SPAMfighter News

Geolocatiedienst Utility of Porn Sites Utilized to Identify Infected PCs’ Location

Wed, 16 May 2012 05:34:28 GMT

According to researchers from security firm, Websense, a malware strain has been revealed from infected computers offering adult dating websites. As the service utilizes geo-location service, the location of an infected system can be determined easily without difficulty.

Innumerable malicious programs examined within the firm's laboratory reached out to the URL promos.fling.com/geo/txt.city.php. Initially, the researchers wondered if it was any central command-and-control (C&C) system of a malicious network-of-bots.

The URL marked as "Hottest Place to Hook Up", enticed netizens towards meeting the hottest members in San Diego", the city where the Websense Security Labs is located. And it is at this juncture that the crafty site promos.fling.com/geo/txt.city.php starts its malicious activity.

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25 Percent of PCs within UK have Malware, Reports PandaLabs

Wed, 16 May 2012 05:34:04 GMT

According to the Q1-2012 report by PandaLabs, nearly one PC in every batch of 4 inside UK has some form of infection. The study indicates that 23%-or-so of the British computers have malware; however, the infection rate is low solely in Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. In China there's maximum malware infection where over 50% of the PCs have been compromised.

Possibly, they're Trojans that cause the infections. According to PandaLabs, it has detected more than 6m distinct malicious programs of which 80% represent Trojans. The next malware to proliferate the maximum are worms, while on No.3 are viruses. Overall, it seems cyber-criminals are utilizing more-and-more of stealthy Trojans for seizing money and personal credentials, while the utilization of worms/viruses is continuously declining.

PandaLabs, through its report, also outlines a number of most dangerous security incidents, which took place in Q1-2012. Among these, ransomware assaults increased dramatically from the earlier Q4-2011 that the company holds the 'Police Virus' responsible for. This malware exhibits logo-embedded e-mails supposedly from agencies of globally functioning law enforcement for deceiving recipients into thinking the police has locked their computers because the machines accessed unsuitable websites alternatively made unlawful downloads. For retrieving control of the hijacked computers, end-users must pay a penalty of around 100 euros alternatively 100 pounds, the virus-laced e-mails indicate.

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OpenID being Imitated in New Spam Wave

Tue, 15 May 2012 05:52:27 GMT

Security researchers from Barracuda Labs state that one new spam campaign is enticing end-users onto a malevolent website, which attempts at duplicating one service called the OpenID, in anticipation that potential victims would believe the spammers' assertion.

It maybe noted that OpenID serves websites in doing away with crafting user accounts for their own. Rather, it lets the clients of those sites access other websites via entering their login credentials. These other websites can be Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook or Twitter.

Based on the known idea about people generally being unaware of the OpenID's working process, the victims become effectively lured into giving away their credentials.

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ICS-CERT Cautions about Gas Pipeline Companies of USA being Targeted with Spear-Phishing

Tue, 15 May 2012 05:52:04 GMT

The U.S. ICS-CERT is cautioning of one live "spear phishing" scam that's aiming attack on enterprises within the sector for natural gas distribution. Computerworld.com published this on May 7, 2012.

The ICS-CERT lately released an advisory, according to which, the Team had got information regarding personalized assaults as well as hacking incidents at many of the enterprises recently. It seemed, according to the agency that the assaults began during late-December 2011.

Chairman Jesse Hurley of the North American Energy Standards Board's Critical Infrastructure Committee, who's also Shift Systems' CEO said that the majority of the conduit builders within USA was encountering the spear-phishing assaults, adding that they'd never occurred earlier. Incidentally, Shift Systems runs the PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) associated with USA's complete power grid. Cnet.com published this on May 7, 2012.

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Syria Conducting Cyber-espionage on Dissidents’ PCs; F-Secure

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:36:30 GMT

According to F-Secure, the security company, the government of Syria apparently is using spyware to infect activists' computers through Skype for quietly monitoring their operations.

Researchers from the company stated that earlier one hard drive they got through a source showed a picture of one computer belonging to an activist in Syria whom local officials had targeted.

A Skype-facilitated conversation had contaminated that activist's computer. The conversation actually started off from a co-activist's PC. Curiously, the co-activist was already in police custody so questionably how could he have been an initiator of the chat.

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