164 News Story Topics
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 | I've been writing about various security risks in the health sector for many years now. Usually my articles cover patient privacy, data protection and health provider network insecurity issues. Occasionally, they spill over into darker territory where the cyber risk morphs into a very real one as far as the …  |
| | A couple of decades ago, in another life, I wrote a little script which would capture keystrokes and then store that data within the 'white space' of an image file. It was pretty crude, but it was also twenty years ago and to be honest nobody was really looking for …  |
| | It's been a year now since the Dyre malware family was first profiled, and there is no sign of infection rates slowing down. In fact, [reports](http://www.scmagazine.com/trend-micro-documents-new-malware-infections/article/418266/) would seem to suggest just the opposite with infections up from 4,000 at the end of last year to 9,000 at the start of …  |
| | Researchers at security company AppRiver have issued a [warning](http://blog.appriver.com/2015/06/amazon-based-malware-targets-crypto-currency/) regarding a variant of the Fareit malware family which is using fake Amazon purchase confirmation emails to inject itself and steal any type of crypto currency that can be found on the target machine.  Troy Gill, manager of security … |
| | While keen to point out that Microsoft's TechNet portal security was "in no way compromised" by the tactic, researchers with security outfit FireEye [discovered](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2015/05/hiding_in_plain_sigh.html) that [a well established China-based hacking campaign called Deputy Dog](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2013/09/operation-deputydog-zero-day-cve-2013-3893-attack-against-japanese-targets.html) had managed to create profiles and posts on TechNet that contained embedded Command and Control codes … |
| | As with any online service that starts to get popular traction and experiences rapid growth, social network come micro-blog platform Tumblr has been the target of just about every kind of scam and attempted cyber-criminal subversion out there [inclduing some of its own making](http://www.daniweb.com/internet-marketing/social-media-and-communities/news/459258/tumblr-warns-users-to-change-password-after-security-mess). Most of the time it's not …  |
| | I don't usually write about acquisitions and all that financial stuff, but news that PayPal has acquired CyActive caught my eye as apparently this brings the promise of 'bio-inspired predictive security' into the online payments provider threat protection mix. Which made me think, just what the heck is bio-inspired predictive … |
| | Chinese computer manufacturer [Lenovo has admitted](http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/superfish) that it installed an adware component called Superfish on 16 million PCs shipped between September 2014 and February 2015 in order to "help customers potentially discover interesting products while shopping" according to an official statement made by the company. Although there is some argument …  |
| | An increasing number of my acquaintances seem to be in the habit of buying cheap Android smartphones when in China on business and, increasingly, from online auction sites. More often than not these will be clones of flagship models but without the flagship price tag; however, cheap is not always …  |
| | Google has been quick to blacklist domains implicated, most often unwittingly, in the distribution of what has become known as the SoakSoak malware campaign courtesy of soaksoak.ru being the first domain in the redirection path it used. With 11,000 domains blocked over the weekend, you might be forgiven for thinking … |
| | Ever wondered why the bad guys continue throwing malware in your direction? The obvious answer is the correct one: because they make money from doing it. On Thanksgiving Day, as all others across the year it would seem, they can be thankful for the high profit to be raked in … |
| | More often than not I'll be writing about the security problems facing Windows XP users, such as when I recently reported how a large number of enterprises are still running XP SP2 machines which will shortly [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story287954.html"]stop being supported by Microsoft[/URL] in terms of security updates, hotfixes and the like. … |
| | Some interesting [research](http://www.proofpoint.com/threatinsight/posts/phishing-in-europe.php) from security outfit Proofpoint was published this morning which reveals that unsolicited email heading towards users in the UK is three times more likely to contain malicious URLs than that destined for users in the United States, or Germany, or France for that matter. It's not, as … |
| | Goodwill Industries International, a network of 165 community-based agencies in North America, has been breached. This follows a previous announcement of a potential attack back in July. After an extensive forensic investigation lasting a month, Goodwill has now [confirmed](http://www.goodwill.org/press-releases/goodwill-provides-update-on-data-security-issue/) that "a third-party vendor’s systems" were indeed "attacked by malware, enabling … |
| | Hardly a week goes by without yet another press release hitting the desk of your technology journalist, or research flag being raised amongst the IT Security profession, that claims Android is insecure. What Android actually is, just like Windows on the desktop in fact, is a big and attractive target; … |
| | Android-driven devices, including smartphones and tablets manufactured by the likes of Asus, LG, Motorola and Samsung, are being sold with pre-installed malware according to claims made by the CTO and Founder of Marble Security. David Jevans made the claim following complaints from a potential client that a mobile security platform … |
| | It has been [officially confirmed](http://php.net/archive/2013.php#id2013-10-24-2) that the php.net website of the open-source PHP programming language has been hacked and infected with malware. The successful breach of the site came to light yesterday morning when the Google Safe Browsing service started flagging php.net as serving up malicious scripts. This was, at …  |
| | As a gamer myself, I thought that last year was a pretty good one. After all, not only did I get to play both GTA V and Call of Duty: Ghosts (indeed, I'm still playing it and working my may through the prestige levels) but if I had enough spare …  |
| | According to a [report](http://www.fireeye.com/resources/pdfs/fireeye-operation-ke3chang.pdf) from researchers at US security outfit FireEye, a number of computers belonging to diplomats attending the G20 summit in Russia three months ago, including at least five European foreign ministries, were successfully targeted by Chinese hackers. FireEye researchers had monitored a server, one of 23, used … |
| | Users of online banking services are at risk from a new 'in the wild' Trojan, Hesperbot, which has been discovered by the ESET malware research lab. Researchers have found that infections of users in Turkey are currently most rife, with users in the Czech Republic, Portugal, Thailand and the United …  |
| | A successful tournament poker player from Japan, with earnings estimated at $1.5 million from his prowess at bluffing and holding his nerve under pressure, has been arrested and charged with being behind an Android malware distribution operation that netted even more: $3.9 million according to Symantec. The Chiba Prefectural Police … |
| | Just as your average Joe starts to 'get' the importance of online security, and that means using anti-virus software, so the bad guys start exploiting this new found understanding by flooding the Internet with fake AV products. [attach]16913[/attach]Security researchers at [URL="http://www.sophos.com"]SophosLabs have today identified a major new fake anti-virus software … |
| | [ATTACH=RIGHT]22213[/ATTACH]You may not be a big fan of Microsoft, but you wouldn't expect your computer to be held to ransom by the company would you? In recent months it has become quite commonplace, at least across Europe, for scammers posing as Microsoft technical support staff to 'cold call' people on …  |
| | With no actual Halloween-based security threats to report, it looks like the security vendors have had no choice but to start reporting scary stuff that might happen to your data instead. While I have no qualms about genuine warnings to 'be careful out there' this Halloween, a little reminder about … |
| | All right stop, collaborate, and listen. A new variant of the ZeuS financial malware platform known as Ice. This baby Trojan spawned from the original Ice IX is targeting bank customers on both sides of the pond. Here in the UK the 'big three' telecommunications providers are where it is … |
| | At the risk of being somewhat obsessed by hitmen after [one recent news story](http://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/microsoft-windows/viruses-spyware-and-other-nasties/news/441025/dont-be-fooled-by-the-fake-hitman-scam) here at DaniWeb, I'm running another. This time though, it's cybercriminals and hackers who would hold your computer and data to ransom that are the target of a contract killer. The killer in question being the … |
| | You might not have heard about Dirt Jumper yet, but the bad guys have. In fact, the high-risk and highly-effective DDoS toolkit is probably the most aggressive of the malware tools being employed by DDoS attackers at the moment, and the situation is set to get much worse very quickly … |
| | The latest VIPRE report, detailing the ten most prevalent malware threat detections spotted by [GFI Labs](http://malwareprotectioncenter.com/) and the ThreatNet Detection System, reveals that Google, LinkedIn, Skype and Mass Effect 3 were amongst the big brands being exploited by cybercriminals in order to leverage trust whilst distributing malware-laden emails. As a … |
| | China may be odds-on to top the medal table at the London 2012 Olympic Games, with less than a week to go, but according to a new report South Korea has the Chinese well and truly beaten as far as malware infected PCs are concerned. And unlike at the Olympic … |
| | With the London 2012 Olympics due to open in just a few days time, the expected push by the bad guys has started. No, I don't mean the banning of wearing Pepsi T-Shirts in the Olympic Stadium as it might upset official sponsors Coke, or the fact that nobody is … |
| | An ongoing attack aimed at users of the Apple Mac platform is being reported by security researchers. [AlienVault,](http://www.alienvault.com) which has discovered these weaponised attacks in the wild, warns that regular Mac users without IT security software installed could be at risk of infection and hijacking.  The researchers suspect … |
 | It's not unusual for a government IT department to warn its users about downloading malware onto their government-issued computers. It's more unusual, though, for the source of the malware to be the ads on the website of the newspaper of record. In July, the cyber security coordinators in the state … |
| | Security vendor Malwarebytes has reported that a new variation of an old password stealing Trojan is out in the wild, but all is not as it may seem. Notably, this particular Trojan is signed with an apparently 'genuine' digital certificate that authenticates the file. Which rather prompts the question: "say … |
| | The 'World's Greatest Anti-Malware Software' is the spurious claim being made by Malwarebiter, which just so happens to sound an awful lot like Malwarebytes which could perhaps justifiably lay claim to that accolade. Take a look at this forum and you will see that Malwarebytes is a very valuable tool … |
| | The results of a new security survey, which asked some 6,000 people across Europe questions about cybercrime, would appear to suggest that nearly everyone (88% of respondents in fact) is some kind of online victim. Have things really got this bad, or is it just another case of the security … |
| | [ATTACH=RIGHT]22280[/ATTACH]Mobile phone security threats used to be mocked by everyone outside of vendors with mobile antivirus software to sell. That has changed, and how. The online media headlines have been full to bursting with reports that 'mobile malware' had grown by a staggering 273 percent in the first half of … |
| | Mobile malware has moved from the security vendor testing labs, out of the realms of marketing hype and FUD, and [firmly onto your smartphone](http://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/tablets-and-mobile-devices/news/382139/how-mobile-malware-actually-grew-by-1400-percent-in-the-last-12-months). The main target for the malware distributors would appear to be the Android platform, which is not surprising given the rapid growth in the userbase coupled … |
| | Everyone loves PHP these days it seems, and that includes the bad guys. So it should come as no surprise to learn that yet another remote access Trojan written using PHP has appeared. However, the fact that this particular bit of PHP backdoor code comes complete with a second, hidden, … |
| | A cyber weapon grade piece of malware, some twenty times the size of Stuxnet, has apparently been fired at a number of countries in the Middle East. This highly complex piece of code which takes screenshots of any open 'programs of interest' such as email or IM, records audio and … |
| | The Flashback Trojan has infected at least 600,000 Apple computers running Mac OS X according to the Russian AV company [Dr Web](http://www.drweb.com/?lng=en) which researched the spread of the malware which was originally discovered at the end of last year and for which Apple issued a security patch just this week. …  |
| | Security researchers are warning that some 30,000 WordPress websites, 85% of them based in the US, have been compromised by a mass-injection hijack attack which sees visitors to any of more than 200,000 individual pages redirected to a Trojan infected rogue AV scam. [ATTACH=RIGHT]24076[/ATTACH]The senior security researcher with Websense Labs, … |
| | The Ainslot.L Trojan appears to be much the same as any other at first glance; logging user activity and sending Gmail and Facebook passwords to the bad guys, downloading further malware, taking over your computer and the main payload of being a Banking Trojan stealing account login data. But Ainslot.L … |
| | Sykipot is not a new Trojan Horse by any means, but the variation found to be attacking Department of Defense smart cards is certainly something that government agencies need to be worried about. United States government agencies, that is. It's doubtful the Chinese government will be too worried about them, … |
| | With the recent announcement of an easy way to gain root access for Android phones running 2.3.4, to add to the list of similar exploits for earlier versions and 3.0 and beyond, it should come as no real surprise that the bad guys are taking advantage of the relative weakness … |
| | [ATTACH=RIGHT]21691[/ATTACH]“Your PC may be infected” says Google, which has taken the unusual step of [URL="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/using-data-to-protect-people-from.html"]warning users[/URL] that a couple of million or so of them have most likely been taken in by a fake AV scam. According to a post on the official Google blog by security engineer Damian Menscher, …  |
 | [URL="http://www.intego.com"]Intego[/URL] [URL="http://www.intego.com/news/hellrts-backdoor-can-allow-malicious-remote-users-to-control-macs.asp"]announced[/URL] today that there is an actual virus threat to the invincible [URL="http://www.apple.com"]Mac[/URL]: HellRTS.D Backdoor. Yep, that's right, a Mac virus just waiting to take control of your iThis and iThat. It would have been funnier if the virus had a better name, but hey, virus writers aren't necessarily … |
| | Using newly registered domains with a very short lifespan to host malware websites is so last year. It would appear that these days such things are far more likely to be hosted on much older compromised web sites instead. Could this be down to a decline in domain tasting? The … |
| | [ATTACH=right]21447[/ATTACH]Penetration testing by the US Department of Homeland Security which involved dropping USB thumb drives and various data discs around the car parks of government agency buildings has revealed a not-so-shocking truth: just like most folk, government workers allow curiosity to trump security when faced with the opportunity to have …  |
| | It's one of the more bizarre questions I have been asked during my twenty year involvement in the computer security business. Yet here I am, pondering whether something being called the Shrek virus could have enabled tens of thousands of butt ugly lonely people to bypass the attractiveness filtering of … |
| | It's not just [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story231517.html"]phishing scams[/URL] that Facebook users have to worry about right now, According to Roger Thompson, the Chief Research Officer with security vendor AVG, hacked Facebook applications are increasingly reaching out to exploit sites based in Russia. As Thompson says, this is different to the normal run of …  |
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