[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

We have discussed SEO poisoning extensively in the ESET Threat Blog, and it should come as no surprise to our readers that any topic which trends up quickly in search engine traffic will be exploited by the criminals who specialize in such activities.  The poisoned search term du jour is "erin andrews death threat".  Apparently,

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

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

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushmi-pullyu#The_Pushmi-pullyu In an article in the Register with the eye-catching title of "Verified by Visa bitchslapped by Cambridge researchers", John Leyden comments on the argument by Cambridge researchers Ross Anderson and Steve Murdoch that the 3D Secure system, better known as Verified by Visa or Mastercard Securecode is better suited to shifting liability for

I recently learned a new acronym: SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It). What this refers to is the defense that criminals routinely use (plausible deniability) – and even more so when it comes to illicit activities on the Internet. On Sunday, November 8th 2009 the Associated Press published an article regarding an individual that was

"Now may I suggest some of the things we must do if we are to make the American dream a reality. First, I think all of us must develop a world perspective if we are to survive. The American dream will not become a reality devoid of the larger dream of brotherhood and peace and

Responding to a request for information about phishing and malware distribution mechanisms this morning, I happened upon a link on the Anti-Phishing Working Group site to the Silver Tail blog  The site has been running a series of blogs on "Online Fraud from the Victim’s Perspective". Author Laura Mather tells the story of two victims,

Here’s something I haven’t noticed before (but then I don’t pay nearly as much attention to phishing messages as I used to, owing to the need to sleep occasionally). I’ve started to receive messages purporting to be from the Alliance and Leicester, in the UK. The messages are much the same, apart from the Subject

Here’s a phish one of ESET’s partners drew our attention to: it’s aimed at users of Maybank (http://www.maybank2u.com), the largest financial services group in Malaysia. The scam is somewhat more elaborate than many we see, and it’s worth a little analysis to see what flags we can extract from it for spotting a phisher at work From: Maybank