Viruses & Malware

Confickr is a little more than two weeks old and has infected an estimated nine million machines, confounding security experts on how to handle one of the worst worm outbreaks in years, DarkReading.com reports.

Security officials said the situation is unique because worms weren't considered as an effective way to make money in cybercrime, according to the article. However, the hackers behind the massive worm have devised an innovative way to spread the attack, making it hard to catch and quarantine.

Hackers are using malicious software that exploits the buzz ahead of Tuesday's inauguration of U.S. president-elect Barack Obama to spread spam and gain access to individual computers, allowing them to potentially steal sensitive information.

A new group of inauguration-themed emails titled "What is going on with our country?" or "Breaking News" pass on messages like "Obama is gone," according to Symantec Corp., a maker of anti-virus software.

Cybercriminals are a busy bunch these days: stealing identities by the millions, grabbing credit and debit card account numbers, and waging a myriad other attacks on unwitting users, businesses and vulnerable websites. Their weapon of choice is the malware injection. Today, a page is infected every five seconds, triple the infection rate in 2007.

Millions of Windows computers have been infected by a new computer worm dubbed "Conficker." The situation is "not getting better," but rather is "getting worse," according to security software vendor F-Secure.

In a blog post, F-Secure security researchers report that the number of machines infected by the Downadup worm has skyrocketed from roughly 2.4 million to over 8.9 million in the last four days alone.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed today that it has suffered virus infections which have shut down "a small number" of MoD systems, most notably including admin networks aboard Royal Navy warships.

The Navy computers infected are the NavyStar (N*) system, based on a server cabinet and cable-networked PCs on each warship and used for purposes such as storekeeping, email and similar support functions. N* ship nets connect to wider networks by shore connection when vessels are in harbour and using satcomms when at sea.

The computer worm that exploits a months-old Windows bug has infected more than a million PCs in the past 24 hours, a security company said today.

Early Wednesday, Helsinki, Finland-based security firm F-Secure Corp. estimated that 3.5 million PCs have been compromised by the "Downadup" worm, an increase of more than 1.1 million since Tuesday.

The Ministry of Health has a computer virus, media reports say.

The ministry says a virus has attacked its internal email services and forced it to take its websites offline, Radio New Zealand reported.

It contracted the virus on December 30. Deputy director general of information Alan Hesketh told Radio New Zealand the virus had slowed the ministry's computer network but has not affected health services.

Members of Facebook should be wary of a virus that continues to make the rounds on popular social networking sites.

The virus, known as Koobface, was first detected in July 2008 and became prominent in December. A Facebook spokesman said Tuesday the virus hasn't been eradicated yet, although a small percentage of users have been infected. The virus found its way onto some Chicago Tribune staffers' computers Monday and Tuesday.

As we come into 2009, I estimate that there are around 17 million virus and malware items that can now attack the Windows operating system.

This is based on the fact that there were 6 million items at the end of 2007, and during 2008 there was an average of 30,000 new virus and malware items created every day.
Some may argue it's not that bad but in comparison, Apple and Linux systems are virtually virus free!

Hackers have launched a large-scale spam attack masquerading as CNN.com news notifications about the Israeli invasion of Gaza, security researchers said today, in a repeat of a massive campaign last summer that also posed as CNN alerts.

Yesterday morning, RSA Security Inc.'s FraudAction Research Lab spotted the first messages in the new attack, which take advantage of the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Israeli ground forces entered Gaza on Jan. 3 after several days of airstrikes and naval bombardments that began Dec. 27.