Computer viruses are almost as old as personal computers themselves, and their evolution was only hastened by the birth of Internet. And within each code is a story about its author, about the time it was written, and about the state of computing when it terrorized our hard drives.
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A team of security researchers claim to have identified a four-year-old Android bug that can allow malicious trojans to appear as verified apps, infecting devices with malware while users remain unaware of its presence.
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When it comes to malware on smartphones, no operating system is 100% immune, although usually when it comes to the headlines, Android seems to be the one suffering from malware the most, and a recently discovered malware does not appear […]
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According to a report by Juniper Networks, mobile malware has grown by 614 percent over the last year. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, 92 percent of it is on Android…
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The team at Google’s Transparency department have brought on a new level of threat reporting – massive amounts of phishing and malware-infected sites from across the web. This newest Google Transparency Report is being laid bare this week with a cool 67,909 compromised sites tracked by the company in mid-June, showing an interesting cross-section of
Google’s Transparency Report has long warned us about the dangers of government overreach, but that’s not the only threat online — there’s plenty of malware to go around. Accordingly, Google is expanding its report to show the volumes of virus-infected and phishing sites found through the company’s Safe Browsing technology. The data includes both attacking and victim pages, and it shows how well web hosts cope with successful infections. Combined, the new information doesn’t paint a pretty picture. Google spotted a total of 67,909 compromised sites just in mid-June, and it still takes over a month for most affected webmasters to scrub their servers clean. The Safe Browsing data isn’t very reassuring, then, but it is a friendly reminder to be careful on the web.
Via: Google Online Security Blog
Source: Google Transparency Report
Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it took down 1,400 Citadel botnets with the help of the FBI, and now Ballmer and Co. have divulged just how big of an impact the effort had. According to Richard Domingues Boscovich, the firm’s Digital Crimes Unit assistant general counsel, the operation freed at least 2 million PCs across the globe from the malicious code — and that’s a conservative estimate by his reckoning. It’s believed that more than $500 million has been stolen from bank accounts thanks to information gleaned from keystrokes logged by computers afflicted with the software. Though the chief botnet organizer is still on the loose and many machines are still burdened by Citadel, Domingues Boscovich says they “feel confident that we really got most of the ones that we were after.”
[Image credit: Edmund Tse, Flickr]
Filed under: Microsoft
Source: Retuers
It turns out Microsoft was serious when it declared war on botnets: the company just announced that its Digital Crimes Unit has successfully disrupted more than 1,400 criminal networks. The company says the action was a coordinated effort between Microsoft and the financial services industry, noting that the FBI chipped in to help out with legal hurdles — giving Redmond the leverage it needed to shut down malicious servers in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. These machines had been infecting computers with Citadel malware, a keylogger that allowed cyber criminals to skim account information from victims. According to Reuters, authorities don’t yet know the identities of the criminals involved, but Microsoft thinks the ringleader lives in eastern Europe, and may be working with 80 or more accomplices. The company has already filed a civil lawsuit, listing the lead hacker as “John Doe No. 1” in the complaint.
Microsoft says it will use the data it collected from the operation to help ISPs find more efficient ways to detect and notify users if their computer is infected. The company also pledges to make the information available through its own cyber threat intelligence program. Check out the firm’s full press announcement for yourself after the break.
Filed under: Internet, Microsoft
Source: Reuters
You might think the only way malware could ever get onto your phone is if you installed an app or some piece of software that was infested with malicious code, but it turns out that modified wall chargers can be used to hack phones as well. Researchers say they’ve built a custom iPhone wall charger that can install malware when connected to a device.
During the annual Black Hat security conference later in July, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology will be showing off a prototype wall charger that they say is capable of installing malware onto iOS devices when plugged into the wall and connected to a device at the same time, which they found the results to be quite “alarming.”
The researchers aren’t saying much about the charger yet, as they reveal most of their findings next month, but they say that the charger is built around an open-source single-board computer known as a Texas Instruments BeagleBoard that costs around $45. Essentially, the researchers wanted to show just how easy and cheap it can be to cause a lot of virtual destruction in an innocent package.
However, it’s noted that a BeagleBoard is too big to fit inside an Apple 5W charger, so it’s unclear how exactly the research team has disguised the board. Perhaps they hid it in a docking station or an external battery pack. However, the team says that other hackers will most likely take their findings and advance the work to fit the necessary components into the tiny iPhone charger.
The Georgia Tech researchers say that this kind of hack could break into an iPhone running the latest firmware in less than a minute. However, this isn’t the first hack to utilize the iPhone’s Lighting/3-pin port. Most commonly, jailbreak software uses the connector to remove many of Apple’s restrictions from iOS, allowing users to install custom apps and themes that Apple would otherwise ban.
VIA: Forbes
iPhone vulnerable to hacking with malware-infested charger is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
The Internet-using public is no stranger to off-the-wall plans and ideas to stop the so-called blight of copyrighted content sharing, but a new proposal recently submitted to the government is perhaps unlike any before it in terms of craziness. In a report, the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property proposed many ways piracy can be combated, including infecting alleged violators’ computers with malware that can wreck havoc, including and up to destroying the user’s computer.
In the proposal, which spans 84-pages, the Commission stated that software can be pre-installed on computers for the purpose of monitoring and identifying copyright-violating activity, which is comprised of storing, using, or copying such content. If the software detects copyright-violating activities of any of those sorts, it would cause the computer or its files to being locked.
Once the files and/or computer was locked, it would show up with a dialog that requires a password in order to unlock the system, as well as instructions telling the computer user to contact a law enforcement agency, which will have the password necessary to unlock the computer. The obvious part of this being, one will theoretically end up confessing to piracy.
The proposal states that such a method of combating piracy wouldn’t violate any laws, but would “stabilize” an infringement situation and get police involved. While that method is allegedly legal, the next one – which is arguably crazier than the first – is not: deliberately infecting computers with malware designed to do several things, including snapping a picture of the computer user with their webcam without their permission.
The malware would allow companies to gather data off a computer, change data located on the network, and destroy it if it feels such an action is necessary – all without permission, obviously. There’s also suggestions that it could be used to do other things as well, including up to destroying the user’s computer and/or network. We’ll have to wait for the official response on this, but we’re guessing it’ll be something akin to throwing the report against the wall.
SOURCE: The Next Web
Proposal seeks to lock copyright infringing computers, force owners to contact police is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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