The TED talks have long been famous for introducing a wide (albeit wired) audience to The Next Big Thing, whether it was Jeff Hann at NYU demonstrating the Minority Report-style touch-sensitive user interfaces in 2006 – years before the iPhone hit the market – or MIT’s David Merrill’s demonstration of stackable mini computers called Siftables. (OK – we’re not sure yet what the heck you can use those for.)
A new ransomware scam locks down its victims’ computers, attempting to convince them that child pornography has been found therein, and informs users that their machine will be unlocked only after paying a $17 (500 ruble) fine, according to a BitDefender analysis reported by MalwareCity.
By Dmitry TarakanovMy colleague Jorge Mieres recently found a C&C server of a botnet based on a malicious program called Ice IX. As announced on several user forums, Ice IX is a bot created using the source code of ZeuS 2.0.8.9, which became publicly available in May. The author of the new bot says the program includes substantial enhancements, which should be interesting to those cybercriminals who steal money from users with the help of banking Trojans.
Attackers on Tuesday hacked the uTorrent.com service, replacing the uTorrent software download with a rogue antivirus program that demanded payment from users in order to remove non-existent malware from their machines.
Researchers at security firm Trusteer claim a new version of the SpyEye Trojan horse program that targets mobile banking users with Android mobile phones and intercepts SMS text messages to and from the phone. However, significant obstacles may prevent it from spreading.
For the first time in recent memory, the United States is no longer among the world’s premier spam distributors. In fact, the US isn’t even in the top ten, according to a new report from Kaspersky Lab.
By Chris WysopalIn the days following 9/11 we heard alarmist warnings of a coming wave of cyberterrorism. In the early days of the war in Afghanistan when an Al Qaeda computer was found, it was treated as evidence that terrorists knew how to use computers so therefore they would soon be sending worms to shut down or blow up our power plants. During that time I was interviewed on a CNN talk show describing what a terrorist might be doing with a computer that was found to have computer aided design (CAD) software on it. I said it might be used to figure out the best place to plant a bomb to cause the most damage to a structure. This wasn’t cyberterrorism. It was using the computer as an engineering tool. Somehow this got lost by the host of the show who kept on plugging away that cyberterror from Al Qaeda was coming soon. That never materialized and in the last 10 years I don’t think there has been any documented cases of cyberterrorism.
It was December 8, 2000 – the waning days of the Clinton Administration. Richard Clarke, a member of President Clinton’s National Security Council, was addressing attendees at SafeNet 2000, a conference sponsored by Microsoft Corp. that brought together computer security experts from around the country to talk about ways to increase cooperation around cyber security.
A rare mistake by Microsoft’s security team resulted in the company’s September software patches to be released to the public days early.
Attackers behind March’s RSA SecurID attack apparently used the same method to try to infiltrate two U.S. national security organizations according to data recently made public by file checking site VirusTotal.
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