products, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Tax-Themed Phishing Scams Cross More National Borders

February 10, 2010 – 4:06 pm

By Andrew Brandt Sometimes, the early bird gets the worm — and not in a good way. People who file their tax returns early are being targeted by a phishing scam that comes with the promise of a big income tax refund. Unlike previous tax-themed scams, which have been based on the stick — fake [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in phishing, social engineering, spam | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Play it Safe on Safer Internet Day

February 8, 2010 – 12:32 pm

By Andrew Brandt February 9 marks Safer Internet Day, and around the world, people are trying to help their fellow netizens navigate an obstacle course of threats to their security and privacy. InSafe, the organization funded by the EU that sponsors the annual youth-targeted event, has themed the day around the concept “Think B4 U [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in Firefox, Gaming threats, Phishing Trojans, social engineering, social networks, Stupid malware tricks | Tags: , , , | Comments (4)

Massive Spam Campaign Impersonates Social Networks

February 5, 2010 – 4:25 pm

By Andrew Brandt Spammers are the source of a flood of messages that appear to originate from various social networks, including Facebook and Myspace, as well as popular sites like iTunes. The spam messages usually just contain a link, and possibly a few words. Their subject matter falls into three general categories common to most [...]

By mguthrie09 | Posted in social engineering, social networks, spam | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (5)
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