Stolen password checking: a question of trust
How do you know a service is legitimate and safe? We all have to trust by proxy sometimes, but it just doesn't feel right to encourage people to accept reassuring statements as gospel.
phish
Google Eye Phish: Bait Me A Hook In The Morning
...I've been seeing quite a few scrawny, toothless piranha mailed from email addresses that are often spoofed but invariably dubious like google.phishing.team@a_latvian_mail_provider.com...
Philosophical Phish
...this is a phish mailed out indiscriminately in the hope of catching a Xoom customer...
Phishphloods: Not all Phishing is Spear‑Phishing
You don't need more advice from me on avoiding phishing following the Epsilon fiasco: Randy, among others has posted plenty of sound advice, and I put some links to relevant articles here, though I don't know of anyone who's published a list of the whole 2,500 or so companies that are apparently Epsilon's customers, though comment threads
Earthquake in New Zealand likely to bring cybershocks
[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
No Stone Left Unturned
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,
iPad scammers target the unwary
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 Return of Jacques Tits
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
Verified by Visa – Pushmi‑pullyu*
* 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
The Blame Game
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
Cybersecurity Awareness Month – Awareness for the Next Generation
“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
Phishing Victims
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,
Phishing Persistence
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
Phish Phlags
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
Phishing the Web
A new advisory from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) offers advice to website owners on what actions to take when notified that their site or server has been compromised for use by phishers. At 18 pages, it’s a substantial high-level document, including: Some web site phishing attack and response scenarios Identifying an attack Reporting a
Get Your Stimulus Check!
As talk goes on in Washington DC about a 2009 Stimulus payment, the phisher are still trying to exploit the 2008 stimulus program. One such attack claims to be the secure way to get your stimulus payment. There was only one secure way to do that, and it was by going through the IRS. There
Self‑Protection part 9
It occurs to me that I should make it clear that this “top ten” isn’t in any particular order. Like the other “top ten” suggestions by the research team that are likely to find their way here in the near future, they’re all significant issues that need thinking about. Point 9 (a short one!) is, don’t
Twitter Security: Tweetie Pie Panic
[Update info moved to new blog post on 6th January] In deference to all those old enough to get a panic attack when reminded of how bad pop music was capable of being in the 1970s, I’ll try to overcome by the urge to mention “Chirpy Chirpy Tweet Tweet”. Anyway, to business. Having all the
10 Ways to Protect Yourself: Part 5
Don’t trust unsolicited files or embedded links, even from friends. It’s easy to spoof email addresses, for instance, so that email appears to come from someone other than the real sender (who/which may in any case be a spam tool rather than a human being). Basic SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) doesn’t validate the sender’s
It’s Scam Time!!!
Welcome to prime-time scam season. This is when the advertisements for taxes in the USA really start to pick up. Granted, they go on all year long, but now is when we traditionally see an increase in volume. There are a variety of such scams. The worst of the scams are the phishing attacks. If