VB Blog

Throwback Thursday: Olympic Games

Posted by   Helen Martin on   Aug 2, 2016

In 1994, along with the Olympic Games came an Olympic virus, from a group of Swedish virus authors calling themselves ‘Immortal Riot’. We look back at Mikko Hyppönen's analysis in the VB archive.

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VB2016 call for last-minute papers opened, discounts announced

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Aug 1, 2016

Announcing the VB2016 call for last-minute papers and a number of discounts on the conference registration rate.

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Guest Blog: Malicious Scripts Gaining Prevalence in Brazil

Posted by   Virus Bulletin on   Jul 28, 2016

In the run up to VB2016, we invited the conference sponsors to write guest posts for our blog. In the second of this series, ESET's Matías Porolli writes about malicious Visual Basic and JavaScript gaining prevalence in Brazil.

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Romanian university website compromised to serve Neutrino exploit kit

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Jul 28, 2016

The website of the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy has been compromised to inject a hidden iframe into the site's source code that serves the Neutrino exploit kit and may infect visitors with ransomware.

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It's 2016. Can we stop using MD5 in malware analyses?

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Jul 26, 2016

While there are no actually risks involved in using MD5s in malware analyses, it reinforces bad habits and we should all start using SHA-256 instead.

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Throwback Thursday: Holding the Bady

Posted by   Helen Martin on   Jul 21, 2016

In 2001, ‘Code Red’ caused White House administrators to change the IP address of the official White House website, and even penetrated Microsoft’s own IIS servers.

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Paper: The Journey of Evasion Enters Behavioural Phase

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Jul 20, 2016

A new paper by FireEye researcher Ankit Anubhav provides an overview of evasion techniques applied by recently discovered malware.

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Guest blog: Espionage toolkit uncovered targeting Central and Eastern Europe

Posted by   Virus Bulletin on   Jul 15, 2016

Recently, ESET researchers uncovered a new espionage toolkit targeting targeting Central and Eastern Europe. They provide some details in a guest post.

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Avast acquires AVG for $1.3bn

Posted by   Martijn Grooten on   Jul 8, 2016

Anti-virus vendor Avast has announced the acquisition of its rival AVG for 1.3 billion US dollars.

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Throwback Thursday: You Are the Weakest Link, Goodbye!

Posted by   Helen Martin on   Jul 7, 2016

Passwords have long been a weak point in the security chain, despite efforts to encourage users to pick strong ones. 13 years ago, Martin Overton wrote an article highlighting the weakness and explaining why it is the human element that presents the biggest risk to computer security - something that rings as true today as it did 13 years ago.

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Bank's Twitter account hacked to send phishing messages

Important lessons for companies engaging in social media.
Important lessons for companies engaging in social media. Last week, the Twitter account of the Bank of Melbourne was hacked and used to send direct messages containing phishing… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/09/bank-s-twitter-account-hacked-send-phishing-messages/

Outlook spam phishes for SMTP credentials

Login details would give spammers access to legitimate mail servers.
Login details would give spammers access to legitimate mail servers. A phishing scam has been identified that targets users of Microsoft Outlook and tries to obtain SMTP login… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/06/outlook-spam-phishes-smtp-credentials/

Canada new hotbed for cybercriminal activity

Country's IP addresses less likely to be scrutinized.
Country's IP addresses less likely to be scrutinized. Security firm Websense has reported a significant increase in cybercrime originating in Canada. Hitherto, Canada and… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/05/canada-new-hotbed-cybercriminal-activity/

Scammers take advantage of Epsilon data breach

Trojan hidden as security tool for affected customers.
Trojan hidden as security tool for affected customers. Scammers are currently taking advantage of the data breach that affected email security provider Epsilon recently, by… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/04/scammers-take-advantage-epsilon-data-breach/

Major email service provider suffers data breach

Financial institutions among affected customers.
Financial institutions among affected customers. Email service provider Epsilon, which carries out email marketing for many major companies, has admitted it has fallen victim to a… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/04/major-email-service-provider-suffers-data-breach/

Dutch most protected Europeans online

Bulgarians most likely to have become infected; financial losses most prevalent among Latvians.
Bulgarians most likely to have become infected; financial losses most prevalent among Latvians. For the occasion of Safer Internet Day on 8 February, Eurostat, the EU's statistical… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/02/dutch-most-protected-europeans-online/

Phishing for different markets

Scam emails trying to steal CO2 emission credits and World-of-Warcraft accounts.
Scam emails trying to steal CO2 emission credits and World-of-Warcraft accounts. Two unrelated phishing campaigns seen doing the rounds recently show that it's not just real money… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2011/01/phishing-different-markets/

Malicious applications target Orkut

Visitors to infected social network profiles redirected to phishing sites.
Visitors to infected social network profiles redirected to phishing sites. Users of the social networking site Orkut have found themselves targeted by malicious applications that… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2010/11/malicious-applications-target-orkut/

Dutch banks report huge increase in online fraud

Users warned against phishing and becoming money mules.
Users warned against phishing and becoming money mules. Figures on online crime released by the association of Dutch banks (NVB) show a significant rise in indicents of online… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2010/10/dutch-banks-report-huge-increase-online-fraud/

Project Honey Pot 'celebrates' billionth spam message

Facebook about to become most phished organization.
Facebook about to become most phished organization. Few people would celebrate receiving a billion spam messages, but those at Project Honey Pot must have been a little proud when… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/12/project-honey-pot-celebrates-billionth-spam-message/

Webmail data leak hype deflated

Rumoured phishing explosion grabs headlines, reality much more mundane.
Rumoured phishing explosion grabs headlines, reality much more mundane. This week has seen some major news organisations picking up on the story of tens of thousands of sets of… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/10/webmail-data-leak-hype-deflated/

VB announces latest VBSpam certification results

Two products achieve top level VBSpam Platinum award.
Two products achieve top level VBSpam Platinum award. Virus Bulletin has announced the results of its second comparative review of anti-spam products, revealing two top-level… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/07/vb-announces-latest-vbspam-certification-results/

DKIM usage shows significant growth

US banks urged to use authentication method
US banks urged to use authentication method In a report on its website, Internet giant Cisco states it has been seeing almost 700,000 non-spam messages that contain valid DKIM… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/06/dkim-usage-shows-significant-growth/

Digital attacks encroach on real world

Car park flyers trick victims to malicious site.
Car park flyers trick victims to malicious site. The online arena of scams and phishing took a worrying step into the real world last week, as researchers heard of a scam starting… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/02/digital-attacks-encroach-real-world/

MS report finds phishing revenues overhyped

Huge earnings may be myth, say researchers.
Huge earnings may be myth, say researchers. A report from Microsoft analysing the potential income of phishers claims that the amounts taken from duped victims of online scams may… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/01/ms-report-finds-phishing-revenues-overhyped/

CastleCops closes down

Security community project comes to an end.
Security community project comes to an end. Well-known volunteer group CastleCops, which ran campaigns to identify and bring down spamming and phishing operations for over five… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/01/castlecops-closes-down/

Twitter hit by phishing and hacks

Popular micro-blog site latest target of link spammers.
Popular micro-blog site latest target of link spammers. The latest social networking craze, micro-blogging service Twitter, has joined the likes of MySpace and Facebook in being… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2009/01/twitter-hit-phishing-and-hacks/

Sarkozy bank account raided by cybercrooks

Hackers steal from French president - phish suspected.
Hackers steal from French president - phish suspected. French president Nicolas Sarkozy has had his funds stolen from his bank account, apparently after a phishing email tricked… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2008/10/sarkozy-bank-account-raided-cybercrooks/

Ham disguised as spam

Webshop makes mass-mailing look like phishing scam.
Webshop makes mass-mailing look like phishing scam. An email addressed to 'Dear customer', in which a user is asked to check their account details, using a link that does not lead… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2008/10/ham-disguised-spam/

Researchers urge anti-phishing companies to share data

Estimate over $300 million lost annually because data is not shared.
Estimate over $300 million lost annually because data is not shared. Researchers have revealed malicious websites are often active for longer than they ought to be due to a lack of… https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2008/10/researchers-urge-anti-phishing-companies-share-data/

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