[UPDATE #1 at 12:15PM: Added more information about location of earthquake and prior scams. AG] We have just heard about the early September 4 (Saturday morning) earthquake near Christchurch, New Zealand, currently estimated at a Richter magnitude of 7.4. Our New Zealand distributor in Auckland is unaffected, but communications with the area are difficult. As with
In addition to recently getting a Droid 2, I purchased a Motorola H17txt Bluetooth headset. When used with a Blackberry or an Android based phone you can download and install an application called MotoSpeak that will read text messages and emails through the H17TXT. Before you go looking for such a headset be warned, there
You have to be a real cool cat to get into the Cambridge Who’s Who registry. A few months ago I received a spam message from whoswhopublication@gmail.com. A legitimate Who’s Who organization is very unlikely to be using a Gmail address and they wouldn’t have sent the email to AskESET. Here’s the email: You were
In my ever-widening circle of anti-cybercrime methodology this particular approach to attribution of the criminals looting the free world makes me particularly gleeful and I can’t wait to spread the good news: Security company HBGary today released an open source tool to digitally fingerprint malicious code and help identify the source of the malware. The
When I first got my Droid I went to set up my security. The first thing I do with a new mobile phone is set it up to require a password to unlock the device. I also set a timeout so that after a few minutes of inactivity the phone will automatically lock itself. If
Installing an application on an iPhone is a bit different than installing an application on an Android based system. With the iPhone you go to the App Store, select your application (and pay if required) then download and install it. For the Android based phones you go to the Android Market, select your application, download
As I previously blogged, there is a serious security flaw in the way that the Android 2.2 OS is implemented, at least on the Motorola Droid 2. If you want to require a password to unlock the phone, and you hit the lock key, it takes at least two minutes before unlocking the phone will
This old dog is learning some new tricks, and no, I am not talking about animal husbandry or bestiality. In the past few months I got a MacBook Pro, switched from Windows XP to Windows 7 and now I have a Droid 2 attached to my hip, so technically I am not married to an
I received an email today that was funny to me, but not to someone who is unsuspecting. I’ll let you read it. —–Original Message—– From: Ann Price [mailto:ann.price@topspot-promotions.net] Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2010 7:14 AM To: AskESET Subject: Placing advertisements on blog.eset.com Greetings, Topspot-Promotions, an established advertising company, would like to pay you for placing
Every layer of protection you add will harden the target against cybercrime. SmartScreen technology found in Internet Explorer 8 has recently clocked over 1 billion blocked potential malware downloads from malicious sites. By way of Terry Zink’s blog: 1 billion malware blocks is an amazing milestone and an example of two things. First socially engineered
I just blogged about a potential new Facebook worm. It may turn out that it is not a worm, but another type of attack that involves multiple levels of criminal organizations, which to some degree are being aided by the privacy laws in the Holland. To begin with there are stolen credential attacks. The two
As expected, Microsoft has released a critical out-of-band patch for the LNK shortcut file vulnerability which received attention last month. As a critical patch, this update will be delivered through Windows’ Automatic Update service, as well as being directly available for download from Microsoft’s site without a Windows Genuine Advantage check. A reboot is required for the
I recently read a column on Chris Elliott’s travel site warning of a truly dishonest and despicable practice that Yahoo Travel and Travelocity are engaging in to attempt to trick people into buying trip insurance. When you go to these web sites and book a trip the screen shows you the price of the trip
Despite all those people who honoured May 31st 2010 as Quit Facebook Day – well, 31,000 people, maybe not an enormous dent in the 500 million users Facebook recently claimed – Facebook marches on. Clearly they’re doing something right. But what? It’s probably not the personal charm of founder Mark Zuckerberg, who when he’s not
Yesterday I blogged about a security company that found a high percentage of apps for the iPhone and for the Android were stealing user information. I call it stealing because the user is not aware of what personal data is leaving their phone. At the Blackhat Security Conference in Las Vegas the same company, Lookout
Do you have an iPhone or an Android based phone? Wait, don’t tell me, if you installed some third party apps I can probably find out. According to Lookout Inc., in an article at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100728/ap_on_re_us/us_tec_techbit_apps_privacy many of the iPhone and Android apps include spyware. To be fair, Lookout Inc didn’t call it spyware, but that
On July 17th, ESET identified a new malicious file related to the Win32/Stuxnet worm. This new driver is a significant discovery because the file was signed with a certificate from a company called “JMicron Technology Corp”. This is different from the previous drivers which were signed with the certificate from Realtek Semiconductor Corp. It is
“Written in the form of a personal retrospective, this paper compares the earliest days of PC computer viruses with today’s threats, as well as provides a glimpse into the origins of the computer anti-virus industry.”
A couple of months ago I posted a blog while flying at about 30,000 feet. That was a first for me and today I have a new first. I’m writing and posting a blog from the jury waiting room as I wait to see if I’ll be a juror. Of course, this reminded me of
Today as I filled up, I noticed that they changed my BP / Arco pump kiosk’s payment instructions, probably as a result of the Hotea Arco skimming case a few years back. With the recent commentary on skimming David Harley provided, I thought a picture of anti-skimming advice might speak a thousand words – or
The attacks from cybercriminals are now occurring in the online stock and equity trading world. Instead of simply emptying out compromised brokerage accounts, cybercriminals apparently are refining their attacks and striking at broader and more lofty goals: the trust mechanisms of business equity valuations with publicly traded stocks and equities. George Hulme, InformationWeek contributing writer