research
Small businesses beware! Point-of-sale malware is after you
Malware targeting point-of-sale (POS) systems has been a major trend for the last six months. With easy pickings to be had from mom-and-pop shops, this pattern is only going to grow until people start fighting back with better system security, and ideally better payment card systems.
Virus Bulletin's Technical Director John Hawes takes a look....
Technical paper: Exploring the history and technology of ransomware
A new technical paper from SophosLabs explores the history and technology of ransomware. From payment by SMS to public key encryption, ransomware has certainly evolved.
Honeypot reveals mass surveillance of BitTorrent downloaders
Within 3 hours of downloading, the copyright enforcers likely have your IP address, according to researchers who put a fake pirate server online and then sat back to see who came sniffing around.
Are you being more private on Facebook?
Researchers looked at 1.4 million Facebook profiles from New York City in March 2010 and then again in June 2011. Do you think anything changed in that time?
Lost your mobile? You're not alooooooone...
I have left phones in airplanes, in cabs, at friends' houses, etc...it is embarrassing really. But it turns out I'm not the only one.
Is online privacy a right or a privilege?
ENISA conducted some research to examine the economic dimension of privacy. Put simply: would you pay a bit extra for additional privacy?
Multi-word passphrases not all that secure, says Cambridge University
Think a passphrase of multiple, random dictionary words is as unguessable as long strings of gibberish, but easier to remember? Not necessarily, according to a recent study.
Sophos Security Threat Report 2012 - seeing through the hype
We know you're probably sceptical of "state of the world" reports from vendors. For all you can tell, they'll turn out to be thinly-digsuised advertorial, unreconstructed product brochures, or worse.
We like to do things differently. Find out how!
Hackers could throw open prison doors, research shows
Research presented at the Hacker Halted conference in Miami late last month showed how hackers could take control of industrial control systems used in prisons.
Android keylogging with no access to keystrokes?
July and August often produce some intriguing and unusual computer security research.
We've already written about BlackHat and DEFCON. Here's something from the USENIX HotSec workshop to pique your interest.
A lesson in heuristic PDF detection
Many of you are all too aware of the number of patches repairing flaws in Adobe's Reader and Acrobat software in the last couple of years. Their PDF reader is deployed on nearly all computers, which is too juicy of Read more…
Scamming the scammers
Scammers use decoy documents (fake invoices, bogus airline tickets, imaginary lottery wins, political commentary on Tibet, information about World Cup 2010 fixtures, and so forth) to trick us into opening files which are dangerous. SophosLabs is pioneering techniques to use Read more…
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