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Phishing

Father's Day phishing plug

Angela Moscaritolo June 08, 2009

The Federal Trade Commission announced Friday that it has created a Father's Day e-card to offer tips on how to avoid becoming a phishing victim. The animated fish-themed card gives examples of typical phishing emails and warns fathers against giving up personal or financial information and to be wary of opening suspicious attachments. The card is available at: http://www.ftc.gov/dad. — AM

The many morphs of a phishing/malware scam

Angela Moscaritolo June 03, 2009

A new attack targeting Outlook users has morphed from trying to retrieve login credentials to attempting to infect users with fake anti-virus products.

Twitter hit with rogue anti-virus scams

Greg Masters June 02, 2009

Users of popular blogging platform Twitter fell victim this past week to a scareware scam.

Bank of America certificate scam propagating Waledac, Virut

Angela Moscaritolo June 02, 2009

A new spam campaign disguised as a Bank of America email telling users they need to update their digital certificate is attempting to lure users into installing the Waledac worm.

Another round of phishing hits Twitter

Chuck Miller May 27, 2009

After last week's phishing attacks on social networking sites, yet another round has struck Twitter.

Phishers continue to wage war on Facebook, Twitter

Dan Kaplan May 22, 2009

Social networking sites are all the rage within phishing circles these days.

Swine flu spam leveling off, but attacks continue

Dan Kaplan May 01, 2009

As reports of swine flu infections grow across the world, spammers and malware purveyors continue to try to cash in.

Facebook neutralizes phishing attack

Dan Kaplan April 30, 2009

Fraudsters, using hijacked Facebook accounts, tried to lure users of the social networking site into divulging their login credentials.

Federal Reserve malware ruse

Dan Kaplan April 29, 2009

IT administrators should be on the lookout for a new round of spam claiming to come from the Federal Reserve Bank. It tries to redirect users to a malware-serving website, the Shadowserver Foundation warned Wednesday. The volunteer watchdog said the emails contain a link to a website that attempts to load a number of exploits, including some for PDF and Flash, in the background with hopes of infecting machines with a trojan. Shadowserver listed a number of offending domains being used in the ploy. — DK

Swine flu cases cause outbreak of fraud on internet

Dan Kaplan April 27, 2009

Reports of swine flu in Mexico and the United States has caused an outbreak of its own on the internet, with reports of a precipitous rise in spam and rogue internet sites being created to reference the hot news item.

RSA: Cybercriminals keeping up with banking safeguards

Dan Kaplan April 22, 2009

Customer education and a holistic security strategy are the best approaches to fight fraud within the financial services community, a panel of experts said Wednesday at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.

Phishing increased 40 percent in 2008

Angela Moscaritolo April 15, 2009

The percentage of people losing money to phishing attacks is higher than ever -- five million consumers in the United States fell victim during 2008, an increase of 40 percent over 2007, according to a new report from Gartner.

First foreign phishing sentence

Dan Kaplan March 30, 2009

A Romanian man on Monday became the first foreign citizen ever to be sentenced to U.S. federal prison for involvement in a phishing scheme, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Connecticut said. Authorities believe six people were involved in the operation, but only Ovidiu-Ionut Nicola-Roman, 23, who received 50 months, has been caught. The group is responsible for delivering bogus emails to people - claiming to come from companies such as Citibank and PayPal - and trying to trick users into giving up personal data. Nicola-Roman was arrested in 2007 in Bulgaria on an Interpol warrant. — DK

Beware "Buzus" spam

Dan Kaplan March 26, 2009

Researchers at internet security firm SonicWALL warned Thursday of a new outbreak of trojan-laden spam claiming to come from shipping company DHL. The emails tell the recipients that the company has been unable to deliver a package and advises them to print out the ZIP file attachment. The message claims that the attachment is an invoice copy, but it actually is the data-stealing Buzus trojan disguised as a Microsoft Help or Word document. SonicWALL, in a blog post, said it has received 1,700 copies of the fraudulent email since Sunday. -DK

Spam attacks focus on victims' economic gloom

Chuck Miller March 17, 2009

The economy remains the main topic spammers focus on to lure users into opening emails with malicious links.

New Waledac spam falsely warns of bomb blasts

Dan Kaplan March 16, 2009

Security companies warned Monday of a new malware campaign in which the Waledac botnet creators are distributing emails that falsely claim the recipient's city has been the site of a bomb blast.

Romania phishing ring busted

Chuck Miller March 13, 2009

Some 20 international phishers were arrested this week in Romania, suspected of stealing the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars from victims tricked into revealing their login credentials online, according to reports. The suspects, rounded up on Wednesday, were thought by police to be members of two separate gangs that set up counterfeit banking websites. When victims visited the sites, they were duped into entering their personal information. — CAM

InfoSec: 23 percent of users fall for spear phishing

Angela Moscaritolo March 09, 2009

A new study found that 23 percent of people worldwide will fall for spear phishing attacks, but others said the number is more like 70 percent.

Phishing attack on iStockphoto

Angela Moscaritolo March 04, 2009

Online photography store iStockphoto warned of a phishing attack targeted against its website on Wednesday, "We strongly urge all users who logged in at some point today to change their passwords," the company said on its website. "In addition, do not open any site mail for the next 24 hours." Attackers created a fake iStockphoto login screen, saved users' credentials on a malicious server then redirected them back to the website's main page. The company said that no financial information was breached. — AM

Banking ID theft reaching epidemic proportions

Chuck Miller February 27, 2009

The volume of malware circulating on the web has reached epidemic proportions. And most of it is financial-identity-theft related.

Spoofed Delta Airlines emails contain trojan

Angela Moscaritolo February 27, 2009

Emails spoofed to look like they are coming from Delta Airlines to confirm a ticket purchase are attempting to infect users with a trojan.

Waledac malware adds geolocation

Angela Moscaritolo February 26, 2009

A new variant of the Waledac malware campaign has been unleashed, taking advantage of the economic crisis by spoofing a legitimate coupon website and using IP address geolocation to appear to offer coupons for local stores.

Google Talk users hit by phishers

Chuck Miller February 25, 2009

Soon after Google apologized for a Gmail outage this week, it was hit by a phishing attack spreading through its instant messenger platform.

Web filtering evolves to meet changing threats

Angela Moscaritolo February 18, 2009

Web filtering today goes beyond just blocking access. It now has to be integrating Web 2.0, managing data leakage, and guarding against malware coming in, according to a new study.

Waledac worm sends no love to Valentine's Day spam victims

Angela Moscaritolo February 09, 2009

Cybercriminals behind the Waledac botnet are trying to capture more victims by using Valentine's Day-themed exploits, researchers from McAfee Avert Labs warned Monday.

Businesses detecting ID fraud faster, absorbing more costs

Angela Moscaritolo February 09, 2009

Identity fraud increased by 22 percent last year, but the burden on consumers is lessening, according to a new study.

IRS phishing scam

Angela Moscaritolo February 06, 2009

US-CERT warned Friday of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) emails claiming to offer users stimulus-package payments. The messages attempt to lure users to a website and then enter personal information. The IRS said it does not request taxpayer information through email and those who receive one should not click on any links, rather delete it immediately. -- AM

Microsoft's IE8 released for final testing

Chuck Miller January 27, 2009

The Monday announcement of Internet Explorer (IE) Release Candidate 1 (RC1) will be the last public update of IE8 before the final product is released. RC1 is available for public download in 25 languages, and is billed as Microsoft's most secure browser ever.

Spam grows as senders use slicker ways to trick users

Angela Moscaritolo January 26, 2009

The amount of spam is nearing pre-McColo numbers, and junk mailers are using crafty new methods to infect computers, two spam reports released on Monday conclude.

With economy in tailspin, Monster discloses major breach

Dan Kaplan January 26, 2009

Monster.com is advising users to change their passwords -- and experts are warning of phishing scams on the horizon -- after the the job site suffered another breach.