BrandPost: Emerging cybersecurity vulnerabilities
One unfortunate aspect of human psychology involves how people tend to deal with potential threats. As long as the threats are more abstract than actual, all too often we reason that there’s no rush to build defenses against them. Only after a threat materializes and does actual harm do we start to really take it…
Malware asks for a selfie as it steals your information
Not content with stealing your financial details, personal information, and login credentials, there’s now an Android banking Trojan that also asks victims to take a selfie with their ID cards. McAfee Labs’ Mobile Research Team discovered the malicious application, which is a new variant of the Acecard Trojan Malware (aka Torec) that was first identified…
Ransomware success creates apathy towards traditional antivirus software
In the last 12 months, 48 percent of organizations across the globe have fallen victim to a ransomware campaign, with 80 percent indicating that they’ve suffered from three or more attacks, according to a global survey conducted by Vanson Bourne. In response to ransomware attacks, 67 percent of businesses globally have increased IT security spending,…
Attacks to make Ask.com Toolbar a conduit for malware are nipped in the bud
Attackers who were trying to turn the Ask.com Toolbar into a malware dispensary got caught early on when their scheme was picked up by security services that were looking for anomalies. The malicious actors are unknown but they managed to get the legitimate Ask.com toolbar update feature to place a dropper/uploader into the browsers of…
Encryption ransomware hits record levels
The amount of phishing emails containing a form of ransomware grew to 97.25 percent during the third quarter of 2016 up from 92 percent in Q1. PhishMe’s Q3 2016 Malware Review identified three major trends previously recorded throughout 2016, but have come to full fruition in the last few months:
Thousands of WordPress sites with malware highlight need for comprehensive security
While everyone was worrying about the holiday influx of POS malware, a cyber criminal group quietly exploited a plug-in vulnerability with the mysterious SoakSoak malware and infected at least 100,000 sites utilizing WordPress’s content management system. Researchers with security firm Sucuri discovered the malware campaign in mid-December, noting that it leveraged a flaw within a…
This malware attack starts with a fake customer-service call
Hotel and restaurant chains, beware. A notorious cybercriminal gang is tricking businesses into installing malware by calling their customer services representatives and convincing them to open malicious email attachments. The culprits in these hacks, which are designed to steal customers’ credit card numbers, appear to be the Carbanak gang, a group that was blamed last…
Retailers may be gifted FastPOS this holiday season
Chilly weather, falling leaves and pumpkin-spiced everything are signs that the holiday season is just around the corner. Retailers have already taken steps to get ready by hiring and training personnel for these busy times. However, can they say the same for their point-of-sales systems? When a person pays with a debit or credit card,…
Traveling on business? Beware of targeted spying on mobile
Corporate spying is a real threat in the world of cyber war. Employees traveling on behalf of their company could create opportunities for sophisticated adversaries to take sensitive corporate data. This is especially true if they are not careful with their mobile devices. The targeted malware attack It may sound like something out of a…
Researchers set to work on malware-detecting CPUs
Adding hardware protections to software ones in order to block the ever increasing onslaught of computer malware seems like a solid idea, and a group of researchers have just been given a $275,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to help them work on a possible solution: malware-detecting CPUs. This project, titled “Practical Hardware-Assisted Always-On…