After A Lull, Botnets Back In Business

After a lull in the fourth quarter of 2010, spam appears to be back in full force, according to reports from both Websense, Commtouch and Symantec Corp.Spam volume was up 45% in the first half of January after diving in Q4 according to a Commtouch spam report. Reports show the recently dormant...

Microsoft botnet take down will not stop spam !

A prominent security researcher said he doubts Microsoft's take down of the Waledac botnet would have any impact on spam levels, as the company claimed. "Waledac just is not a hugely prolific spammer," said Joe Stewart, director of malware analysis at SecureWorks and a noted botnet researcher. "S...

Spam Volume Recovers After Holiday Break

The amount of spam hitting users’ inboxes fell off a cliff in late December, with many security experts attributing the decline to the sudden disappearance of the Rustock botnet and other networks from the spam business. But the level of spam has begun to gain back some of the ground it lost toda...

New Service Helps Attackers Get Zeus Botnet Off the Ground

The inventiveness and avarice of the underground community knows few bounds and one of the latest bits of evidence of this is the creation of a new service designed to help newbies get their Zeus botnets up and running as quickly as possible. The service takes one of the more bothersome tasks...

Week in Security: Year-end E-Card Drama, Foreign Spies and Sandboxes – Not So Safe After All?

An onslaught of spammy holiday cards ushered out a 2010 that saw spam, for the first time ever, in decline. Meanwhile, the DoD warned about foreign governments stealing military technology, while researchers warned that application sandboxes might not be so safe to play in, after all. Read on for...

White House E-Card Scam Part of Larger Zeus-Related Attack !

The simplistic spam campaign that hit around Christmas and purported to be a holiday greeting from the White House not only included a piece of Zeus-related malware that searches hard drives for documents and uploads them to a remote server, but also appears to be connected to a similar attack fr...

White House E-Card Scam Part of Larger Zeus-Related Attack

The simplistic spam campaign that hit around Christmas and purported to be a holiday greeting from the White House not only included a piece of Zeus-related malware that searches hard drives for documents and uploads them to a remote server, but also appears to be connected to a similar attack fr...

Storm Botnet Returns as Part of New Year's Attacks

A new spam campaign that appeared shortly before the New Year is part of a new effort by the crew behind the Storm/Waledac botnet and is using some rather elementary tactics–in combination with fast-flux–to attempt to compromise unsuspecting users. The new attack emerged late last week and is...

Geinimi Trojan targets Android devices !

A data-stealing Trojan affecting Android devices has emerged in China. The Geinimi Trojan sends location co-ordinates, unique device identifiers, and a list of installed apps on the infected device to a remote server. Additionally, it can independently download applications and prompts the user t...

Anonymous Targets WikiLeaks Critics in Operation Payback Campaign

Do you support WikiLeaks? Are you angry at critics trying to suppress it? Maybe you're considering joining online protests to shut down the websites of its opponents. Don't. A group of vigilantes named Anonymous has turned their Operation Payback campaign, previously targeting antipiracy...

Alleged Mega-D Botnet Controller Pleads Not Guilty

The man accused of running the Mega-D spam-spewing botnet has pleaded not guilty to charges that he was using the botnet to send millions of spam messages a day, some of them laden with malware. Oleg Nikolaenko was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Wisconsin on Friday on charges that he violate...

Researchers Tracking Emerging Darkness Botnet

Researchers are tracking a new botnet that has become one of the more active DDoS networks on the Internet since its emergence early last month. The botnet, dubbed “Darkness,” is being controlled by several domains hosted in Russia and its operators are boasting that it can take down large sites...

FBI Arrests Alleged Head of Mega-D Botnet Operation

The FBI has arrested the man that they allege is behind the notorious Mega-D botnet, which at one point accounted for nearly a third of all of the spam on the Internet. The arrest came to light this week after the man was caught entering the U.S. last month on his way to a car show. The man that...

Report: IRC Botnets Dying…But Not Dead

Once the most common form of malicious computer network, botnets that use the IRC Internet Relay Chat protocol are going the way of the Brontosaurus, according to a report from Internet security monitoring firm Team Cymru. Under fire from better monitoring of IRC command and control C&C traffic a...

China Introduces New Laws to Combat Cyber Hacking

China is taking decisive action against computer hacking with a new law set to govern the sentencing of hackers and other internet offenders. This initiative, announced by the Ministry of Public Security, aims to enhance cybersecurity in response to the growing threat of cybercrime. Lawmakers are...

zScaler: Resurgent Lethic using Stuxnet Tricks

Newly detected versions of the Lethic botnet are digitally signed using stolen credentials similar to those used by the Stuxnet worm, according to a blog post from Web security firm zScaler. In a blog post Wednesday, zScaler Senior Security Researcher Mike Geide said the company had intercepted n...

Botnet Crackdowns Staunch Spam…For a Month

The crackdowns on massive, spam-spewing botnets disrupted the global flow of spam e-mail…for about a month. That, according to a new report out from Kaspersky Lab. “Spam in the Third Quarter of 2010” is the latest, quarterly report from Kaspersky’s anti virus research labs. It finds that several...

Researchers To Debut Botnet-Resistant Coding Techniques

As the botnet epidemic continues to rage, researchers are expanding the scope of their search for new methods to prevent users from becoming unwitting victims of these massive malicious networks. One pair of researchers this week will unveil a new technique they’ve developed to help Web sites...

Attackers Now Using Honeypots to Trap Researchers

Attackers are constantly changing their tactics and adapting to what the security community and researchers are doing, and it’s not unusual for the bad guys to adopt techniques used by their adversaries. The latest example of this is a malware gang that has deployed what amounts to a honeypot...

Indian hackers focus on botnet attacks

A new report released by computer giant Microsoft has revealed that the attack of 'botnets' on computers has increased in India. A botnet is a network of computers, controlled by one computer bot herder, which attacks another PC and makes it a part of its network. The report says that the Indian...