Security

A leading security firm says targeting personal data is becoming less of a priority for online criminals. Instead, there's now a greater effort to unlawfully access corporate data, including trade secrets. Word of this new trend comes to us courtesy ... of a McAfee report based on a survey of around 1,000 IT managers in seven countries. Only 1/3 Of Companies Publicly Admit Data Breach Perhaps the most dramatic finding was that previous estimates of data breaches may have been much lower than was reality, as just 30 per cent of companies questioned said they always make breaches public. Around 60 ... (view more)

A controversial new Trojan virus is creeping onto Android smartphones everywhere, but poses no danger of compromising personal data or stealing confidential banking information. The threat is virtually harmless to "victims". Rather, the sole intent ... of the Trojan is to target, and later humiliate, those Android owners who download pirated material rather than pay for an authentic version of the same content. Pirated Android Walk and Text App Devious Referred to as the "Batman of Mobile Malware" the Trojan (also called Android.Walkinwat) poses as a pirated version of the popular "Walk and Text ... (view more)

According to a new report from security firm Symantec, the volume and complexity of web-based hacker attacks continues to grow. Symantec says the total daily number of online attacks actually jumped an incredible 93 per cent from 2009 to 2010. Also ... rising to concerning levels was the number of attacks launched upon mobile platforms. Symantec's findings come to us courtesy of the company's "Internet Security Threat Report," which was released on Tuesday. The findings were certainly eye-catching, including one report which suggests that hacking results in an average of 262,767 exploited ... (view more)

An unspecified number of email users may be indirect victims of a recent data breach at a major marketing company. The breach was at Epsilon, which operates online mailing lists for many major companies, including seven of the ten largest firms in ... America. It's rumored that "millions" of email addresses may have been compromised in the attack. (Source: forbes.com ) The data theft means users should be on high alert for so-called email " phishing " attempts. Massive Data Breach a Gold Harvest for Online Scammers Epsilon says the breach involved the data relating to 2 per cent of its ... (view more)

In taking advantage of a security loophole, hackers have hijacked as many as four million website pages over the past week. It's thought to be the biggest attack of its type, ever. The attacks have been dubbed LizaMoon, named after the first ... destination to which visitors of hijacked sites were redirected. The hijack campaign has proven to be incredibly successful: on the first day, security firm Websense estimated 28,000 web sites were affected, but within three days that figure had risen to 500,000. Two days later and the number of affected pages were estimated to be as high as three or four ... (view more)

A computer security company has apologized after its software mistakenly reported that new Samsung laptops carry malicious software. The confusion was due to security software labeling a legitimate folder directory as being infected. The claims were ... first made by tech writer Mohamed Hassan in an article for Network World. He wrote on Monday that after buying a new Samsung laptop, he ran a security software check and found two cases of a keylogger known as Starlogger. A keylogger is a malicious application that records all keystrokes made by the user and returns them to the application's ... (view more)

A myriad of different brand-specific search boxes have been embedded in the most popular social media and entertainment websites in recent years, so it should come as little surprise that one of the most popular social networks, Facebook, would ... decide to implement one on their main page as well. But the company is bewildered by the latest presence of a second search box, dubbed "Search the Web", which is leading many to believe that the feature could potentially lead to the spread of malware. Facebook news blog AllFacebook was the first to report on the issue, after a number of ... (view more)

The last day to file your taxes in the U.S. is not until April 18, but hackers and online scumbags have long been preparing for the date. A number of new scams have since surfaced online, promising tax credits and other incentives for charitable ... donations. Online Tax Filing Up 6 Percent Since 2010 Almost 19 million people have already filed their taxes at home this year, which is up 6 per cent compared to 2010. For many, this will be their first time tackling the ominous task via the Internet and without the assistance of an accountant. Hackers realize that this is the time when taxpayers ... (view more)

Hackers are actively exploiting a bug that involves both Windows and Internet Explorer. Google believes the hackers may be targeting specific users. The bug involves MHTML, which is a special format designed to combine all the different files of a ... web page, such as the coding for the text and layout, the image files and video files, into a single file. It was originally developed as a way for a user to save an entire webpage to their desktop without winding up with a messy collection of files, but can also be used as a web link. The vulnerability involves the way that Internet Explorer and ... (view more)

Earlier this year, Jeremy Hotz, known to some as "GeoHot", made quite a name for himself by using his website to publish programming code that allows people to hack Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) video game console. Hotz is currently in the middle of a ... lengthy legal battle with Sony as a result, and we've yet to see a final decision. However, it's a side story from the case -- a court order that allows Sony to see who is and has been visiting Hotz's web site and YouTube page -- which has drawn lots of attention lately. Hotz originally decided to publish a special hack for the PlayStation 3 that ... (view more)