Donald Sears

SEC: BroCo Investments Hijacked Accounts

A U.S. federal judge has agreed to freeze the assets of a company being accused of manipulating the stocks of 38 companies listed on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange via compromised trading accounts. Read the full article. [CNet]

Banking Losses for Small Biz Blowing Up

Most small business owners have no clue about the threats they face or
the liability they assume when banking online, even as the frequency
and sophistication of attacks appears to be increasing. Read the full article. [KrebsonSecurity]

Mac OS X Ransomware ‘A Matter of Time’

In need of a fresh example that cybercriminals are actively looking for ways to monetize infected Mac OS X hosts? Early-stage discussions at several web forums, including a PoC (proof of concept, source code included) Mac OS X blocker as well as potential GUIs for the ransomware, offer an insight into the potential to monetize OS X infected hosts using SMS-based ransomware.


Criminals increasingly attempt to camouflage the traces of their malware on the internet to keep control of a hijacked server for as long as possible. However, their paths can be retraced using special tools to identify the vulnerability the malware intends to exploit to enter a system. Read the full article. [The H Security]

Through 2012, 60 percent of virtualized servers will be less secure
than the physical servers they replace, according to Gartner. Although
they expect this figure to fall to 30 percent by the end of 2015,
analysts warned that many virtualization deployment projects are being
undertaken without involving the information security team in the
initial architecture and planning stages. Read the full article. [Help Net Security]

A bogus application that lures Facebook users by falsely offering to
show who has been viewing their profile has been exposed as a scam. A researcher warns he
has already identified 25 different copies of the same rogue app but
using different monikers such as peeppeep-pro, profile-check-online and
stalk-my-profile. Read the full article. [The Register]

The latest version of the Zeus do-it-yourself crimeware kit goes to
great lengths to thwart would-be pirates by introducing a
hardware-based product activation scheme similar to what’s found in
Microsoft Windows. Read the full article. [The Register]

The Public Interest Registry will add an extra layer of security known
as DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) to the .org domain
in June — a move that will protect millions of non-profit
organizations and their donors from hacking attacks known as cache
poisoning. Read the full article. [Network World]