Category Archives: spam

Unsolicited email, IM, SMS texting, proximity-triggered behavior, usually of a commercial nature but also sometimes used to distribute links to malicious Web sites or malware executables themselves.

Pharmaceutical scammers launch their own Web contest

February 10, 2012 – 6:13 pm

By Dancho Danchev What are pharmaceutical scammers up to? From active participation in black hat search engine optimization campaigns, to spamvertising of bogus links – including QR Codes – and compromising of web sites with high page rank in order to redirect to pharmaceutical scams, scammers are keeping themselves pretty busy in order to monetize as much [...]

By ddanchev | Also posted in Blackhat SEO, social engineering | Leave a Comment

Cisco releases ‘Cisco Global Threat Report’ for 4Q11

January 29, 2012 – 7:12 pm

By Dancho Danchev Cisco Systems, recently announced the release of ’Cisco Global Threat Report’ for 4Q11, containing threat intelligence based on Cisco’s observation of the malicious threat landscape. Key summary points:

By ddanchev | Also posted in Botnet activity, Enterprises, Internet security industry, malware, phishing, Targets | Comments (1)

How phishers launch phishing attacks

January 23, 2012 – 7:27 pm

By Dancho Danchev Just like in every other industry, participants in the cybercrime ecosystem are no strangers to the concept of standardization. Standardization results in efficiencies, which on the other hand results in economies of scale. In this case, malicious economies of scale. Just how easy is it to launch a phishing attack nowadays? What tools, [...]

By ddanchev | Also posted in Threat Research, social engineering, Passwords, Online shopping threats, phishing | Leave a Comment

Millions of harvested emails offered for sale

January 3, 2012 – 6:44 pm

By Dancho Danchev What does it take to be a successful spammer in 2012? Access to a botnet, managed spamming appliance, spam templates that are capable of bypassing spam filters, and most importantly freshly harvested databases of valid emails from multiple email providers. Let’s profile a web-based service currently selling millions of harvested emails to [...]

By ddanchev | Also posted in social networks | Comments (3)

For your eyes only (please)

December 1, 2011 – 10:15 am

By the Webroot Threat Team Have you ever had the queasy experience of sending a message to someone that you’d rather not have anyone else see, and then hoping that it won’t get passed along? A new system developed by Internet law and security researchers aims to solve the problem, with a light-handed touch. The [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Everyone has a role in protecting a corporate infrastructure (Part 1)

November 30, 2011 – 11:21 am

By Jacques Erasmus This time of year, those of us in information security become wary of crafty criminals leveraging the winter holidays to prey on our employees’ lack of awareness online in a number of ways. All it takes is for one Trojan to infect a single PC in a company to put an entire [...]

By jerasmus11 | Also posted in Uncategorized, Enterprises, Phishing Trojans, social engineering, phishing | Leave a Comment

Black Hat Redux: Botnet Takedown Mistakes to Avoid

August 17, 2011 – 12:00 pm

By Andrew Brandt I’ve worked in the security industry for nearly five years, and it was apparent early on that the most successful people in this field bring to their work a passion and a commitment to protecting not only one’s customers, but to providing a certain level of information about security threats to the [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in Advanced Malware Removal, Botnet activity, Deep Knowledge, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Comments (3)

Brazilian “Winehouse” Trojan Sends Hotmail, Bank Passwords to China

July 29, 2011 – 11:18 am

By Andrew Brandt Late Monday, after news about the death of troubled pop singer Amy Winehouse had been circling the globe for a little more than 48 hours, we saw the first malware appear that used the singer’s name as a social engineering trick to entice victims to run the malicious file. Abusing celebrity names, [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in Botnet activity, phishing, Phishing Trojans, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Comments (3)

With IM Buddies Like These, Who Needs Frienemies?

July 6, 2011 – 11:15 am

By Andrew Brandt The other morning, I walked into the office to find a slew of instant messaging buddy requests from total strangers. This isn’t unexpected: I frequently get buddy requests on IM accounts I maintain for research purposes that contain malicious URLs and other useful research data. But this was one request I wasn’t [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in Botnet activity, Destructive behavior, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Comments (1)

Phishers Cast Their Nets in the Social Media Pool

June 21, 2011 – 8:23 am

By Ian Moyse, EMEA Channel Director It can seem at times that the only people who like change are Internet attackers. And they don’t just like it—they need it. Technology’s rapid changes give cybercriminals new attack vectors to exploit, and new ways to turn a profit out of someone else’s misfortune. Take phishing, for example. [...]

By imoyse | Also posted in Botnet activity, hijack search results, Keyloggers, phishing, Search engines, social engineering, social networks, Stupid malware tricks, Trojans, Website owners | Comments (2)
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