We’ve seen a fair few spam emails in circulation this week, ranging from phishing to money muling to sexploitation. Shall we take a look? The FBI wants to give you back your money First out of the gate, we have a missive claiming to be from the FBI. Turns out you lost a huge sum of money that you somehow don’t have any recollection of, and now the FBI wants to give it back to you via … [Read more...]
July 31, 2018
July 25, 2018
Trojans: What’s the real deal?
The fictional Greeks hiding in their legendary Trojan horse would probably be excited to learn that the default Wiki page for Trojan is, in fact, their big wooden horse thingy (vs. computer infections or dubious businesses). Sorry, fictional ancient Greek warriors. It’s not that we don’t think you’re a big deal—that film with Brad Pitt was at least a 6 out of 10. It’s just that at this … [Read more...]
July 20, 2018
July 11, 2018
IoT domestic abuse: What can we do to stop it?
Some 40 years ago, the sci-fi/horror film Demon Seed told the tale of a woman slowly imprisoned by a sentient AI, which invaded the smart home system her husband had designed to manage it. The AI locked doors, windows, turned off communications, and even put a synthesised version of her onscreen at the front door to reassure visitors she was “fine.” The reality, of course, is that she … [Read more...]
June 29, 2018
Major data breaches at Adidas, Ticketmaster pummel web users
There’s been a number of data breaches and accidental data exposures coming to light in the last few days, and no matter where in the world you happen to be located, you’ll want to do some due diligence and see if you’ve been affected. These aren’t small fishes being preyed upon by black hats; we’re talking Adidas, Ticketmaster, and Exactis, the last one being a … [Read more...]
June 28, 2018
Red Hen website suffers SEO spam compromise
If you’re thinking about checking out the website owned by the restaurant that asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave the premises, you might want to hold off. There’s some site compromise action afoot. Although the homepage appears to be acting in a perfectly normal manner, turning off scripts so you can see what’s happening under the hood provides a … [Read more...]
June 27, 2018
World Cup 2018: malware attacks gunning for goal
World Cup 2018 is upon us and in full swing, bringing together 32 nations for a month of footballing to see who’ll be crowned World Champion. With the tournament underway, we thought it’d be fun to see which of the footballing powerhouses also expended a similar amount of energy fighting off malware attacks. From January 1 until June 14, the day the World Cup matches began, we gathered … [Read more...]
June 15, 2018
UK law enforcement: an uphill struggle to fight hackers
About 16 years ago in the UK, I walked into a local police station to report a computer crime, because walking into local police stations is how they did things back then. There may well also have been penny farthing bicycles, real pea souper fogs, Mary Poppins, and Jack the Ripper, though I could well be wrong on those last two. I was greeted at the incident report desk by a bemused officer on … [Read more...]
June 13, 2018
VPNFilter malware still making waves
Last month, a piece of malware called VPNFilter caused chaos for owners of MikroTik, Lynksys, TP-Link, and Netgear equipment. Roughly 500,000 devices worldwide fell victim, with the unwanted parasite able to listen to traffic, steal credentials, damage devices, and more. Until patches started to roll out, the options weren’t great; as one of our researchers, Jovi Umawing told SCMagazine … [Read more...]
June 1, 2018
Blocks for Flash and others coming to Office 365
If you’re a user of Microsoft Office products such as Word and Excel, you’re probably aware that they’ve been used as inroads for malware for a long, long time. But what about malware attacks without Macros? Sure. Macro malware for Macs? That, too. Malicious documents and spying tools? Danger, Will Robinson. We have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that monthly … [Read more...]
