Articles by seanmcdonaldsophos

Phishing for Gamers

by seanmcdonaldsophos on July 25, 2009 | Leave a comment
Phishing for Gamers

While in the lab today checking out threat and scam activity, I came across this phish targeting "World of Warcraft" gamers: So what is so obviously phishy about this email apart from asking you to click on a link to Read more…

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Scammer tricks

by seanmcdonaldsophos on May 31, 2009 | Leave a comment
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After I leave the lab after a busy day, I often ponder what tricks scammers will use next? For example, we see a constant stream of fake security applications that fraudulently suggest a user should offload a sum of money Read more…

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Plenty of Bargains for Christmas Day Shoppers

by seanmcdonaldsophos on December 25, 2008 | Leave a comment
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Forget the financial crisis folks, there are still plenty of too-good-to-be-true deals available for those looking for a last minute Christmas day bargain gift. Check out the following great email deals: For those that need help in the sack, and Read more…

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White Hats meet Black Hats

by seanmcdonaldsophos on August 7, 2008 | Leave a comment
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Some of us are just plain unlucky and always choose the short straw. The penalty for my latest poor straw choice was to fly out to sunny Las Vegas to attend the 2008 Black Hat briefings. Readers please do not Read more…

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Plug-n-pray

by seanmcdonaldsophos on April 11, 2008 | Comments Off
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The recent news of yet another storage device being shipped with "˜pre-loaded' malware raises the question on what level of trust we can assign to a fresh out of box device. In the most recent incident, HP shipped USB keys Read more…

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The Christmas menu

by seanmcdonaldsophos on December 25, 2007 | Comments Off
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This year's Christmas menu had it all: an assortment of "˜enlargement' medications, copious amounts of supposedly free goodies (just need to take a survey or three and wait ... an infinity), some very generous (and pre-approved) credit allowances, various Phish, Read more…

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Rehashing old tricks

by seanmcdonaldsophos on July 18, 2007 | Comments Off
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Over the past few weeks, spammers have started to adopt PDF files as the carrier of spammy content. In this type of spam, it is the PDF file attached that contains the actual spammy message enticing people to purchase all Read more…

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Signs of trouble

by seanmcdonaldsophos on May 3, 2007 | Leave a comment
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The lab released detection for another variant of the W32/SillyFDC family of worms today as W32/SillyFDC-AA. Like other variants in this family, the worm spreads by copying itself to removable drives including floppy drives and USB keys. The worm then Read more…

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