Oregon State University is notifying 34,000 current and former employees that a computer containing some of their personal information was recently infected by a virus.
In a press release issued Wednesday, the university said its computer experts believe it is “highly unlikely that the virus put any of that information in the hands of unauthorized users.”
Trend Micro security researchers caution that a latest version of the notorious Koobface worm is circulating on Facebook through Direct Messages (DMs). The spam entices users towards a harmful site by informing them that someone has posted their video on YouTube.
Internet users are being warned this week to be on high alert for a new malware campaign that's using a bogus request for payment from eBay as a front to infect users' PCs and mobile devices with a variety of spam and malware.
According to researchers at security software vendor Sophos, the ploy begins with an unsolicited email with the subject line "Payment request from" with a phony "eBay@reply1.ebay.com" return email address.
Security researchers from computer software giant CA warn that a new major version of the ZeuS crimeware toolkit is already being used in the wild. The new release protects its configuration better and focuses on banks in United States, United Kingdom, Spain and Germany.
ZeuS is a professional crimeware toolkit that can be used to generate customized computer trojans that are remotely controllable via a command and control server. Named Zbot (ZeuS bot), this type of trojan comes with information stealing capabilities and is one of the primary tools employed by identity thieves.
A multi-step attack targeting defense exporters was recently reported on Symantec’s security blog. This ploy first invaded one defense contractor’s network where it set up a directory on the system for fake press releases. The invaded network was then used to send emails from that network to employees of a second defense contractor. Those emails reported (falsely) that the CEO of the second defense contractor had been arrested for violations of the Export Administration Act and contained a link back to the fake press release directory on the first contractor’s website.
Kaspersky's new spam report for May 2010 states that the list of top 10 malware supplying countries remained the same when compared to the list of April 2010.
The firm states in its report that the developed regions are still the most lucrative targets for hackers who have greater chances of making profit by hitting users in developed countries because every user in these countries owns a credit card or online banking or an e-pay system.
Malware (malicious software) continues to be the No 1 threat to personal computers, according to Security Intelligence Report version 8 (SIRv8), released by Microsoft Corp.
It showed that software worms accounted for 27.8% of all infected computer systems, followed by trojan software (16.6%), with miscellaneous other potentially dangerous software (including browser modifiers and remote-control programs) at 13.8%.
As the world’s legitimate Web traffic increases, so do instances of spam e-mail, Internet-borne malware and general hacker activity. When special or unusual events happen — such as the current Gulf oil spill or the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament in South Africa — communications traffic of all kinds skyrockets. This takes into account text messaging, e-mail, Web searches, cell phone usage, television and Web streaming video, among others.
The Google trends are once again a mix of hot trends, including the Gulf Oil Spill, Michael Jackson, Miley Cyrus, Microsoft and Microsoft Kinect.
Unfortunately, those who are searching for more information on a trending topic are being lured in by hackers who don't provide anything more than an unhealthy dose of malware, a term used for malicious software.
Practically every corporation has its own internal team of malware experts tasked with preventing infections and dealing with the consequences of a successful compromise.
