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- ChetWisniewski: Fancy some geeky tech-puzzle fun? Try our latest #sophospuzzle (and win a NERF gun) http://t.co/9k3pr1Qaabout 3 hours ago
- ChetWisniewski: Looks like no #Canadians have solved the latest #sophospuzzle yet - c'mon, let's give'r http://t.co/9k3pr1Qaabout 4 hours ago
- SophosLabs: Sophos just released a beta of its free Android anti-virus scanner (does other things too). Get it here http://t.co/9ankUHxhabout 5 hours ago
- gcluley: Technical paper - Fake anti-virus: The journey from Trojan to a persistent threat http://t.co/8pyjNEbGabout 5 hours ago
Monthly Archives: July 2009
AddFollowers spam hits Twitter accounts
Ever wanted to be an internet celebrity? Millions of strangers following your every Twitter belch and stomach rumble, just like Ashton Kutcher or Britney Spears? Okay, so maybe you don't want to be quite that famous, but chances are that Read more…
Out of date (by policy).
I came across an interesting blog article over the weekend, published on the Digg blog. It presents some results from a survey into the browsers used by Digg users, with specific interest in those running IE6. Digg's angle on this Read more…
Pepper spray-armed ATM misfires
According to media reports, a bank in Cape Town, South Africa, has equipped its cash machines with pepper spray to deter criminals from tampering and stealing money. Absa Bank has installed the disorientating pepper spray in 11 of its ATMs, Read more…
Excuse Me But Your Backdoor Is Showing....
We all need to download, update and install applications from the internet and consider that as part and parcel of normal IT activities. These applications can range from installing updates for Star Office/MS Office to browser add-ons like Flash and Read more…
Office Web Components exploits in the wild
Only a week after the serious vulnerability in the MPEG2TuneRequest ActiveX Control Object, Microsoft has released a security advisory documenting a remote execution vulnerability affecting Microsoft Office Web Components that may allow attacker to take control over the victim's machine Read more…
Zero day vulnerability in Microsoft Office Web Components discovered
Microsoft has published an advisory about a serious security vulnerability in its Office Web Components (OWC) software that could allow an attacker to run malicious code on your computer. Microsoft says it has seen a limited number of attacks exploiting Read more…
Republican urges Obama to launch cyber attack against North Korea
Congressman Peter Hoekstra, the lead Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has urged President Barack Obama to launch a "show of force or strength" against North Korea, for its alleged part in a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks in the Read more…
Surge in Sinowal distribution
Fairly recently I blogged about the distribution of Sinowal (aka Mebroot or Torpig) via compromised web pages [1]. Well, over the last couple of weeks we have observed a noticeable rise in the volume of such pages here at SophosLabs. Read more…
Too HIP to be Clomp-y
We have seen a flurry of Clomp malware samples this week -- a family of Trojans that tend to install themselves on systems with unsuspecting names like "lsas.exe" or "svchosts.exe" before calling home to some malicious domain to report their Read more…
Twitter warns users of Koobface worm
Koobface, the worm which has previously troubled social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Bebo and Friendster, appears to now be making itself comfortable on micro-blogging website Twitter. A warning from Twitter has been posted on the site's blog, Read more…
South Korean arrested for denial-of-service attack
Police in South Korea have announced that they have arrested a 39-year-old man in connection with a denial-of-service attack which reportedly paralysed a government website. According to media reports, the man identified solely as "Choi" launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) Read more…
SophosLabs informs on dodgy files
I have just returned from the Queensland Hi Tech Crime Symposium hosted by the Queensland State Crime Operations Command, where the hot topics of eFraud and eCrime were discussed. My presentation on the rising abuse of trusted file formats such Read more…
Hacking into mobile phone voicemail systems
The big story in the British press today revolves around accusations that newspapers have been repeatedly hacking into the mobile phones of public figures in their hunt for stories. The Guardian newspaper claims that Rupert Murdoch's news empire has paid Read more…
Apple issues security fixes to Safari browser
Apple has updated Safari to version 4.0.2, reportedly improving the web browser's Nitro JavaScript engine. Whether you run Safari on your Mac OS X or Windows computers, it's a good idea to keep up-to-date, as the update is also said Read more…
Troj/BHO-MQ more than meets the eye
One of the most difficult types of malware SophosLabs analysts face is the ones that appear to do nothing. Last week a colleague came across a file that appeared to do nothing and ask me to help dig deeper. He Read more…
Man accused of hack-pump-dump scam extradited to USA
If you were following security trends a few years ago you'll have been very familiar with what is known as the pump-and-dump stock scam. What happened was spammers would use junk email to pump up the price of a thinly-traded Read more…
Recession Bites Hard For The Rich And Famous
Today we have seen a couple of html files which redirect to an online shop selling fake watches (or as they like to call it - "a copy of the original") Sophos detects these files as JS/Agent-KLD and JS/Agent-KLE respectively. When these Read more…
Update on the DirectShow vulnerability du jour
As already mentioned by GC here, there is a DirectShow vulnerability currently in the wild. Samples seen thus far are being detected as Exp/VidCtl-A and Mal/JSShell-D. Several new variants of the exploit scripts are being proactively detected with these names. Read more…
Guest blog: Algorithm guesses social security numbers
Guest blogger Michael Argast, director of global sales engineering at Sophos, comments on how sometimes adding security can actually take it away - despite the best intentions of governments. Over to you Michael.. Two researchers from Carnegie Mellon have discovered Read more…
Zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft DirectShow
The SANS Internet Storm Center is reporting that hackers are exploiting a zero-day flaw in the msvidctl.dll component of Microsoft DirectShow to infect computer users visiting compromised legitimate websites. The flaw means that if you visit an affected website, hackers Read more…
