“Love you” malspam gets a makeover for massive Japan-targeted campaign
ESET researchers have detected a substantial new wave of the “Love you” malspam campaign, updated to target Japan and spread GandCrab 5.1
Spam
Russia hit by new wave of ransomware spam
Among the increased number of malicious JavaScript email attachments observed in January 2019, ESET researchers have spotted a large wave of ransomware-spreading spam targeting Russian users
Analysis of the latest Emotet propagation campaign
An analysis of the workings of this new Emotet campaign, which has affected various countries in Latin America by taking advantage of Microsoft Office files to hide its malicious activity
Unboxing Linux/Mumblehard: Muttering spam from your servers
Today, ESET researchers reveal a family of Linux malware that stayed under the radar for more than 5 years. We have named this family Linux/Mumblehard. A white paper about this threat is available for download on WeLiveSecuriy.
Twitter awash in miracle diet pills spam onslaught
Twitter was flooded by an avalanche of spam from compromised accounts, leading to shortened links and pages promising miracle weight loss, diet pills, and products which would “change lives". The attack appeared to have come via a third-party service connected to Twitter.
AOL diet spam email assaults world
A flood of diet spam emails seemingly from AOL addresses has hit inboxes around the worl
YouTube comment channels now even angrier after ‘forced marriage’ to Google Plus
YouTube comments channels are widely known as a toxic and hostile environment - but Google has admitted that YouTube’s recent integration with Google Plus has made things even worse.
King of Spam: Festi botnet analysis
We have just completed fresh analysis of the malicious software known as Win32/Festi. While the "Festi" botnet created with this malware has been in business since the autumn of 2009 we can see that the software is frequently updated, as described in our analysis, and these updates mean Festi continues to be a potent threat
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...
Stop spam/botnets? Follow the money
It’s no secret that spam/botnets are big business. There are a multitude of variations on a familiar theme, but after they trick unwitting users, what happens to the money? University of California wondered the same thing. In their recent report, “Click Trajectories: End-to-End Analysis of the Spam Value Chain” they analyze where the money goes,
Scams and the Beautiful Game
We like to give you plenty of warning when we suspect that something unpleasant is coming down the pike, even if it’s just one of those likely bursts of Black Hat SEO (web search poisoning) that come with a media-friendly event. Still, I suspect that if I told you we expect lots of malicious activity
Disaster Scams and Resources
I've added some commentary and resources on the Japan earthquake/tsunami disasters to an independent blog I maintain that specializes in hoaxes, scams and so forth, but here are a few of the same resources that aren't already included in my recent blogs here on the topic: Analysis from Kimberley at stopmalvertising.com: http://stopmalvertising.com/blackhat-seo/recent-japanese-earthquake-search-results-lead-to-fakeav.html Guy Bruneau at Internet
Facebook Spam: the Fifth Wave
My colleague from ESET Ireland, Urban Schrott, reports that the company has seen a megawave of Facebook spams: five separate spams in 24 hours. I've no idea of the numbers involved, but Urban's "think before you click" message is well worth repeating. The post is to ESET Ireland's CyberThreats Daily blog post: the company also
February ThreatSense Report
The February ThreatSense Report is now available...
From Russia with Spam
...Ontinet has been noticing lots of emails with links to forums. Following the links leads to a forum full of spam products, from replica watches to viagra...
Comment Spammers Welcome
...one interesting trend in blog comment spam that I’ve noticed in recent months is that a number of comments are obviously intended to push a product or site, but contain content that is actually relevant...
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
Spam, Bad Guys, and the Russian FSB
Interesting news this week with some heavy anticrime work in Russia resulting in the arrests of the alleged RBS Worldbank cybercriminals. In related research I had to laugh out loud at this particular turn of phrase reported by the Financial Times; The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)has detained suspects including Viktor Pleshchuk, an alleged mastermind
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,
So THAT’S Who’s Doing it!
Early last month I posted a blog entry entitled "Who Is Doing it? Who? Who….?!". The main point of my entry was regarding the matter of people opening attachments and clicking on links that appear to be spam based. I've just been reading the 2010 MAAWG Email Security Awareness and Usage Report, and it seems