CEOs targetted by sneaky phishing scam

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Panos Anastassiadis didn't click on the fake subpoena that popped into his inbox on Monday morning, but he runs a computer security company. Others were not so lucky. In fact, security researchers say that thousands have fallen victim to an email scam in which senior managers such as Anastassiadis are told ...

Bot breaks Hotmail’s CAPTCHA in 6 seconds

Monday, April 14th, 2008

A new bot can crack defenses erected by Microsoft to keep spammers from creating large numbers of accounts on its Live Hotmail service within seconds, a security researcher said Friday. Dan Hubbard, vice president of security research at Websense, said the bot broke Live Hotmail's CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test ...

New Crimeware-as-a-Service Market Thriving

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

First it was do-it-yourself malware and phishing toolkits, then it was specialized sites selling stolen FTP credentials and credit card accounts, and now it’s the next phase in cybercrime: crimeware as a service. Researchers at Finjan, MarkMonitor, and Trend Micro are among those seeing a new cybercrime business model, where ...

Apple Adds Anti-Hacker Features to QuickTime

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

Apple is quietly adding several key anti-hacker security features into its flagship QuickTime media player as part of a deliberate plan to reduce the effectiveness of malicious exploits. The XPMs (exploit prevention mechanisms) have been fitted into the WIndows and Mac OS X versions of QuickTime 7.4.5, a new update that ...

Vista Security Is Annoying by Design

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

If you're running Windows Vista, you're familiar with User Access Control (UAC). It's the security subsystem that pops up those irritating dialog boxes asking whether you really want to install software, or modify system files, or write to the Registry. UAC may be Vista's most-hated feature, but as it turns out, ...