Items tagged with Malware
Android may have been birthed as an operating system for digital cameras, but after being acquired by Google, it's since grown to become the most popular mobile OS in the world. Cyber criminals have taken notice, and according to a study by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation...
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Linux users have long been able to claim that their platform of choice is about as safe as an OS can get, but that sentiment is getting a little harder to side with thanks to the recent discovery of the 'Hand of Thief' trojan - it's a bad one, so listen up. Hand of Thief's goal is to lead you to financial ruin by...
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As the prevalence of the Android OS grows, so grows a commensurate vector for malicious attacks from malware. Apparently, the number of malicious apps is growing, too. According to a study released by security software maker Trend Micro, the number of malicious and high-risk Android apps has jumped to about 718,000--which is more startling...
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I'm not sure we needed another example of just how opportunistic malware creators can be, but thanks to Android.AntiObscan, we got one. This is a piece of malware that's been floating around the Web recently that mimics Jay-Z's brand-new album app, Magna Carta Holy Grail. Weeks before its launch, this album hit the...
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Android, like any operating system, is vulnerable to exploits. And every year about this time, we see a flurry of openings crop up as Black Hat approaches. Typically, these hacks are discovered by researchers who are looking to make the software universe safer. And now, Bluebox Security is doing precisely that. The...
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While mobile use worldwide is growing at an accelerated rate, so too is the increase of malware. But accepting that idea is one thing; seeing it in numbers is another. According to Juniper Networks, the number of individual pieces of mobile malware increased 614% between March 2012 and March 2013. 614%! That figure is nothing short of staggering,...
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Be careful what you click on, Facebook users. According to security outfit Trend Micro, variants of the info-stealing Zeus malware are "reemerging with a vengeance" and targeting Facebook users with increased tenacity in recent months. A surge of activity was noted in the beginning of February, but instead of leveling off, it continues to...
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There's been much talk about security on Android in recent months, and it seems likely that it's a subject we won't be dropping anytime soon. Recently, we discovered that Android is susceptible to simple email attachment attacks, and not long before that, Google detailed how it was keeping its Google Play store more...
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If your moral compass doesn't dissuade you from pirating games, maybe the prevalence of malware will. According to the latest research from AVG, game hacks and cracks almost always contain malicious code, as in more than 90 percent of the time, depending on where the downloads originate. In other words, for every 10 times you download a keygen...
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Talk about spring cleaning. According to techcrunch, citing “a company in the mobile app industry which has insight into changes like this”, some 60,000 apps were removed from the Google Play store in February. That’s a startling number, considering that the total number of apps in the Google Play store is around 700,000....
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It's clear that where security's concerned, Google is on top of things. The company has no desire to be compromised, or have its users compromised, and so it's doing a variety of things to make sure incidents are kept to a minimum. Last fall, we learned of Google's app scanner utility - included in Android 4.2+ -...
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As the world shifts to mobile, hackers are adapting their strategies. According to Kaspersky Labs, the security firm just discovered a successful campaign by unknown hackers to target malware at a group of Android phone users. The target: Tibetan activists. The Conference app is malware. Image credit: Forbes The key to getting the attack off...
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Is there a world record for number of software vulnerabilities exposed within the span of a single month? If so, I'm willing to bet that Oracle's Java is the clear winner. We've reported on many Java happenings over the past couple of months, and it doesn't look like the fun is going to end anytime soon. Security firm...
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In the immortal words of radiohead: “You do it to yourself...and that’s why it really hurts.” Security company Bit9 is surely feeling those words after being hacked late last week when attackers targeted computers within Bit9’s own network that weren’t protected by Bit9’s own...
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Forget the school bully who wants your kid’s lunch money: today’s 11-year-old wants your kid’s digital gold, and he’s writing malicious code to steal it. Feeling out of your league, yet? AVG recently took to the airwaves and the Internet to warn parents that kids are learning to code at an...
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Social butterflies beware, there's a brand new strain of the Facebook Token Hijacker malware going around, and it preys on victims who want to score a pair of free UGGs boots. What makes this malware "special" is that it's armed with improved obfuscation techniques to keep its dirty code hidden from anti-malware...
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The antivirus market is enormous, responsible for billions in revenue each year. That being the case, it'd be easy to believe that current offerings are quite good, but not so claims a report (PDF) by security company iMPERVA. This report states a couple of alarming facts, including one that shows that less than...
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In case you need yet another reminder not to go downloading Android apps willy-nilly, a developer was recently caught trying to spread malware by masquerading infected programs as legitimate software. This latest outbreak was relatively easy to spot for tech savvy users, as the dirty dupes were identifiable with the...
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If there's one thing you don't want to happen when you run a website, it's for Google to shun you. Or worse. Today, that "worse" bit happened to one of the web's largest hosts of image files, used extensively on websites and social media. TwitPic, for some odd reason, was picked up in the latest Google sweep of...
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Software vulnerabilities will be the main target of cyber criminals in 2013, according to research by Panda Security's malware laboratory, PandaLabs. Java and Adobe in particular will prove points of emphasis for both cyber criminals and intelligence agencies in countries around the world. "In 2012, we saw how Java...
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On Friday, security firm Symantec discovered a Trojan called Backdoor.Makadocs, which in typical backdoor Trojan fashion accesses a compromised system and attempts to swipe data from it. The interesting bit is that it uses Google Docs as a proxy server to get around firewalls and connect to a C&C server, instead of attempting to connect...
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Windows 8 isn't without controversy, in that Microsoft designed the operating system to offer a unified experience between touch-friendly mobile devices and desktops that may or may not be equipped to handle touch input. But should we also be concerned about security? That depends on your perspective. On one hand, a new study by security firm...
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