Chris Brook

A phishing campaign via the Donbot botnet has been spamming unsuspecting Bank of America customers, according to a blog post by Rodel Mendrez at M86 Security Labs.Online banking customers who’ve been targeted receive an e-mail that appears to be from Bank of America instructing the user to confirm their online banking details. After downloading an attachment that claims it’ll restore customer’s account access, researchers found the phishing trick.

Mozilla is working on making their web applications more “attack aware,” according to a blog post on the company’s Web Application Security blog Wednesday.In the blog post, Mozilla’s web security nomad Michael Coates, discusses how these “attack aware” applications will be able to differentiate between normal user errors and abnormal errors made by malicious users who intend to damage the system.

We were so excited about the release of Spore. Imagine: MMORPG that combined StarCraft-like interplanetary species competition with the principles of Darwinian evolution. Just cool! Too bad the actual game sucked so bad that barely anyone wanted to play it. Still, with the hundreds of millions of dollars that were invested into Spore’s creation, the world got a half decent 404 graphic in the bargain. That’s not so bad.

http://www.spore.com/404

It’s always so easy to blame the ninjas, isn’t it? Still, we’ve gotta give props to the anime-inspired custom 404 error page for this Sydney, Australia based Web design firm, which claims that “A ninja stole this page.” Visitors are encouraged to “return when the moon has friends and the fox is borrowed.” Cool!

http://huwshimi.com/404/

“Menacing” is probably the word that best describes istockphoto.com’s choice of graphics to adorn its 503 “service unavailable” message. It’s an octopus…that much is clear…but it’s blue. And has a maw full of teeth and dripping blood – presumably from the poor creature it’s just decapitated.

There’s something very retro about the “fail folder,” Google’s go-to image, which pops up on the Chrome Web browser every time you, say, lose your Internet connection. It’s colorless and two dimensional and its size and shape not so subtly recall the beloved GUI of early vintage Macs. Google made billions following a “less is more” ethos and – it seems – the same idea extends to its 404 error pages.

It’s hard to get mad at a cuddly little raccoon when it stares at you wide-eyed. That’s especially true when said raccoon is also hard at work in the data center: circuit board and wrench (?!) in hand. At least, that must be what Loic Le Meur and crew at social network management startup Seesmic must have been reasoning. More than one commenter has noted the uncanny resemblence that Seesmic’s raccoon has to Swiper, Dora the Explorer’s nemesis.