The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) released its Q4, 2009 Phishing Activity Trends Report, which reveals that eCrime syndicates are expanding the base of brands they exploit for online fraud far beyond major financial institutions and online merchants, with the number of hijacked brands reaching a record 356 in October, up nearly 4.4 percent from the previous record of 341 in August 2009. Read the full article. [Help Net Security]
Congress and other government agencies are under a cyber attack an
average of 1.8 billion times a month, a number that has been growing
exponentially since President Barack Obama took office. In 2008, security events caused by vectors including worms, Trojan
horses and spybots averaged 8 million hits per month. That number
skyrocketed to 1.6 billion in 2009 and climbed to 1.8 billion this
year, according to Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance Gainer. Read the full article. [Politico]
A Thai court has approved the extradition to the U.S. of a Malaysian
man allegedly involved in hacking credit card information, causing
massive losses for victims in the U.S. Read the full article. [Computerworld]
A pair of researchers has amassed nearly 8,000
iPhones and Android smartphones in an experimental mobile botnet that
demonstrates the ease of spreading potentially malicious applications
on these devices. Read the full article. [Dark Reading]
SAN FRANCISCO–Despite years of efforts by software security teams at major vendors to harden the operating systems and browsers that are the most common targets of attackers, exploitation of new as well as older vulnerabilities is still simpler than many people might think.
The United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) has warned that the software included in the Energizer DUO USB battery charger contains a backdoor that allows unauthorized remote system access.
A security vulnerability identified in Opera can be exploited to crash users’ browsers, but probably can’t lead to the remote execution of malware, a company spokesman said. Read the full article. [The Register]
Cisco has released a number of reports on vulnerabilities in its products. It is possible to disrupt the transfer of voice data in the Unified Communications Manager using crafted SIP, SCCP and CTI packets. Read the full article. [The H Security]
Microsoft’s idea that the fight against malware could be funded by an Internet tax is “horrible,” an analyst said as other experts weighed in on a recent comment by the company’s security chief. Read the full article. [Computerworld]
A now available second maintenance release for PHP 5.3 fixes more than 60 bugs and closes several security holes which were already corrected in version 5.2.13, from the 5.2 branch, last week. Read the full article. [The H Security]
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