Back on the 22nd of February, I wrote an entry on this blog called “Does Anybody Know WHOIS Out There?”. This entry was about the very slack or even non-existent verification of identification information (sheesh, try saying THAT with a few beers under your belt!) provided by individuals and organizations registering domain names on the
The Apple iPad is the current gadget du jour amongst the digerati and has been seeing strong presales, with estimates as high as 150,000 units on the first day. With such attention in the media and the blogosphere, it is no wonder that both legitimate businesses and scammers have taken to using it as bait
The Anti-Phishing Working Group has asked its members to publicize the forthcoming Counter eCrime Operations Summit in Brazil, which I’m pleased to do. This year the APWG is hosting it’s fourth annual Counter eCrime Operations Summit (CeCOS IV) on May 11, 12 & 13 in São Paulo, Brazil. The Discounted Early Bird Registration rate will
[Update: so far I have two votes for dumb. Maybe I’m giving this spammer too much credit, and it is a simple “spam template fail” 😉 On the other hand, while I wouldn’t vote “evil genius”, I’d still love to know how many people actually fall for this – I don’t have a problem envisaging
It has been a year since we last discussed fraudulent domain name registrar scams and we wanted to let people know that this scam continues unabated. In a nutshell, a message is sent to a publicly-visible email address listed on your website (sales, support, the CEO’s office, a public relations contact, et cetera) from a
Greetings, friends and fiends. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to blog: I’ve been trying out one of these vacation thingies that I keep reading about in travel magazines. (Well, my wife does, and she tells me when I need a holiday, presumably as my conversations get grouchier.) But I see that my
We have recently seen some reports that give some idea of the real size of the cybercrime problem. Recently Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Examiner Dave Nelson reported that online banking fraud involving the electronic transfer of funds cost US banks more than $40 million dollars per month for the third quarter of 2009. The
Ford Motor Company has recently announced that later this year it will be producing cars with built-in WiFi capabilities. Since 2008, the first generation of this system enabled owners of certain Ford, Lincoln & Mercury vehicles to connect media players & bluetooth devices to their entertainment systems. This second generation of its so called Sync
Let’s consider the words of the song “I’ll Never Fall In Love” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David: “What do you get when you kiss a girl? You get enough germs to catch pneumonia After you do, she’ll never phone ya I’ll never fall in love again” OK, it’s confession time. I am single and
While serving in the Marine Corps, one activity that I felt was effective in preparing both myself and my unit to be able to handle real-world scenarios, was getting as much experience as possible from military training exercises. In most cases multiple branches worked together or, as in the case with NATO exercises, multiple countries
Perhaps you have seen the recent buzz around Google Buzz. The fact is that Google has decided that anything it knows about you it is free to share with the world at its discretion and not only do you not need to be told, but if you say no they will say yes for you.
According to Cell-news.com, in 2007 over 850,000 Brits flushed their cell phones down the toilet. I’m sorry to report that there isn’t much a security vendor can do to help you if you flush your cell phone. ESET recently commissioned a study of smart phone users concerning mobile security. The results are interesting. A little
Recently Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, said in an interview “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”. There are a variety of circumstances in which a person would want some degree of privacy for perfectly legitimate reasons. If a person
[Part 7 of an occasional series, updating a blog series I ran in early 2009 to reflect changes in the threat landscape. This series will also be available shortly as a white paper.] Call For Backup If sensitive information is stored on your hard drive (and if you don’t have something worth protecting on your system,
No, I’m not talking about a newly-discovered and virulent OS X upconversion of SevenDust or AutoStart 9805. Mac Virus is a site founded by Susan Lesch in the 1990s, when pre-OS X Mac-specific malware was still a serious issue – AutoStart in particular caused significant damage back then – and cross-platform macro viruses were also a major
Wow, I knew it was a problem, but the scope is mind-boggling. At least one of you out there is probably making this mistake. According to the security firm Trusteer, 73% of people use their banks passwords at other sites as well. You can read the article on MSNBC In addition to that statistic, Trusteer
Two new papers have gone up on the ESET White Papers page at http://www.eset.com/download/whitepapers.php. (Strictly speaking, they’re not altogether new: they include some material that has previously been blogged here.) The Internet Book of the Dead is a bit different from other papers you’ll find on the ESET white papers page. (Technically, it’s not actually
At least as of this writing if you paste the following line into a Google search you’ll find something interesting… “2004 Honda Accord EX-V6” $3000 site:craigslist.org An ad with the title and price shows up on almost every Craigslist site in the country and in virtually all cases the ad has been flagged for removal.
In December 2009, due to miserable security practices, Rockyou.com suffered a data breach that exposed over 32 million user passwords which were then published on the internet. For a little background, if you use Face Book apps, like Superwall, Speedracing, Likeness, Hugme, or Birthday cards, MySpace apps like Glittertext, Slideshow, Photofx, and many others, as
A little over a week ago we received a comment in response to David Harley’s blog post that read as follows: InterNations – the Network for Expatriates and Global Minds! The Internations Management has decided to donate 10 Eurocents to Haiti for each text message! Text “Haiti” to: +xxxxxxxxxxxx Spread the Word!
SC Magazine recently reported a malicious application in Google’s Android online market store http://www.scmagazineus.com/malicious-apps-found-in-googles-android-online-store/article/161001/. Due to the highly open nature of Android applications, this is going to probably be a huge problem. Here is the real irony. Many people will probably switch from Android to the iPhone because of the security concerns. Why is it