Mobile operators are starting to feel the pinch from viruses resulting from the increasing use of emails and internet browsing on cellphones, according to an industry study published today.
Attacks on cellphones rose fivefold in 2006, with clients of 83 per cent of mobile operators around the world having been hit, the joint study by security software firm McAfee and research company Informa said.
Experts at SophosLabs?, Sophos's global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have welcomed the news that Chinese authorities have arrested a group of hackers in connection with the Fujacks worm. The worm, also known as Whboy) made headlines last month because it converts icons of infected programs into a picture of a panda burning joss-sticks as it stole usernames and passwords from online games players.
Security experts are warning PC users to be on guard against viruses masquerading as Valentine's Day messages, which could damage computers.
"Computer users should keep a wary eye on any romantic messages received by e-mail, as many of them could contain malicious code," said US security firm PandaLabs after detecting an increase in a worm it dubbed Nurech.A.
The worm hides in emails with subjects like: "Together You and I," "Til the End of Time Heart of Mine."
People who open an attached file such as postcard.exe can end up infecting their computers.
Penn State University researchers have created technology they say can nab computer worms more quickly than traditional signature-based systems and speedily set free the traffic if it's determined to be harmless after all.
The Proactive Worm Containment technology watches for a packet's rate and diversity of connections to other networks to identify worms, rather than having to wait around for a signature to be generated to spot new malware.
Hackers and spammers have "raised their onslaught" with two global email-borne virus attacks launched in December and January.
The attacks were so large that they drove up the level of viruses up by a factor of 20 compared with usual activity, according to data from security firm Postini.
The January attack became known as the Storm worm because the original email subject line was '230 dead as storm batters Europe'. At the time of the email, there was a heavy storm occurring in Europe.
With the bad guys increasingly resorting to quieter, more targeted attacks, it's been a long time since we've seen headlines about the massive spread of a worm or Trojan horse. Most security experts agree the days of Sasser-like attacks are over.
So when the so-called Storm Trojan started gaining traction last week, antivirus vendors were jolted into overdrive.
About half of the downloads claiming to be free versions of Microsoft's Vista operating system are actually malicious Trojan horse software, security vendor DriveSentry warned Thursday. With Vista's consumer launch just days away, hackers have been bombarding discussion boards with offers of "cracked" versions of Windows Vista, which are typically being distributed on peer-to-peer networks, said John Lynch, vice president of sales and marketing for DriveSentry.
As virtual machines and various emulators have become commonplace in analysis of malicious code, malicious code has started to fight back. This hot topic was recently covered at AVAR 2006 conference by Peter Ferrie, a researcher at Symantec anti-virus research center.
The goal of the Trojan seems to be to acquire a large botnet, or collection of compromised PCs, that can be used to send traditional scam spams or for later identity mining..
The Trojan horse that began spreading Friday has attacked at least 1.6 million PCs, said a security company.
In addition, it appears that Windows Vista, the new operating system Microsoft will launch next week, is vulnerable to the attack.
The virus writers behind last week's Storm Trojan outbreak showed off some neat tabloid headline-writing skills in a string of similar attacks over the weekend.
