blacklist

Phishers use HTML attachments to evade browser blacklists

To get around phishing blacklists in browsers, scammers are luring people by using HTML attachments instead of URLs, a security firm is warning.

Chrome and Firefox are good at detecting phishing sites and warning Web surfers via a browser notice when they are about to visit a site that looks dangerous. So good, in fact, that scammers are resorting to a new tactic to lure victims into their traps via e-mails--attaching HTML files that are stored locally when they are opened, according to an M86 blog post yesterday.

After the user fills in a form with the information the scammers … Read more

WikiLeaks removed from Aussie blacklist

No parts of whistleblower Web site WikiLeaks are now on the Australian blacklist of banned Web sites, according to the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

In March 2009 the ACMA revealed that a number of pages on WikiLeaks were put on the blacklist of banned Web sites because the pages linked to Web sites on Denmark's blacklist.

However, the ACMA today revealed that WikiLeaks was no longer on its blacklist of Web sites.

"Currently, the ACMA list of prohibited URLs that is notified to accredited filter providers does not contain any URLs within the WikiLeaks Web site," … Read more

Dasient helps Web sites avoid blacklists, malware

Last week, PBWorks founder David Weekly found out from some customers that his hosted collaboration site had been blacklisted by Symantec for hosting malware and, thus, visitors to any of the 10 million pages on PBWorks were being warned that the site wasn't safe.

"(Damn) you, Norton Safe Web. Whenever one file on one PBWorks space has a virus, all of PBworks is marked unsafe?!" a frustrated Weekly wrote on Twitter and Facebook on Thursday. In a follow-up interview, he said: "That's tarnishing our brand. It's not legitimate to basically poison the whole domain … Read more

iPhone can phone home and kill apps?

Apple has apparently included a blacklisting mechanism in iPhone OS 2.x through which the device can phone home, check for unauthorized applications, and disable them. The OS includes a URL that points to a page containing a list of unauthorized applications, specifically those listed here.

According to Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the book iPhone Open Application Development and an iPhone forensics manual:

This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to … Read more

Finnish government blacklists 'free speech' site

A recent incident in which a Finnish free speech activist was censored by his government highlights the dangers of secret blacklists of supposedly illegal Web sites.

The spat started when programmer Matti Nikki began to research which Web sites were secretly blocked by Finnish Internet providers based on a list compiled by the government. Although the secret blacklist was supposed to be reserved for overseas child pornography, Nikki discovered that, at least in his view, the majority of Web sites blocked were perfectly legal.

And what happened when Nikki published his findings on its Lapsiporno.info site? You guessed it: … Read more