80 posts
-
Can You Hear Me Now?
Cell phone users, beware. The FBI can listen to everything you say, even when the cell phone is turned off. A recent court ruling in a case against the Genovese crime family revealed that the FBI has the ability from a remote location to activate a cell phone and turn its…
-
Cyber Crime Hits the Big Time in 2006
Computer security experts say 2006 saw an unprecedented spike in junk e-mail and sophisticated online attacks from increasingly organized cyber crooks. These attacks were made possible, in part, by a huge increase in the number of security holes identified in widely used…
-
Top viruses, worms and malware in 2006
As it does every year, Panda Software is publishing its annual list of those malicious codes which, although they may not have caused serious epidemics, have stood out in one way or another: – The most moralistic. This award goes to the spyware Zcodec which, among other…
-
Santa’s Web Site Hacked
Even Santa isn’t safe from spyware and viruses. With Christmas fast approaching, Santa Claus reached out for a little help from Stopbadware.org this week. The consumer advocacy group said it was approached by an Incline Village, Nevada, man who has legally changed his…
-
Windows Vista and protection from malware
On November 30, Sophos issued its monthly report on the top ten threats reported to them in November of 2006. As a part of this, Sophos also studied Windows Vista’s vulnerability to these malware threats. I found the information and press discussion confusing, so I…
-
Worm Spreading via Skype Chat?
Computer security analysts are studying reports of a worm that may be circulating via a feature in Skype’s popular Voice over IP service. Security vendor Websense said the worm spreads through Skype’s chat feature. Users receive a message asking them to download a…
-
Hackers Selling Vista Zero-Day Exploit
Underground hackers are hawking zero-day exploits for Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system at $50,000 a pop, according to computer security researchers at Trend Micro. The Windows Vista exploit—which has not been independently verified—was just one of many…
-
Potential pirates, not Vista, get cracked
35 days before Windows XP was officially released, a pirated key, called the “devils0wn”, began circulating around the web which allowed users to run a pirated copy of the operating system. Since then, the key has been used thousands of times and is now a part of…
-
MySpace worm exploits Quicktime weakness to steal logins and plant spyware
F-Secure has spotted an outbreak of a Javascript exploit that uses flaws in Apple’s Quicktime to grab MySpace profile data. It’s not easy to explain, but it’s a form of phishing: you visit what looks like a normal MySpace page, but the links have been altered…
-
McAfee predicts surge in video malware
Security vendor McAfee has predicted that the increasing popularity of video on the web will make it a future target for hackers. The use of video formats on social-networking sites — such as YouTube — will attract malware writers, the company claims. As people become more…