Spyware, viruses, & security : NEWS - October 30, 2009
- 10/30/09 6:24 AM
NEWS - October 30, 2009
by Carol~ - 10/30/09 6:24 AM
Trick or Threat?
Det Caraig
October 30, 2009
The month of October in the threat landscape is often associated with scary social engineering tactics in time for Halloween. As in years past, the threats that lurk in and plague the current threat landscape are real. Most of them can cause irreparable damage, often resulting in information, or worse, identity theft as shown in the following blog entries:
Weather Report for Halloween: High Chances of a Storm
“Halloween Costumes” Bring More Fright Than Expected
But just how scary is the Web 2.0 environment nowadays? Let us run down a list of the scariest threats thus far:
Continued here: http://blog.trendmicro.com/trick-or-threat/
Icann approves internationalised domain names
by Carol~ - 10/30/09 7:13 AM
In reply to: NEWS - October 30, 2009 by Carol~
IDNs could be in use by early next year
David Neal
30 Oct 2009
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has approved the use of internationalised domain names (IDNs), web addresses made up of non-Latin characters, such as Chinese, Korean and Arabic.
The decision comes after two years of investigation, and should bring some web commonality to users of languages including Chinese and Arabic.
"This is a culmination of years of work, tests, study and discussion by the Icann community," said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the board of directors at Icann.
"To see this finally start to unfold is to see the beginning of an historic change in the internet and who uses it."
The IDNs could be in use early next year, and industry members have been quick to comment on its significance.
Continued here: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2252279/icann-approves-idns
Tech Know: How to hack a handset
by Donna Buenaventura - 10/30/09 7:52 AM
In reply to: NEWS - October 30, 2009 by Carol~
The recipe is simple.
Take as many mobile phone developers, hackers and builders that you can find; put them in The Great Hall at Imperial College; add a liberal helping of heavyweight companies talking about new tools, developer aids and techniques to program mobile phones during the day; then challenge them to come up with "something new".
Leave this to simmer as hackers work through the night and have everyone present their new programs to the rest of the conference the next day.
That sums up the Over the Air hackathon. Now in its second year of bringing together the UK's mobile developer community, it continues to have a huge impact on those who get involved with the overnight competition.
One of the groups involved in the hacking challenge was from mobile developer Future Platforms. Last year it walked away with the Best Overall Prototype for a multi-limbed robot called Octobastard. This year it wanted to produce something beautiful as well as clever. The result was Project Bluebell.
Continue reading about Handset hackaton in http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8332665.stm?
Sanford Wallace Loses Again; Owes Facebook $711 Million
by Donna Buenaventura - 10/30/09 7:55 AM
In reply to: NEWS - October 30, 2009 by Carol~
Sanford "Spamford" Wallace, of course, was the original "spam king" back in the 1990s. Despite his claim to have reformed at one point, he apparently has been spamming various social networks and advertising spyware. Back in 2004, the FTC investigated him and fined him $4 million. Last year, MySpace won a $234 million judgment against him. Wallace responded by disappearing. At one point, even his lawyer couldn't find him. Earlier this year, when Facebook sued him for spamming their users as well, it seemed unlikely that he would bother to respond. Surprising pretty much everyone, he showed up in court, though claimed he was totally bankrupt. Either way, Facebook has just been awarded a $711 million judgment against him.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20091029/1840516725.shtml?
eBay.co.uk blocked for smelling phishy
by Donna Buenaventura - 10/30/09 8:36 AM
In reply to: NEWS - October 30, 2009 by Carol~
Online tat bazaar ebay.co.uk was blocked for much of yesterday because OpenDNS wrongly labelled auction pages on the site as phishing pages.
Individual items, with addresses starting cgi.ebay.co.uk, were unavailable to anyone using the system, or using an ISP which uses the system. Instead surfers saw this error message:
"Phishing Site Blocked Phishing is a fraudulent attempt to get you to provide personal information under false pretenses."
Several threads in forums reported the issue and explained how to manually restore access. The problem has now been fixed, according to a poster in OpenDNS's own support forum.
http://forums.opendns.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=5317&page=2
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/30/ebay_opendns_block/?
Twitter phishing attack disguised as BT
by Donna Buenaventura - 10/30/09 8:38 AM
In reply to: NEWS - October 30, 2009 by Carol~
BT's customer services' Twitter account has been used to spread a phishing attack.
Twitter users have been claiming that BT Care has been hacked, but BT said this is not the case.
"The BT Care Twitter account has not been hacked. There is a suspected phishing attack which has affected a small number of our followers," said a BT spokeswoman.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/10/30/238357/twitter-phishing-attack-disguised-as-bt.htm?
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