February 5th, 2010

Mozilla Firefox hit by malware add-ons

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 8:20 am

Categories: Anti Virus, Browsers, Data theft, Exploit code, Firefox, Malware, Microsoft, Mozilla, Spam and Phishing, Spyware and Adware, Viruses and Worms, Vulnerability research

Tags: Mozilla Firefox, Trojan Horse, Malware, Mozilla Corp., Add-on, Spyware, Adware & Malware, Cyberthreats, Spyware, Viruses And Worms, Security

Mozilla says a pair of malicious Firefox add-ons slipped by its security checks and infected approximately 4,600 Windows computers over the last five months.

The browser add-ons, described my Mozilla as “experimental,”  contained a Trojan horse that executed when Firefox started and infected the host computer.

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February 4th, 2010

Does Blippy really pose a security risk?

Posted by Dancho Danchev @ 4:11 pm

Categories: Browsers, Hackers, Malware, Passwords, Phishing, Privacy, Social Networking Applications, Spam and Phishing, Web 2.0

Tags: Fraudster, Phishing, Cyberthreats, Spam, Viruses And Worms, Security, Spam And Phishing, Dancho Danchev

Researchers from Cyveillance are calling the recently launched “Twitter of personal finance” service - Blippy, a “spear phisher’s dream” due to the massive amounts of real-time purchasing history shared by its users.

With fraudsters actively crawling Web 2.0 services (Spammers harvesting emails from Twitter - in real time) for data to be later on integrated in targeted attacks, the detailed and publicly obtainable financial data on Blippy can come handy if they manage to solve a simple problem - obtaining the emails of Blippy users.

Here’s are some sample scenarios that cybercriminals can easily take advantage of.

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February 3rd, 2010

Microsoft warns of new IE data-leakage vulnerability

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 2:25 pm

Categories: Arbitrary Code Execution, Browsers, Data theft, Exploit code, Malware, Microsoft, Patch Watch, Responsible disclosure, Spam and Phishing, Vulnerability research

Tags: Vulnerability, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Attack, Web Browsers, Security, Internet, Ryan Naraine

Microsoft today issued a security advisory to acknowledge an information disclosure hole in its Internet Explorer browser and warned that an attacker could exploit the flaw to access files with an already known filename and location.

The vulnerability was first discussed at this week’s Black Hat DC conference by Jorge Luis Alvarez Medina, a security consultant with Core Security Technologies.   Microsoft says the risk is highest for IE users running Windows XP or who have disabled the browser’s Protected Mode feature. Read the rest of this entry »

January 6th, 2010

Researcher exposes Google spyware connections

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 11:06 am

Categories: Browsers, Malware, Passwords, Phishing, Spam and Phishing, Spyware and Adware

Tags: Google Inc., Advertisement, Continental Airlines Inc., Ben Edelman, Spyware, WhenU, Advertiser, Advertising & Promotion, Travel, Marketing

A prominent anti-spyware researcher is calling on Google to sever its ties with an advertising partner that covers popular sites with pop-up PPC advertisements promoting those same sites.

According to Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School and a staunch anti-spyware advocate, Google is charging advertisers for what he described as “conversion-inflation” traffic from the WhenU spyware program.

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January 4th, 2010

Apple (Snow Leopard) malware blocker collecting cobwebs

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 11:46 am

Categories: Anti Virus, Apple, Arbitrary Code Execution, Browsers, Data theft, Phishing, Social Networking Applications, Spam and Phishing, Viruses and Worms

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Malware, Apple Inc., Spyware, Adware & Malware, Desktops, Apple Mac OS X, Cyberthreats, Apple Mac OS, Viruses And Worms, Security

Nearly six months after Apple added a malware blocker to Mac OS X (Snow Leopard), the feature appears to be collecting cobwebs.

Apple has not added any anti-malware signature updates to the XProtect.plist file that launched with antidotes for OSX.RSPlug.A and OSX.Iservice, two known Trojan horse programs targeting Mac OS X users.

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December 8th, 2009

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft plugs IE 'drive-by download' security holes

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 12:50 pm

Categories: Arbitrary Code Execution, Browsers, Denial of Service (DoS), Exploit code, Microsoft, Patch Watch, Responsible disclosure, Spam and Phishing, Spyware and Adware, Vulnerability research, Windows Vista, Zero-day attacks

Tags: Attacker, Vulnerability, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Security, Ryan Naraine

Microsoft today shipped six bulletins with patches for a total of 12 documented security vulnerabilities in a wide range of widely deployed software products.  Three of the six bulletins are rated “critical,” Microsoft’s highest severity rating.

The most serious issues affect the company’s Internet Explorer browser, including the newest IE 8 on Windows 7. Read the rest of this entry »

December 4th, 2009

How many people fall victim to phishing attacks?

Posted by Dancho Danchev @ 3:43 pm

Categories: Botnets, Browsers, Data theft, Malware, Passwords, Phishing, Research, Spam and Phishing

Tags: Phishing, Cyberthreats, Spam, Viruses And Worms, Security, Spam And Phishing, Dancho Danchev

According to a recently released report, based on a sample of 3 million users collected over a period of 3 months, approximately 45% of the time, users submitted their login information to the phishing site they visited.

The study, exclusively monitored users who successfully reached a live phishing site that was not blocked by their browser’s built-in anti-phishing protection or filtered as fraudulent one (Phishing experiment sneaks through all anti-spam filters), and found out that on average, 12.5 out of one million customers sampled for a particular bank, visited the phishing site.

Here are some of the key findings from the report:

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December 4th, 2009

Critical Adobe Flash, Adobe Air patches on tap

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 7:49 am

Categories: Adobe, Arbitrary Code Execution, Browsers, Data theft, Exploit code, Flash, Microsoft, Patch Watch, Responsible disclosure, Spam and Phishing, Viruses and Worms, Vulnerability research

Tags: Adobe Systems Inc., Patch Management, Macromedia Flash Player, Adobe Air Inc., Patches, Apple Mac OS X, Productivity, Security, Operating Systems, Software

Here’s an important security heads-up to all computer users: Adobe plans to ship a critical Flash Player update next Tuesday to fix multiple serious security vulnerabilities.

The patches will be released alongside updates from Microsoft and will affect all platforms — Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

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December 2nd, 2009

Fake H1N1 (Swine Flu) alerts lead to malware

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 8:37 am

Categories: Arbitrary Code Execution, Data theft, Exploit code, Malware, Phishing, Spam and Phishing, Viruses and Worms

Tags: Malware, H1N1 Flu, Spyware, Adware & Malware, E-mail, Cyberthreats, Viruses And Worms, Security, Online Communications, Ryan Naraine

Malicious hackers are using fake alerts around H1N1 (Swine Flu) vaccines to trick end users into installing malware on Windows computers, according to warnings issued by computer security firms.

The latest malware campaign begins with e-mail messages offering information regarding the H1N1 vaccination. The e-mail messages contain a link to a bogus Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site with prompts to create a user profile.  During this process, a malware file gets planted on the user’s machine.

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November 12th, 2009

Microsoft bracing for malware attacks from embedded fonts

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 11:16 am

Categories: Arbitrary Code Execution, Botnets, Browsers, Denial of Service (DoS), Exploit code, Metasploit, Microsoft, Passwords, Patch Watch, Responsible disclosure, Spam and Phishing, Spyware and Adware

Tags: Malware, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Attack Vector, Font, Attack, Metasploit, Microsoft Windows, Security, Operating Systems

Heads up to all Microsoft Windows users: If you’re running Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, stop what you’re doing and immediately download and apply the MS09-065 update released earlier this week.

Security researchers say it’s only a matter of time — days not weeks — before malicious hackers start exploiting one of the vulnerabilities via booby-trapped Web pages or Office (Word or PowerPoint) documents.

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