The MacDefender malware has morphed again, now taking the guise of “MacShield.” As in the case of its oldest sibling MacDefender, the MacShield variant has taken the name of a legitimate Mac OSX software product with small distribution, doubtless causing the real developer significant heartache. The UI is essentially unchanged, but as usual all
Cyber Security pundits have been keenly watching the development of nascent state targeted attacks such as the Stuxnet worm with interest for some time and warning of the possible implications, but now it’s official. According to The Wall Street Journal, “The Pentagon’s first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public
Android Smartphones are under attack again by rogue applications that once installed are reading information from the phone and sending it back to a pre-assigned location. According to mobile security firm as many as 120,000 users may have been infected from a cafeteria selection of at least two dozen applications from the Android Market. “Once
A while back a malicious program called DroidDream was found on the Google Marketplace. The thing about DroidDream is that it exploited a vulnerability that gave it root access. Now contrast how Google treats security software. Security applications are not allowed to have root access. The truth is that the most popular mobile platforms (and
We like to give you plenty of warning when we suspect that something unpleasant is coming down the pike, even if it’s just one of those likely bursts of Black Hat SEO (web search poisoning) that come with a media-friendly event. Still, I suspect that if I told you we expect lots of malicious activity
Over the past couple of years rogue online pharmacies have been advertising their domains on search engines and promoting themselves through search engine optimization. Legitimate pharmaceutical companies have their own measures in place to work on taking these sites offline. The problem with rogue online pharmacies is that they do not meet federal regulations. To
In an unfortunate series of events related to the RSA SecurID technology, reports are coming in that Lockheed Martin’s networks have been broken into by unknown perpetrators. Jim Finkle and Andrea Shalal-Esa broke an exclusive story and reached out to folks in the industry to get to the truth. “They breached security systems designed to
Update: It seems like the initial article is inaccurate and that Paul Rellis never made any such comments about a 14 year old breaking into the X-Box live servers and have not offered to mentor him http://kotaku.com/5805742/microsoft-is-helping-an-xbox-live-hacker-develop-his-talent TekGoblin reports (http://www.tekgoblin.com/2011/05/27/14-year-old-call-of-duty-hacker-hired-by-microsoft/) that a teenager who broke into the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 gameservers last
In the last few days, I have been asked by a journalist (or four) what MacDefender means for the future of Apple security, and if I thought there was excess hype around it. I’ll address the second question first. I think its safe to say the current malware would not be newsworthy if
Security companies in general and, unfortunately, anti-malware companies in particular, are often accused of ‘hyping’ threats because of a perceived self-interest. However, in the main, legitimate vendors and researchers like those at ESET typically try to resist overhyping or playing up threats where possible, in favor of more balanced discussion that can help customers take
The recent MacDefender Trojan has been receiving “rebranding” facelifts since it came out. It has now been deployed as MacProtector, MacDetector, MacSecurity, Apple Security Center, and there are no doubt more iterations to come. The malware has been updated, and now sports an improved UI that looks like a native Mac OSX application, unlike the
Introduction As the sun is setting and I breathe some of the night time air I am inspired to write about Facebook. Yes, *the* Facebook, the third largest country if it were a physical place with boundaries under a common rule of law and government. When many people use a service such as this, it
Recent additions to SCMagazine’s Cybercrime Corner blog include: “Password strategies: Who goes there?” by David Harley, May 23, 2011 Password selection usually involves compromise, but even a short password can be reasonably strong and still memorable. This follows up at some length on a previous ESET blog by Paul Laudanski. “Fighting cybercrime” by Randy Abrams,
Yes, it is Sony again. This time it is their Canada web site and their Japan website. According to thehackernews.com, which I cannot vouch for, this is the 10th Sony hack. While we don’t know how the PlayStation Network hack happened, we do have some information about how some of the other attacks were performed
… I haven’t recently posted any pointers to our content on SC Magazine’s Cybercrime Corner, and now might be a good time to recap on what Randy and I have been posting there this month (so far…) …
It seems a little strange to have the words “Facebook” and “privacy” in the same sentence in one of my blogs, yet it seems that Facebook CTO Bret Taylor testified at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on mobile phone and internet privacy. But it turns out the story is about rather more than privacy: it’s
Greetings Dear Reader, We have published guidance material previously on passwords and passphrases, some are blogs and some are lengthier depending on your liking (link & link). Even still it is always good practice to reinforce sensible password techniques. For this blog, I plan on sharing an analogous self-ritual, and one that relies on a
In life one cannot reload a particular scene; however, in gaming one certainly can. This is an unfortunate time for Sony PlayStation and customers due to the recent breach. Anecdotal reports are now coming in that Sony PlayStation who opened up their gaming ecosystem recently has now potentially fallen to a password reset hack. This
There are reports coming out today about Google Android and how approximately 99.7% of its users are potentially open to compromise. This news cycle started by the Ulm University publishing some information on the 13th of May showing some results. I’m sure this story will develop and CTAC may follow-up to my blog with more details;
Another day, another Facejack attack. We see a lot of these sorts of scams, alluringly titled posts – typically with a promise to show you who has been visiting your profile (or infamously, video of Osama Bin Laden’s death) – that try to get you to click to see some special content. The latest one
…35% of iPhone/Android users in the US interact with their smartphones before they get out of bed…