Hi-tech criminals have found novel ways to carry out web-based attacks that are much harder to spot and stop, warn security experts.
Some cyber criminals have exploited file-sharing networks and popular webpages to attack targets. The malicious hackers have turned to these methods instead of going to the trouble of hijacking home PCs.
Web security software firm Panda has spotted a new "ransomware" strain that is threatening to fleece internet users.
The company's Panda Labs has uncovered the Sinowal.FY threat, which is malicious code that encrypts users' files so that they cannot access them. The malware then demands a £150 ransom for giving them a tool to decrypt the files, as well as the decryption key.
When Sinowal.FY installs on the system, it encrypts every single document on the hard disk and creates a file called "read_me.txt" with the kidnapper's demands.
Hackers haven't wasted any time exploiting the airplane crash in Sao Paulo, Brazil that claimed nearly 190 lives Tuesday, a U.S. security company said today.
An e-mail campaign is using the tragedy to lure readers to a malicious Web site, reported Websense Inc. in an alert. According to Websense, the e-mail, written in Portuguese, includes details of the TAM airlines flight that crashed after trying to land at the notoriously dangerous Congonhas Airport, which is located in the middle of Sao Paulo.
Always on the lookout for new and less-noticeable means for carrying out online fraud and other cyber-crimes, hackers are increasingly moving to adopt techniques including response splitting and cross-site forgery as they continue to mature their attacks, according to Web security and testing expert Jeremiah Grossman.
I recently attended a luncheon celebrating the 25th anniversary of security vendor Symantec, so perhaps it's apropos that this year is also the anniversary of the creation of the first computer virus. One wonders if Symantec be what it is today, or if companies like McAfee or Trend Micro even be around, were it not for a high school kid from Pittsburgh named Richard Skrenta.
Hotmail and Yahoo accounts have been hijacked to send out tens of thousands of spam messages, according to security firm BitDefender.
The two webmail providers have fallen victim to a new trojan called Trojan.Spammer.HotLan.A.
The malware not only generates new webmail accounts automatically but has also found a way around the anti-spam CAPTCHA system, which requires people to enter the letters depicted in an image.
In June, some 40 percent of malicious software worldwide originated from Beijing, nearly doubling from 21 percent in May, said Simon Heron, managing director for security vendor Network Box Corp.
Spam from Beijing, however, dropped from 11 percent to 5 percent over the same time period, he said.
Computer users have been warned to watch out for a talking virus. The new attack, detected by PandaLabs, uses the Windows text reader to play the following sentences:
“You has [sic] been infected. I repeat you has been infected and your system files has been deleted. Sorry. Have a nice day and bye bye.”
A NASTY computer worm is taking advantage of the worldwide Harry Potter mania to infect PCs around the globe.
With the release of the last ever Potter book and the premiere of the fifth movie in the franchise, the W32/Hairy-A worm is disguising itself as a copy of the eagerly-anticipated novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which releases worldwide on July 21.
Once in the user's system, the worm copies itself onto attached USB memory drives so it can spread to any other PCs it is connected to.
A new round of greeting-card spam that draws users to visit attack sites relies on a sophisticated multipronged, multiexploit strike force to infect machines, security professionals said late Thursday.
Captured samples of the unsolicited e-mail have all borne the same subject line -- "You've received a postcard from a family member!" -- and contain links to a malicious Web site, where JavaScript determines whether the victim's browser has scripting enabled or turned off.
