The head of Google’s Web spam team says that the company has pushed warning messages to some 20,000 Web site owners that their sites may be compromised and are performing “weird” redirections, possibly to malicious Web sites.
Researchers at Kaspersky Lab says a new malicious program, dubbed SabPub, exploits the same Java security hole as the Flashback Trojan and enables targeted attacks against Mac users.
A new scareware-ransomware hybrid attempts to convince users they are being sued in violation of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and offers to remedy the problem if users purchase a fake antivirus solution.
Apple, which usually doesn’t get involved much in security issues outside of issuing patches when needed, said it is working with internet service providers around the world to disable the Flashback botnet’s command and control servers.
HP is warning customers that some of its ProCurve switches were shipped recently with compact flash cards infected with malware. The company said that a number of software versions in the ProCurve 5400 switch were affected, and that PCs could be become infected by the malware under some conditions.
We wrote yesterday about research by Paul Brodeur of Leviathan Security Group on security weaknesses that are built into Google’s Android mobile operating system. Brodeur was able to show, using a proof of concept application, that Android applications without any permissions can still access files used by other applications, including which applications are installed and a list of any readable files used by those applications. In this question and answer session, Brodeur corresponds with Threatpost about his ongoing work studying the Android operating system, and how a combination of loose application coding and insecure design makes Google’s Android a boon for advertisers and others who want to harvest data on mobile users.*
Apple is planning to release a software fix that will find and remove the Flashback malware that has been haunting Mac users for several months now. The latest version of Flashback has built a botnet that at times has included more than 600,000 infected machines.
Dennis Fisher talks with Ryan Naraine and Costin Raiu about the Flashback Mac botnet, why Apple is reluctant to let third parties update software on Macs and the future outlook for the security of Macs.
There is a new Zeus Trojan variant that is targeting the Canadian human resources and payroll service provider, Ceridian.
Mac malware is still enough of an oddity that the existence of a single botnet made up of Macs has prompted a huge amount of publicity and finger-pointing in the general direction of Apple. The furor over the Flashback malware seems to be receding a bit, and researchers say that the number of unique bots connecting to a sinkhole server dropped significantly over the weekend. But that doesn’t mean that the threat is over.
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