Phony Pokémon GO Android App Gave Attackers Root Access

A rogue and malicious app that billed itself as a “Guide for Pokémon GO” managed to make it into Google Play’s marketplace. Once installed, the malware-laced app gave attackers root access to any Android device it was installed on. The app, actually a Trojan in disguise, contained a nasty piece o...

Fake EFF Site Used in Spear Phishing Campaign

Attackers, possibly associated with the Russian government, registered a phony Electronic Frontier Foundation domain earlier this month in an attempt to dupe users into thinking correspondence from the site was coming from the well-known privacy watchdog. The scheme, largely carried out via spear...

Pro-Syria Cyberespionage Campaign Uses Social Engineering

It’s a tried-and-true plotline for many a corny movie: the lonely soldier on the front lines falling for a girl who turns out to be the enemy. If you apply a 2015 reality to that scenario, you have the lonely soldier Skyping with an alluring woman who turns out to be an enemy hacker dropping cust...

Spammers Take A Liking to WhatsApp Mobile App

Spammers have settled in on the WhatsApp messaging platform with greater regularity, aided in one locale, by of all things, government regulations. Researchers at AdaptiveMobile yesterday published a report that exposed a number of spam campaigns peddling phony handbags and sunglasses, investment...

'Real Footage of Malaysian Flight MH 17 Shot Down' Facebook Spam Spreads Malware

A distasteful trend among the cyber crooks have began these days that they left no occasion, either good or bad, to snatch users’ financial information in order to make money as well as spread malware to victimize users. The tragedy of the crashed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is no exception for...

Phony SSL Certs Spoof Google, Facebook, GoDaddy, others

Dozens of phony SSL certificates were discovered this week mocking legitimate certs from banks, e-commerce sites, ISPs and social networks. If a user stumbled over one of the bogus certificates on a mobile device it could put them at risk for a man-in-the-middle attack. Disguised as official...

Twitter Underground for Phony Follower Accounts Thriving

Buying Twitter followers is standard practice for celebrities, politicians, startups, and even so-called social media experts who want to boost their online Q Score. So it shouldn’t be surprising that hackers have noticed this market opportunity and are building a formidable underground business...

Phony Fax Leads to Metasploit, Rapid7 DNS Hijacking

A pro-Palestine hacker collective went old-school in its takedown of the Metasploit and Rapid7 websites today. Metasploit creator and HD Moore confirmed via Twitter that Metasploit.com was hacked via a spoofed DNS change request sent via fax to its registrar, Register.com. “Hacking like it’s 1964...

Microsoft Update to Improve Cryptography and Digital Certificate Handling (2854544)

This host is missing an important security update according to Microsoft Security Advisory 2854544. OpenVAS Vulnerability Test $Id: secpodcryptndigitalcerthandlingupdate.nasl 5347 2017-02-19 09:15:55Z cfi $ Microsoft Update to Improve Cryptography and Digital Certificate Handling 2854544 Authors:...

Faux, Hacked Apps Continue to Litter Google Play Marketplace, Developer Alleges

Phony, potentially malicious apps are continuing to make their way into Google’s Play marketplace, triggering debate over whether applications are being properly vetted for adhering to the company’s marketplace policies. Developers at the Root Uninstaller Team have called out another app publishe...

Business Identity Theft: Increasingly Commonplace Yet Incredibly Obscure

You wouldn’t know it from reading the news, but business identity theft is becoming an increasingly large concern for small business owners, according to a report filed by NPR’s Yuki Noguchi today on Morning Edition. Noguchi tells the story of Scott Burnett and the Memphis-based company he and hi...

Phony Temple Run Game For Android Plays On Android-iOS App Gap

Scammers are using the super-popular Temple Run game for iOS as bait to lure Android users into installing a phony version of the game on their phones. The incident comes amid reports of an explosion in traffic to mobile Web pages and application stores. Researchers at Trend Micro wrote on Monday...

Fake Antivirus Scams Targeting Android Users

Fake antivirus software, or “scareware” scams have been one of the tried and true methods that crooks have used to make illegal profits online in recent years. The scams often offer convincing replicas of legitimate anti malware software to trick users into installing malicious programs that can...

Facebook And Twitter Erode Your Company's Security From Within. Here's How To Stop It.

The “up side” of social networks like Facebook, Twitter and G+ are well known. But the down side of these networks for both users and for organizations that employ them are only now becoming clear. Worms, malware and spam are just the beginning of the security problems engendered by the social ne...

Anonymous Hacks Murdoch's Sun Web Site

Ever attuned to the headlines, the hacker collective Anonymous have inserted themselves into the ongoing scandal over hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World Tabloid, hacking the Web site of The Sun, another Murdoch publication, and redirecting traffic to that paper’s home page to a phony...

High Profile Education, Government Sites Hacked

The Web sites of some of the nation’s top universities were discovered to be serving up links to bogus online stores offering everything from popular software by Microsoft to student visas and Viagra, according to a report from security firm zScaler. Portions of Websites belonging to Harvard...

Real SEO Feeding Traffic to Fake Search Engines

Online scam artists are using black hat search engine optimization SEO techniques to push more than just malicious software. In fact, SEO is increasingly being used to drive traffic to a range of phony Web based search engines that are feeding cost-per-click advertising scams, according to a blog...

Malware Spreading Through Phony FDIC Alerts

There are reports of phony FDIC notification e-mails tricking computers users into installing the ZBot identity-theft Trojan. The e-mails tell the recipients that their banks have filed for bankruptcy and that the banks’ asserts are now under the control of the FDIC. The links offered in the...

Scareware Locks Apps on Infected PCs

USA Today is reporting on a new variant of scareware that not only inundates users with exhortations to purchase phony antivirus software called “Total Security 2009,” but that also locks users out of nearly all applications until they purchase the disreputable product. Once their PCs are infecte...