Not surprisingly, malware is never far away from any internet users. Revealing exactly how easy it is to expose a computer to malware, a recent study has found users visiting the 1,000 most commonly visited websites are typically no more than two clicks away from exposure to malicious content.
While searching the top 1,000 websites, a recent study from Websense found 72 percent of top news and media sites are at least two mouse clicks away from malware exposures. Additionally, 71 percent of the most popular message boards and forums and more than half of all social networking sites were as close as two clicks away to a malware campaign.
Most PC security providers offer software that prevents malware while users surf the web without worrying about threats. Check Point Software decided to take a different approach.
The company, which develops the popular ZoneAlarm firewall product, has recently been criticized for a type of scareware campaign, bombarding its users with pop-up messages that warn against the worldwide threat for the recently successful Zeus/Zbot Trojan. The warnings read “Global virus alert. Your PC may be in danger!” and link to a sales page on the company’s website, offering updates for its protective solutions.
While the campaign is less harmful than typical scareware campaigns, which are often employed by cyber criminals who design malicious attacks to look similar to their victims’ antimalware software, the issue has had a similar impact upon users who believed it was a legitimate warning that their personal data was at risk. read more…
I forgot last night around 3am while couldn’t sleep I was catching up on some articles on my old faithful (Tmobile G1) and wanted to share this. Gawker has been covering the Google engineer who was fired for spying on children illegally fairly well (or at least paying this notable story the amount of attention the story deserves while other media outlets have not). They even did this great follow up piece covering the most important questions of all that have not been answered by Google. Definitely worth a quick read:
Four Questions Google Still Needs to Answer About its Creepy Engineer
We figured it out, right from our cubicles. Google Instant was most certainly inspired by the Mel Brooks classic, Spaceballs.
Hyperspeed!
I, like most other netizens, have been following the Facebook privacy hubbub for some time. I even recently opted myself out of Facebook Places, as difficult as they tried to make that process. Overall though I hadn’t really had any personal issues and thought the privacy issue was being blown a wee bit out of proportion.
That is until I had a scare forwarded to me by a colleague. A dashboard had somehow discovered all of my personal profiles and linked them to all of my professional profiles. Yes it even found ye olde Myspace profile. I should just delete it and it is private but I worked so hard to get all of those friends (or random strangers)! read more…
Some computer users may decline to make the investment in protective anti-malware software, under the impression a serious online scam could never happen to them. However, a recent study revealed the true risk associated with simple web surfing and email, discovering that 65 percent of internet users have been affected by an online scam regarding PC viruses, credit card fraud or identity theft.
The research, conducted by security firm Norton, found malware is the most dangerous internet threat. Malicious software, including PC viruses, Trojans or worms, are responsible for 51 percent of all cyber crimes investigated in the report. The study revealed the importance of protective software, as malware was far more effective than other online scams. For example, only 10 percent of cyber crime victims were reportedly deceived by an online scam, and email phishing accounted for just 9 percent of cyber crime. Social networking, however, is on the rise as a target for cyber criminals, taking up 7 percent of the study’s results.
Malware attacks have a lasting effect upon their victims as well, as the study found the global average for resolving an issue from a cyber crime was 28 days. The financial damage may exceed any other impact, as the worldwide average for cost associated with cyber crimes was $334.
“We all pay for cyber crime, either directly or through pass-along costs from our financial institutions,” said Adam Palmer, Norton’s lead cyber security advisor.
In response to the trends among cyber criminals’ victims, Norton’s security experts advise reporting an online scam immediately, as well as safeguarding PCs with protective software. Of the 7,000 respondents, only half claimed they would change their behavior regarding internet security, and less than one-third of victims said they never resolved the cyber crime that affected them.
“Cyber criminals purposely steal small amounts to remain undetected, but all of these add up,” Palmer added. “If you fail to report a loss, you may actually be helping the criminal stay under the radar.”
In fact, this dynamic may be spreading throughout web browsers across the globe. As many internet users are not experts, and may lack the knowledge to resolve the issue themselves, they feel helpless when targeted by an online scam.
“We accept cyber crime because of a ‘learned helplessness’,” said Joseph LaBrie, associate professor of psychology at Loyola Marymount University, IT Pro UK reports.
LaBrie advises internet users to consult trusted PC experts and legitimate internet security software providers to help recover from a scam.
“It’s like getting ripped off at a garage – if you don’t know enough about cars, you don’t argue with the mechanic,” LaBrie added. “People just accept a situation, even if it feels bad.”
In addition to investing in protective software, running a PC scan for malicious software can ensure users’ PCs aren’t already being exploited by a malware scam that could be releasing sensitive personal data.
Computer users may have been finding it more difficult to determine which websites are legitimate and which are potentially harmful lately. This may be because cyber criminals typically create 57,000 new malicious websites every week, many of which exploit the brand names of high-profile companies such as eBay and Visa, according to a recent study.
PandaLabs, the research branch of Panda Security, recently released the results of its three-month study on the behavior of global cyber criminals. In a worldwide effort to deceive computer users into subjecting themselves to malware or releasing their personal information, hackers have created scams that exploit the legitimacy of popular companies such as eBay and Western Union, which combine to have an affiliation with 44 percent of all fake malicious sites in the world.
“The problem is that when you visit a website through email or search engines, it can be difficult for users to know whether it is genuine or not,” Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs. “Given the proliferation of this technique, we advise consumers to visit banking sites or online stores by typing in the address in the browser directly rather than using search engines or links in an email.”
The study discovered the 10 most commonly used brand names for fake malicious websites among computer hackers. As eBay and Western Union led the study with connection 23.2 percent and 21.1 percent of all scams across the globe, respectively, a number of other popular websites are also extremely common victims of cyber criminals’ scams. Visa was the third most common, composing slightly more than 9.5 percent of the study’s results, and the United Services Automobile Association followed with more than 6.8 percent. Other notable targets for website scams were Amazon, Bank of America, PayPal and the IRS.
Because online banking requires the exchange of some of the most sensitive information on the web, PandaLabs’ research found major banking websites were copied for scam purposes in 65 percent of attacks during the past three months.
As this technique has become so popular, and proven so effective, cyber criminals are showing no signs of slowing down.
“Although search engines are making an effort to mitigate the situation by changing indexing algorithms, they have so far been unable to offset the avalanche of new websites being created by hackers every day,” Corrons added.
While many users may be tempted to click on a link presented through an email that seems to have been sent from their bank or online auction site, the mounting issue of fake website scams can make that potentially harmful to their computer or personal information. Security experts advise users to immediately delete suspicious emails that request the release of personal information. Also, advising a company that has been exploited can help bring the scam to an end and save other users trouble in the future.
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