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Mobile Call Back Spam
(thanks Steve)
Telemarketers are taking the battle up a
notch. They now prank your mobile with one ring then hang
up. This has been happening for at least a few months before
Christmas. Most people will call the number back to find out
who they missed. These people are then greeted with a
recorded message saying they have won! and then requests
them to dial a $2.50/min number for further details. Spam!
There is a way to combat this.
Read more...
Sophos reveals the "Dirty Dozen"
Spam Countries
Only a couple of years back, the
United States accounted for more than half of the spam being
excreted into people's inboxes, but heightened user
awareness of security and the prosecution of large-scale
spammers has dropped that number.
Along with the
CAN-SPAM Act
Microsoft
probably deserves some credit for the decrease. With the
release of the Windows XP operating system, users received a
firewall as part of the installation. Given the vast number
of home PCs running Windows, that XP firewall probably has
helped block a lot of attacks that would have entered PCs in
the past.
The
top twelve spam relaying countries for January to March 2006
are as follows:
Read more...
Debit card fraud outbreak raises
questions
Major credit card
associations and financial institutions are saying little
Avivah Litan, author of the Gartner report,
said that PIN-based fraud schemes involve hackers somehow
gaining access to the encrypted PIN data that is sent along
with card numbers to processors that execute PIN debit
transactions. The thieves also steal terminal keys used to
encrypt PINs, which are typically stored on a retailer's
terminal controllers, she said. The encrypted PIN
information, together with the key for decrypting it and the
card numbers, allow criminals to make counterfeit cards.
Read more...
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Nokia to inoculate phones with
antivirus
Nokia has entered a
pact with Symantec to help secure its mobile phones from
viruses that target certain kinds of handsets.
Under the agreement, announced on Wednesday, Nokia plans to
arm its Series 60 smart phones with the Symantec Mobile
Security antivirus program. The software is designed to ward
off attacks that could compromise the extensive data, such
as contact databases, that people store on their smart
phones, the companies said. The devices typically have many
computer-like features, including e-mail and Web browsing,
which have made them vulnerable to attacks.
Mobile phone virus outbreaks are a small but emerging
threat, security experts have said. Security specialists
F-Secure and Trend Micro, which develop antivirus software
for handsets, claim the malicious code is proliferating. Yet
research firm Gartner recently predicted that a
fast-spreading phone virus or worm is unlikely to appear
before 2008.
Nokia series 60 handsets running the Symbian operating
system are the target of the CommWarrior Trojan horse, which
has been spotted spreading.
Nokia and Symantec said their agreement follows two years of
joint work to develop mobile security technology. Earlier
this year, software maker Kaspersky Lab released its own
mobile antivirus software.
Security
Threats Up Nearly 50 Percent in 2005
It's been a good year
for cybercrooks, especially those with the foresight to have
gotten in on the booming Trojan hose business.
Read
more...
So... Who's Got My Keys?
They're easy to make from online kits, and
shadowy conspirators are deploying them at a record rate to
harm unsuspecting individuals.
Unlike other popular identity-theft techniques like "phishing,"
which entails constructing a bogus Web site and hoping
people will send confidential information to it, keyloggers
install themselves onto computers without users' knowledge.
Read more...
Time Runs Out for
Anti-Virus Vendors
The window between the appearance of malware and the point
at which its impact becomes significant, combined with the
overall increase in damaging code, is making it difficult
for anti-virus companies to keep up.
Read more...
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