A study shows that spammers and phishers are playing on our biggest fears and our biggest desires.. Think mind games are only for dating and creepy movies? Think again. According to researchers at McAfee, a new study shows that cybercriminals use psychological games to scam users. In his study, “Mind Games”, Dr. James Blascovich, professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, focuses on multiple common spam sc… read more »
June 29th, 2007 in
General News Source:
itnews.com.au
Two former police officers have been convicted of hacking into computers as part of a private investigation service they conducted for wealthy clients. Jeremy Young and Scott Gelsthorpe were found guilty on two counts of conspiracy to cause unauthorised modification of computer material at Southwark Crown Court in London yesterday. In addition, they both admitted to conspiring to defraud and cause criminal damage to property.
The pair set up thei… read more »
June 29th, 2007 in
General News Source:
scmagazine.com
Kaspersky Internet Security technological prototype represents a new generation platform for creating applications specifically designated for complex protection of personal computers and workstations. Uniting the substantially improved functional abilities of version 5.0, Kaspersky Lab protection products with the latest technological innovations introduced by the company the Kaspersky Internet Security solution secures the most effective and co… read more »
Hacker groups are using a “construction kit” supplied by the author of a Trojan horse program discovered last October to develop and unleash more dangerous variants of the original malware. The new Trojans have been used to steal sensitive information belonging to at least 10,000 individuals and to send the data to rogue servers in China, Russia and the US, Don Jackson, a researcher at security firm SecureWorks, said.
The stolen data … read more »
The Internet Storm Center is warning that hackers are spamming e-mail messages that purport to be a Microsoft security update. The phony e-mail doesn’t carry any fixes. Actually, it contains malicious code to infect unwary users who open the message and click on any links or attachments. “Microsoft would never e-mail patches, so I don’t know why people still fall for this but they do,” said Johannes Ullrich, chief technolo… read more »
A FRENCH TECH SITE is releasing free software that anonymises DRM free files bought on iTunes Plus. Ratatium.com has just launched software called Privatunes, which strips out personal information including the user’s full name and account e-mail. Apple wanted the information in the file so it could find out which of its users were pirating music. But Apple’s insistence had raised privacy concerns in Europe.
Ratatium.com says its soft… read more »
Malicious code embedded in about two dozen MySpace pages downloads the dangerous FluxBot onto victims’ machines. Internet Storm Center researchers are warning users that drive-by exploits have been embedded in a few dozen legitimate MySpace pages.
Johannes Ullrich, chief technology officer with the Internet Storm Center, told InformationWeek that the malicious code that’s embedded in the Web pages installs the FluxBot, a dangerous new… read more »
Online auction site eBay has made public the details of a three-year long campaign to curb online fraud being perpetrated by criminals in Romania — an effort that has resulted in several hundred arrests. Matt Henley, a member of eBay’s US-based Fraud Investigations Team, spoke about the campaign while taking part in a two-day workshop in Sydney with representatives of local law enforcement agencies.
Henley is currently in town to discuss … read more »
June 28th, 2007 in
General News Source:
zdnet.co.uk
Users are being warned of a new phishing scam falsely telling recipients they need to download a Microsoft patch. SANS Internet Storm Center handler Donald Smith wrote on the organisation’s blog last night that several readers reported receiving emails, from four different domains, claiming to be from Microsoft. The emails - some of which include the recipient’s full name and the company they work for in the letter body - inform recip… read more »
Spanish police have arrested a 28-year-old man and charged him with creating and distributing malware that infected an estimated 115,000 mobile phones, the French AFP news service has reported. The unidentified defendant, who was arrested in Valencia after a seven-month investigation, allegedly created more than 20 variants of the Cabir and Commwarrior worms, which target mobile phones running the Symbian operating system and infect nearby device… read more »
