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Those who attempt to predict the future run the risk of being wrong. But those who overlook the importance of conducting a prospective analysis adopt a passive attitude that weakens them against the dictatorship of events. Anticipating societal changes prepares us to weather the storm. That quote comes from the recently published Prospective Analysis on Read more…
Tags: Cybercrime, predictions
Pinterest is getting lots of media attention lately. Spammers are also starting to exploit the social-media “pinup” site to make quick money. We have found that there are already lots of ready-to-use tools that make it easy for anyone to start Pinterest scams without much difficulty or technical skill. These tools are so easy that Read more…
Tags: Android, Cybercrime, Data Protection, global threat intelligence, identity fraud scams, identity protection, identity theft, Identity thieves and cybercriminals, McAfee Labs, pinterest scam, social networking, spam
Mother’s Day is normally celebrated by people to express their love for their mothers. We sometimes buy them special gifts such as watches, antiques, greeting cards, or flowers. Spammers also celebrate Mother’s Day, but with a different goal in mind. As always, spammers like to take advantage of special occasions and festivals. Currently we see Read more…
Tags: Mother’s day spam, spam
In recent years one of the most prevalent malware threats for PCs (and lately Mac users) is fake-antivirus software, which pretends to be a legitimate security program. Its real purpose is to charge victims a fee to remove a nonexistent threat. The same threat has now been ported to mobile devices. In some cases we Read more…
Tags: Android, fake anti-virus software, fake-av, Google Play, Mobile, pup
We all know how fast the smart phone market is growing. Along with it, the complexity and the numbers of mobile malware are also on the rise. While I was going through our mobile malware collection, I found an interesting piece of malware for Android. This malware acts as an IRC Bot, just as we Read more…
Tags: Android Bot analysis, Android Dropper, Android Malware, Android Malware Analysis, Android Rooting Exploit, Android SMS broadcast, Arun Sabapathy, Exploit for Android, IRCBOT for android, Malicious Android Application, mobile malware, Premium SMS Trojan, Rooting Exploit
A lot of recent attacks on Android users are attributed to fake websites of popular applications such as Cut the Rope, Instagram, Angry Birds, or Grand Theft Auto III. However, the very recently discovered malware NotCompatible uses a distribution method not previously seen in the mobile world. The malware hacks into vulnerable websites to inject Read more…
Tags: Android, Android Malware, Android Malware Analysis, NotCompatible
Few days back, we found another Pastebin entry that contains a source which looks to be malicious botnet code. As I wrote in my earlier blog, malware authors also use Pastebin to trade botnet kits. Many times, snippets of a botnet help researchers understand the workings of the botnet and write detections for it. The Read more…
Proliferation ZeroAccess is one of the most talked and blogged,[1][2] about rootkits in recent times. It is also one of the most complex and highly prevalent rootkits we have encountered, and it is continuing to evolve. The ZeroAccess rootkit is distributed via both social engineering as well as by exploitation. A recent blog post by our colleagues at McAfee describes some Read more…
Tags: Deep Defender, DeepSAFE, Rootkits
Since last week, we have seen many specially crafted files exploiting CVE-2012-0158, a vulnerability in MSCOMCTL.OCX in Microsoft Office and some other Microsoft products. This exploit can be implemented in a variety of file formats, including RTF, Word, and Excel files. We have already found crafted RTF and Word files in the wild. In the Read more…
Tags: CVE-2012-0158, exploit, OLE, RTF
On April 16, we found a Pastebin entry selling the latest version of the infamous SpyEye botnet (Version 1.3.48) for a much lower price than we’ve seen elsewhere. (This botnet is mainly used to steal banking information.) The quote was just US$150 including three months hosting, after that it’s $15 per month. This version was Read more…
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