H1N1 Virus Goes Hi-Tech! and the CDC warns of H1N1 ‘phishing’ e-mail scam — also more on cybersquatting and cracked firewalls for cPanel CMS users and banks. 2009: The Year of the Social Media Hack and we pick up a study about online friends, and even a set-up identity attack by the Rubber Duck!
H1N1 Virus Goes Hi-Tech!
A fallacious email about the H1N1 vaccination program is being circulated over the Internet. The e-mail tells its recipients that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has implemented a H1N1 vaccination program, which requires individuals to create their personal profile on the cdc.gov website.
This e-mail is a carrier of a computer virus, and Internet users who click on this e-mail are at risk of having a malicious code installed on their computer system. In the worst case, this malicious code could provide a stranger access to the user’s personal information, or one might become a victim of fraud or identity theft.
* continue reading :: www.buzzle.com/articles/
CDC warns of H1N1 ‘phishing’ e-mail scam
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a warning as a result of reports it has received of fraudulent e-mails (phishing) that reference a CDC sponsored State Vaccination Program for H1N1. The messages request that users create a personal H1N1 (swine flu) vaccination profile on the CDC.gov web site. Users that click on the embedded link in the e-mail are at risk of having malicious code installed on their system.
The malicious e-mails state, “You have received this e-mail because of the launching of State Vaccination H1N1 Program. You need to create your personal H1N1 (swine flu) Vaccination Profile on the cdc.gov website. This profile has to be created both for the vaccinated people and the not-vaccinated ones. This profile is used for the registering system of vaccinated and not-vaccinated people. Create your Personal H1N1 Vaccination Profile using the link.”
* continue reading :: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
2009: The Year of the Social Media Hack
The use of social media grew exponentially in 2009; based on data from Cisco’s 2009 security report released in December (PDF), more than 2 percent of all Web traffic for businesses comes from employees accessing social networking sites.
While social networking has opened new possibilities for communicating over the Internet, it also gives hackers more vectors through which to attack.
* continue reading :: Jabulani Leffall – rcpmag.com
Bank firewalls cracked by cyberhackers
There has been a big rise in such frauds, raising the stakes in the war between financial institutions and criminals and costing some bank clients half a million dollars, or more.
The cyberhackers “are clearly ahead of the defence in terms of antivirus solutions, firewall solutions, etc,” Jeffrey Troy, chief of the FBI’s cybercrime section, told the Financial Times. Online bank thefts in 2009 had seen “a very dramatic increase from past years”.
* continue reading :: Joseph Menn in San Francisco
cPanel CMS Connected to Phishing Attacks
BEWARE if you use cPanel to administrate your web site … cPanel, an extremely popular CMS (Content Management System) used by many web hosting companies, is the latest to fall victim to nefarious security breaches.
E-mails are being sent directly to web site owners requesting confirmation of their log-in credentials. Once this information is offered, the phishing criminals proceed to upload extremely convincing bank web sites with the sole purpose of stealing money.
* continue reading :: Renee Hendricks – newsblaze.com
Evicting cybersquatters
Big brands are about to find the fight against brandjacking, cybersquatting and phishing much tougher thanks to new regulations that allow URLs to be created in languages other than English.
Now URLs can be expressed in any language how will Coca Cola, for instance, keep track of rogue or unauthorised websites created in its name in Mandarin and Cantonese, Hindi and Russian? It’s a new problem with which all large organisations will have to come to grips or risk losing control of the image and reputation associated with their brands.
* continue reading :: Sydney Morning Herald – ALEXANDRA CAIN
Study: Pick Your (Online) Friends Wisely
It isn’t always easy to turn down a request to be friends — especially in the context of online social networking. That was one finding of a recent study by security research firm Sophos. The trouble is, according to security experts, a growing number of networking messages are coming from scammers, phishers, and malware distributors.
Sophos created two fictitious profiles for the study. Daisy, represented by a picture of a rubber duck, was 21 and single; Dinette, posting a picture of two cats on a rug, was 56 and married. Sophos sent 100 friend requests from each profile to random contacts in similar age ranges.
* continue reading :: By John Wagley, for Security Management
Identity attack: Rubber Duck
Sophos created two fictitious users with names based on anagrams of the words “false identity” and “stolen identity”. 21-year-old “Daisy Felettin” was represented by a picture of a toy rubber duck bought at a $2 shop; 56-year-old “Dinette Stonily” posted a profile picture of two cats lying on a rug. Each sent out 100 friend requests to randomly-chosen Facebook users in their age-group. Guess what happened…
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