Adobe earlier today issued a security update for its Flash Player to seal serious security vulnerabilities that could crash and possibly allow remote control of machines with the popular media software installed.Microsoft also issued a security advisory for similar vulnerabilities that could impact users of Internet Explorer 10 as well as all supported editions of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.
The Dorkbot worm that fooled many a Facebook and Twitter user is now socially engineering Skype users into downloading the malware, whose payload now includes a mechanism to lock down machines.Various antivirus and security companies are reporting the latest iteration rummages through an infected Skype user’s contact list and sends the message “Lol is this your new profile pic?” in English. It sends a similar message in German, too.
Hundreds of thousands of users who signed up for an inexpensive proxy service called Proxybox.name got quite a steal alright. They ended up installing a Trojan horse linked to a botnet first detected last summer.Researchers at Symantec reverse engineered the Backdoor.Proxybox malware and unearthed a major black hat operation and perhaps the actual malware developer.
Several Web sites in Sweden, including the nation’s central bank and two government affiliates, were hit with attacks this week, supposedly in retaliation for a police raid on an Internet company tied to The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest file sharing site.That site also was offline until Wednesday, but its officials say it was due to broken Power Distribution Unit.
Microsoft announced today it’s reached a settlement with the operator of a Chinese Web site whose domain and sub-domains hosted more than 500 kinds of malware, including the Nitol botnet found on brand new computers.
Lawmakers are urging the Food and Drug Administration to more thoroughly vet certain implantable medical devices for security, not just safety, risks. They include life-saving defibrillators, insulin pumps and pacemakers, which have been shown in recent years to be vulnerable to remote attacks.
California today joined two other states making it a crime for employers and colleges to ask applicants or workers for their social media login information in order to access their private Web sites. The new laws — one for companies and one for colleges — go into effect Jan. 1, 2013.
The popular open-source repository SourceForge is investigating how a corrupted copy of phpMyAdmin came to be served from a Korean-based mirror. Logs indicate 400 users downloaded the malicious file before it was removed from rotation today.
Sophos is warning of a new trick to get Twitter users to open direct messages from trusted users that ultimately infect their machines with malware.In a blog post, senior technology consultant Graham Clulely said the initial message is a tweet claiming the recipient’s been captured on a Facebook video. One version makes it sound like something scandalous was taped without the person’s knowledge.
A Sprint spokeswoman today responded to a software developer’s claim that millions of Virgin Mobile users are vulnerable to attacks due to inadequate authentication mechanisms.In an email sent to Computerworld, Stephanie Vinge Walsh said Virgin Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint, has multiple safeguards to prevent someone from tampering with users’ accounts.
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