TechBlog

Symantec Connect: Phishers regularly introduce new types of fake applications with the motive of improving their chance to harvest user credentials. In February 2012, Symantec observed a phishing site recommending a fake application that allegedly removes “Timeline” profile for Facebook users. The phishing site was hosted on a free web hosting site. The phishing site embedded the Facebook Timeline promotion video from YouTube, with the claim “Remove Timeline Now”. According to this phishing site, users will have their “Timeline” removed from their Facebook profile and get back their old profile page—only after they enter their login credentials. To make the fake application look more authentic, phishers added that it was protected by an antivirus product with the logo of the antivirus brand placed below the login form. After user credentials are entered, the phishing page redirects to a page which displays a screenshot from the Facebook Timeline promotion video. If users fell victim to the phishing site by entering their login credentials, phishers would have successfully stolen their information for identity theft purposes. ...

The H-Security: Next week’s Patch Tuesday sees Microsoft planning to publish a total of six bulletins, including one that addresses a critical vulnerability in all versions of Windows from Windows XP service pack 3 to Windows 7 service pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The rating means that the hole enables attackers to infect a system via the internet and inject malicious code. Other bulletins will address a privilege elevation flaw which affects the same span of Windows versions. ...

SophosLabs: Messages are spreading between Facebook users, claiming that members of the social network have lost all respect for popular songstress Rihanna after watching a video. However, if you’re careless enough to click on the link you will find yourself lured into a survey scam that attempts to earn affiliate cash for fraudsters. A typical message trying to tempt users into falling for the scam looks like this: ...

avast: While taxpayers are the regular target of springtime malware schemes, this year the bad guys are aiming for the accountants. A series of imposter emails are threatening recipients with the removal of their professional accreditation if they fail to respond promptly. The tax-phish appear to be from organizations such as the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants(AICPA), Better Business Bureau(BBB), and Intuit tax services. After clicking on the email, users are redirected through a hacked legitimate site to the final malware distribution center where their computer can download fake antivirus or another malware package selected by the bad guys. ...

The H-Online: Google has announced on its Inside Search blog that it is enabling SSL encryption by default on its global search pages. The US site Google.com has been switching users to the secured HTTPS protocol since last year and now, to improve security and privacy for all its users, the company is rolling the behavior out to its international properties such as google.co.uk. As is the case on the US site, this only affects users who are signed into their Google account when visiting the site. The company expects to roll out this feature to the different local Google search pages “over the next few weeks”. Google hopes that this move will encourage other companies to adopt SSL more broadly across their web sites as well.

Symantec Connect: Recently we noticed spammers abusing Dropbox, a popular cloud-based, file-hosting and synchronization tool, to spread spam. Dropbox accounts have a public folder where files can be placed and made publicly available. This function is useful to spammers, as it effectively turns Dropbox into a free hosting site. Spammers have abused URL shortening and free hosting sites for some time. Dropbox also provides a URL shortening service, which spammers have also abused. ...

SophosLabs: Is Google really extending its online empire, and opening an online pharmacy? Of course not. So don’t believe spammed-out emails like the following: Do you notice how the spammers have changed the “o”s in Google to Cialis and Viagra tablets? Very creative. Part of the spam message reads as follows: We’ve just launched a pharmaceutical interfaces for Google, as well as several new features that will improve the Google experience for the people buying pills and using pharmaceutical interfaces. ...

SophosLabs/NakedSecurity: With alleged Anonymous hackers belonging to the LulzSec group arrested and charged yesterday, and the startling relevation that prominent hacker Sabu had been working undercover for the FBI for months, hacktivists defaced a number of websites belonging to anti-virus firm Panda Security overnight. The hackers changed two dozen pandasecurity.com subdomains to include a YouTube video, showing a pot pourri of Anonymous/LulzSec activity during 2011, and posted what appeared to be the username and password details of over 100 Panda employees. ...

The H-Security: Google has released a new stable version of its Chrome browser. The update fixes seventeen high severity vulnerabilities and updates the bundled Flash player. Google referred users to Adobe for details of the Flash Player update, and as usual, revealed few details about the seventeen holes that it closed in the release. It did, though, say that the researchers earned between $500 and $3000 for their vulnerability disclosures. ...

ISC Diary: One of the things that I’ve been working on lately is building an automated malware analysis environment to handle Android malware similar to the one I built for Windows malware. I’m not quite there yet, but I was quite pleased to here about the new service being offered by the folks at Die Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. This is still a research project, so if you choose to use it, be understanding. Don’t expect 24×7 uptime and let’s try not to DoS them. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing how well it works and how the dynamic analysis will work once it is actually in production. ...