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Social Engineering

Social Engineering, Management, and Security

A BYOD dissonance between economic imperative and loss of central control? Discontented staff susceptible to social engineering? David Harley reflects on aspects of Business Reimagined, a new book by Dave Coplin, chief envisioning officer at Microsoft UK, interivewed by Ross McGuinness in Metro.

Valentine’s Day Scams: For the love of money

Scam artists and cybercriminals are looking to turn romance into profit now that Valentine’s Day approaches, possibly taking over your computer in the process. According to ESET researchers in Latin America, we can expect the quest for love to be leveraged as an effective social engineering ploy to enable the bad guys to infect unsuspecting

A dozen predictions for 2012

While I share the reluctance of my colleagues to predict the future, I think there are some trends that can be classified as “reasonably likely to occur” in 2012. I make no promises, but here’s what I think we will see, in no particular order of importance or certainty. We will see increased interest in

Much Ado About Facebook, Part II

Since yesterday’s Much Ado About Facebook post in the ESET Threat Blog, we have written additional articles, received a few comments, and also received updated information on the “threat,” so it seems that now is a good time for a follow-up article.  Reports continue to come in of pornographic and violent imagery on Facebook, and

Facebook video scam: 15 seconds? Don’t watch it at all

[Update: For more articles about Facebook security click here. To help you protect yourself on Facebook and Twitter, ESET provides a free social media scanner.] One of my Facebook friends drew my attention today to a fast-spreading link. I’m pleased to say that he knew better than to look at it, but I figured it was

Malware De‑Cloaked

… people have been asking me about Google’s interesting paper on Trends in Circumventing Web-Malware Detection…

MacDefender: The sky is not falling…

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

Email malware: blast from the past

…today I’m waxing nostalgic about a piece of malware. Not one of those anniversaries that have filled so many blogs, articles and videos recently (happy birthday, dear Brai-ain….), but something that just popped into my mailbox…

Phone Scams and Panic Attacks

…many scams work by panicking victims into taking some unwise action, whether it’s parting with their credit card details or opening a malicious program, claiming that some problem or illegal action is associated with their computer or IP address, such as transmitting malware or visiting paedophile or other pornographic sites…

How to Fool a Security Researcher

…Andrew Lee conducted a fun but disquieting thought experiment in the course of an amusing and informative presentation on user education at the recent Virus Bulletin Seminar…

Boonana Threat Analysis

Our interim analysis of a version of the malware we detect as Java/Boonana.A or Win32/Boonana.A (depending on the particular component of this multi-binary attack) differs in some characteristics from other reports we’ve seen. The most dramatic difference is in the social engineering hook used in messages sent to an infected user’s friends list. Other reports

Imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery

Since its release in 2007, ESET Smart Security has received many accolades for its antimalware, antispam and firewall functions.  However, we have recently been the recipient of a very dubious honor; a rogue antivirus program which masquerades as our own software. The Rogues Gallery Rogue antivirus is a loose family of programs that claim to

Privacy? Who Cares?

In the security industry, we’re sometimes over-ready to be over-prescriptive, seeing security and privacy concerns as paramount where others see them as a distraction. And we’ve become used to the mindset that computer users will always prefer convenience to security.