Criminal Hackers

Facebook has joined the ranks of the most popular sites targeted by phishers, according to a study released Wednesday by Kaspersky Lab.

Facebook's share of the phishing attacks that occurred from January through March this year was 5.7 percent, while more than 52 percent were masquerading as PayPal, 13.3 percent targeted eBay users, and 7.8 percent were fake HSBC messages. The rest of the top 10 listed in the report were Google, the Internal Revenue Service, Web-hosting site RapidShare, Bank of America, UBI credit union, and Brazilian bank Bradesco, followed by a category called "other.&… Read more

When Joe Weiss goes to cybersecurity conferences, he rubs elbows with world dignitaries, law enforcement officials, and large corporations, but usually he's the lone representative from the industrial critical infrastructures.

He's been beating the security drumbeat for the utility industry and the others for at least 10 years, as previously isolated control systems at electrical and nuclear plants, electric substations, oil refineries, and water distribution centers are being modernized with direct connections to other systems and to the public Internet. The introduction of the smart grid is pushing old-school industrial control managers off a technological cliff and increasing … Read more

On the heels of a worm that was installing backdoors on Windows systems via Yahoo Instant Messenger comes a new worm that is even more sophisticated in its social engineering and payload, security firm Bkis said on Friday.

The malware arrives via instant message through Yahoo or Skype with any one of a number of messages, including "Does my new hair style look good? bad? perfect?" or "My printer is about to be thrown through a window if this pic won't come out right. You see anything wrong with it?" Bkis wrote in a blog post. … Read more

A rise in fake antivirus offerings on Web sites around the globe shows that scammers are increasingly turning to social engineering to get malware on computers rather than exploiting holes in software, a Google study to be released on Tuesday indicates.

Fake antivirus--false pop-up warnings designed to scare money out of computer users--represents 15 percent of all malware that Google detects on Web sites, according to 13-month analysis the company conducted between January 2009 and February 2010.

That's a five-fold increase from when the company first started its analysis, Niels Provos, a principal software engineer at Google, said in … Read more

Scammers are distributing e-mails designed to trick iPad owners into downloading software that they think is an iTunes update, but which turns out to be malware that opens a back door on the computer, researchers warned on Monday.

The e-mails have a subject line that says "iPad Software Update" and offer a link to a Web page that looks like a legitimate iTunes download page, according to BitDefender. Instead, the link installs malware identified as Backdoor.Bifrose.AADY, according to the BitDefender blog.

The malware injects itself in to the "explorer.exe" process and opens up … Read more

McAfee is partnering with Adgregate Markets on a new service designed to keep malware out of ads that appear on Web sites, the companies plan to announce Monday.

Typically, ad networks, advertisers, and publishers have to manually scan advertising content for malware. The Secure Ads service aims to automate that process for them, said Henry Wong, chief executive of Adgregate Markets.

Currently, when staff at ad and publisher networks perform quality assurance on ads, "they are supposed to catch any potential malicious advertising units, but a lot slip through the cracks," he said. "We secure the ad … Read more

Security researchers have discovered flaws in common file formats, including .zip, which can be used to sneak malware onto computers by evading antivirus detection.

Eight vulnerabilities were found in .zip, supported by Microsoft Office, along with seven others in the .7zip, .rar, .cab and .gzip file formats, said Mario Vuksan, president of ReversingLabs Corp.

The vulnerabilities could be used by attackers to hide malware that could then be slipped past antivirus software via an e-mail attachment and used to compromise a computer, he said.

"The file goes straight through Gmail or Hotmail because it's a trusted format," … Read more

An unpatched hole in Java was being exploited to target visitors to a song lyrics Web site and more attacks are likely, researchers warned on Wednesday.

The flaw in Java Web Start, disclosed last week by several security researchers, affects Windows systems running Firefox and Internet Explorer, said Roger Thompson, AVG chief research officer. He said he couldn't get it to work on Chrome though, despite reports that it does.

Thompson found exploit code for both the Java hole and one in Adobe Reader on servers in Russia that was triggered by computers visiting English-language site Songlyrics.com. The … Read more

A year ago, a variant of the high-profile Conficker worm was all set to stir, programmed to begin receiving update instructions on April 1, with potential consequences being anybody's guess.

Those fears were unfounded as the worm's worst impact appeared to be that it installed malware that displays fake antivirus warnings.

The time bomb failed to blow up, and the buzz died down. But a year later several variants of the worm are still around and growing, albeit slowly--causing problems for unsuspecting Windows users.

Conficker caused major headaches for CNET TV associate producer Jason Howell a few weeks … Read more