Items tagged with Malware
When services are provided for free, it's important to evaluate whether or not there's a major caveat that comes along with it. According to an investigation by CBS News, the free "PC Health" checkup provided by Office Depot carries a big one: you could be encouraged to shell out money to fix a nonexistent...
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Google has a message for webmasters serving up malware and it goes something like this: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Going forward, Google is plugging what it calls a "gap" in its online protection scheme that allowed sites serving up malicious content to become repeat offenders without much...
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Getting hit with ransomware, a form of malware that encrypts your files and holds them hostage until you pay the hacker responsible to decrypt them, is no laughing matter, at least if you're the victim. But for cyber crooks becoming ever more brazen, the temptation to taunt victims and security researchers is...
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What do you usually find in your mailbox? Love letters? Bills? People in Victoria, Australia are finding malware-laden USB drives in their mailboxes, or “letterboxes” as they are called down under.
The Victoria police warned citizens about the malicious USB drives, stating, “The USB drives are believed to be...
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If you operate a Web server that runs on Linux, we're here to give you a bit of a prod in case you haven't updated it in a while. A piece of ransomware called FairWare is floating around, and as you'll soon see, its name is ironic as it's anything but "fair".
Reports are coming in of users who have been struck with...
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A security researcher for AVG has discovered a new piece of ransomware called Fantom that masquerades as a critical Windows update. Victims who fall for the ruse will see a Windows screen acting like it's installing the update, but what's really happening is that the user's documents and files are being encrypted in...
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It seems like we have had to report on some major new hack or threat every week as of late. Black-Hat Hackers are becoming more sophisticated, while their wares are becoming more diverse and complicated. One of the latest pieces of malware, the nasty Rex Linux Trojan, packs in DDoS attacks, ransomware, and a Bitcoin...
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Whenever I give advice on keeping Windows secure from the many threats on the web, I preface things by saying that even the safest computing habits aren't enough these days. Simply visiting a compromised website can get your system infected, but it's not just Windows users that are at risk. Researchers at security...
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Go ahead and cue up Cartman's "No kitty, that's a bad kitty!" soundbite, only this time it's not in reference to stealing those delicious Cheesy Poofs. McAfee's mobile malware research division found a sample of ransomware for Android that it's calling "ElGato," and once infected, it can steal a user's SMS messages...
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With Nintendo's latest game - a mobile one, at that - the company has proven that there is still a lot of innovating to do in the market. While Pokemon GO is based on another title, Ingress, any game is going to have a greater chance of success when it features one of the most popular franchises ever. GO isn't just...
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It has been suggested that the microprocessors we use each and every day could pack in a bit more than we bargained for; namely, the tools needed for spying or undetectable access. And unfortunately, according to security researcher and developer Damien Zammit, there's a potential reason to be concerned over the "ME"...
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If you've ever tried to link someone to a Google Maps URL, you'll undoubtedly understand the benefit of URL shorteners. With them, we can take grossly long URLs and shorten them to a mere fraction of their original length, allowing your Facebook status update to retain a clean look and actually put a few words...
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Thought the Stagefright saga was all behind us? Think again. In a new paper published by Israel's NorthBit, we're shown that Stagefright can still prove to be a serious threat to older devices, with some able to be cracked in as little as 20 seconds. If you're still toting around a Nexus 5, LG G3, HTC One, or Samsung...
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Over the past few years, ransomware has become an ever growing threat to enterprise and personal users alike. If you’re unfamiliar with ransomware, it’s a piece of malware that infects a system, usually encrypts a user’s personal data – like photos, office documents, PDFs and the like – and then forces the user to pay...
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A medical center located in Hollywood, California, paid hackers 40 bitcoins worth nearly $17,000 in U.S. currency to decrypt its files that were being held ransom. The ransom amount is far less than the $3.6 million that was being thrown around when news of the security breach went public, but is no less disheartening...
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Could you go a full day without using your PC? It might not be all that difficult on a casual basis, but for workers at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, they've had the challenge of servicing patients without the aid of any computer systems for over a week due to a malware outbreak and subsequent ransom...
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If you’d like to take a trip down memory lane to a simpler time when MS-DOS was still a big part of computing life and most Americans hadn’t begun to “surf the web”, the Internet Archive has put on a display a virtual museum of computer malware from the 80s and early 90s. But this isn’t just a “static” museum where...
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It seems certain that we've all managed to wind up on a website at some point in time that had misleading elements, such as fake download buttons. While piracy is going to be the first thing that springs to many minds when this kind of sketchiness is brought up, it's hardly exclusive to that area. Some websites that...
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Dozens of Starwood hotels around the country were hit with malware that enabled cyber thieves to access credit and debit card information from point of sale terminals. The malware affected a variety of locations on Starwood properties, including restaurants, gift shops, and other places where customers might have...
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Security firm Lookout has just revealed what could be one of the most hard-hitting pieces of malware to ever hit Android. It doesn't have an official name, except to be referred to as "trojanized adware", and right from the top, we can tell you that if you only stick to downloading apps through Google's Play Store...
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It's hard to argue that "Internet of Things" (IoT) devices can enrich our lives. From making it easier to moderate temperature in our homes to securing them, IoT is going to be a big part of our future. Unfortunately, that does lead to one problem: as more and more devices get rolled out, the inevitability is that...
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The researchers at Palo Alto Networks are working overtime thanks to plenty of new mobile exploits creeping up seemingly every day. Recently, the firm has been responsible for a couple of big stories revolving around Apple's iOS. Back in August, it found that over 225,000 Apple accounts were stolen from jailbroken...
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