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By Mincom, on April 2nd, 2010
A New Trojan Horse Attacks the Military and the Banks
NetWitness is probably a name you haven’t heard of, but the company is a major in corporate computer security – antivirus for the big boys, if you will. And in February, NetWitness called the alarm on a major Trojan horse attack on government and corporate computers. The attack has gained a lot of notoriety, and they call it the Zeus botnet. On the NetWitness website, the company’s press release declares that there were 2500 corporations and government offices hit around the world. And they were not just hit by hackers passing the time for their schoolboy hijinks. This was an attack that stole large caches of corporate secrets (from companies like the pharmaceutical major Merck), and financial information like credit card numbers. Whoever did it, did it for money.
This particular attack is still on the rampage, and it hasn’t been contained [...]
By Mincom, on August 21st, 2009
Adware, spyware and computer viruses share some similarities, one of which is that all three are major nuisances for computer users. Let’s differentiate the three.
Spyware is software that does not intentionally harm your computer. What they do is to create ways for someone else than the owner to communicate with the computer. Normally spyware record the various types of web sites you visit which are later used by web advertisers to allow them to send you unwanted emails and pop-ups.
This is why spyware are usually frowned upon and greatly avoided. They are more intrusive than adware. Spyware have their own separate executable programs which allow them to record your keystrokes, scan files on your hard disks and look at other applications that you use including but not limited to chat programs, cookies and Web browser settings.
The spyware will send the information that it had gathered to the spyware author. The [...]
By Mincom, on May 2nd, 2009
San Francisco – The Conficker worm’s creators are evidently toying with ways to put the pervasive computer virus to work firing off spam or spreading rogue anti-virus applications called “scareware”.
An April update sent to a tiny percentage of infected computers had the machines retrieve components of notorious Storm and Waledac worms unleashed in past years to create armies of “botnets” – automated crime networks – for spreading spam or scareware.
“It looks like these guys are perhaps testing the waters to see which one of those would be a better money-maker for them,” Trend Micro advanced threats researcher Paul Ferguson said on Monday of Conficker’s masters.
“We have always suspected that the people behind this would not sit idly by without trying to make money off this somehow. Spamming and rogue anti-virus are pretty lucrative for these guys.”
Ties to components of Storm and Waledac signal that Conficker’s creators were likely involved with [...]
By Mincom, on May 2nd, 2009
Tokyo – Japan has reported no human cases of deadly swine flu so far – but a computer virus of the same name has been spreading on the Internet in recent days, authorities warned on Thursday.
Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) said on its website that a suspicious Japanese-language email message with an attached file called “information on swine flu” had been circulating in cyberspace.
“The institute has received reports that the email message falsely identifying itself as coming from the NIID is circulating,” it said.
“The email is carrying a file titled ‘information on swine flu’, which has been recognised as an illegal programme by the institute’s virus-checking software,” the NIID statement said.
The institute did not say what kind of malware was hidden inside the file or what harm it might do.
The email, originating from senders in the “@yahoo.co.jp” domain, seemed to be sent to random Internet users, the institute [...]
By Mincom, on April 27th, 2009
San Francisco – Computer security top guns around the world watched warily as the dreaded Conficker worm squirmed deeper into infected machines with the arrival of an April 1st trigger date.
The malicious software evolved, as expected, from East to West, beginning in time zones first to greet April Fool’s Day.
“Planes are not going to fall out of the sky and the Internet is not going to melt down,” said threat analyst Paul Ferguson of Trend Micro computer security firm in Northern California.
“The big mystery is what those behind Conficker are going to do. When they have this many machines under their control it is kind of scary. With a click of a mouse they could get thousands of machines to do whatever they want.”
A task force assembled by Microsoft has been working to stamp out the worm, referred to as Conficker or DownAdUP, and the US software colossus has placed [...]
By Mincom, on April 27th, 2009
San Francisco – The dreaded Conficker computer worm is stirring. Security experts say the worm’s authors appear to be trying to build a big moneymaker, but not a cyber weapon of mass destruction as many people feared.
As many as 12 million computers have been infected by Conficker. Security firm Trend Micro says some of the machines have been updated over the past few days with fake antivirus software – the first attempt by Conficker’s authors to profit from their massive “botnet”.
Criminals use bogus security software to extort money. Victims are told their computers are infected, and can be fixed only by paying for a clean-up that never happens.
Conficker gets on computers through a hole Microsoft patched in October. PCs set up for automatic Windows updates should be clean. – Sapa-AP
By Mincom, on April 27th, 2009
San Francisco – The Conficker worm’s April 1st trigger date came and went without the bedevilling computer virus causing any mischief but security specialists warn that the threat is far from over.
Conficker did just what the “white hats” tracking it expected – the virus evolved to better resist extermination and make its masters tougher to find. “There are still millions of personal computers out there that are, unknown to their owners, at risk of being controlled in the future by persons unknown,” said Trend Micro threat researcher Paul Ferguson. “The threat is still there. These guys are smart; they are not going to pull any obvious strings when there are so many eyeballs on the problem.”
A task force assembled by Microsoft has been working to stamp out the worm, referred to as Conficker or DownAdUp, and the US software colossus has placed a bounty of $250 000 on the heads [...]
By Mincom, on April 27th, 2009
Boston – A malicious software program known as Conficker that many feared would wreak havoc on April 1 is slowly being activated, weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm, security experts said.
Conficker, also known as Downadup or Kido, is quietly turning thousands of personal computers into servers of e-mail spam and installing spyware, they said. The worm started spreading late last year, infecting millions of computers and turning them into “slaves” that respond to commands sent from a remote server that effectively controls an army of computers known as a botnet.
Its unidentified creators started using those machines for criminal purposes in recent weeks by loading more malicious software onto a small percentage of computers under their control, said Vincent Weafer, a vice president with Symantec Security Response, the research arm of the world’s largest security software maker, Symantec Corp.
“Expect this to be long-term, slowly changing,” he said of the [...]
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