Security

Symantec Connect: Customers of popular email service providers have been a common target for phishers for identity theft purposes. Phishers are constantly devising new phishing bait strategies in the hope of stealing user email addresses and passwords. In April 2012, Symantec observed phishing pages that mimicked popular email services in an attempt to dupe users with attractive storage plans. Customers were flooded with fake offers of free additional storage space for services such as email, online photo albums, and documents. In the first example, the phishing site was titled “Welcome to New [BRAND NAME] Quota Verification Page”. According to the bogus offer, the additional storage plan ranged from 20 GB to 1 TB per year, at no extra cost. The phishing page boasted that the free additional storage plan will help customers prevent loss of data and the inability to send and receive emails due to exhausted storage space. It also stated that the plan will auto-renew each year and the customer can choose to cancel at any time by returning to the same page: ...

The H-Online: Google has released a new update to the stable 18.x branch of its Chrome web browser to close a number of security holes found in the application. The update, labelled 18.0.1025.168, addresses a total of five vulnerabilities, three of which are rated as “high severity” by the company. These include use-after-free problems in floating point handling and the XML parser; all of these bugs were detected using the AddressSanitizer. As part of its Chromium Security Vulnerability Rewards program, Google paid a security researcher by the name of “miaubiz”, who is number three in the company’s Security Hall of Fame, $1,000 for discovering and reporting one of the float handling problems. Two medium risk problems related to IPC validation and a race condition in sandbox IPC have also been corrected. ...

The H-Online: According to a blog post, a modified version of the Skype VoIP software can be used to easily find out the IP address of any valid Skype user. No contact has to be made with the user in order to get the information. This IP could then be used to find out other personal details about the user, such as their location or even their employer. With a certain registry key, the manipulated version of Skype will create a log file with information including other users’ external and internal IP addresses. These IPs can be retrieved simply by opening up a user’s profile with the Skype client. In a test conducted by The H’s associates at heise Security, the log file always showed the correct IPs – and when a user was logged in with multiple clients, the IP addresses for all the clients were visible. ...

Corss-posted from ZDNet: Summary: Cyber criminals have created a fake Biophilla app for Android that is really just malware in disguise. Your first red flag should be that Biophilla is officially available on iOS, but not on Android. During April alone, we’ve already seen malicious versions of Angry Birds Space and Instagram in the wild. Both are Android apps that are really just malware designed to generate money from unsuspecting users by sending expensive international text messages. Now the same is happening with the popular Biophilla app. ...

The H-Online: The whitec0de.com blog reports that, for $20, a member of a hacker forum offered to crack any Hotmail account within a minute – and that he kept his word. Apparently, the hacker found out about a critical vulnerability in Microsoft’s email service on a security forum, and the hole allowed him to change the passwords of arbitrary Hotmail users. The blog says that various users were affected as a result, for example because they used their Hotmail accounts to access services such as PayPal. Allegedly, the vulnerability was also exploited to change the ownership of particularly attractive, short account names such as [email protected] and [email protected]. ...

Symantec Connect: Symantec is intercepting a resurgence of spam attacks on popular brands. Spam messages that are replicas of the Wikipedia email address confirmation alert are the new vector for the present. The said spam messages pretend to be originating from Wikipedia, and are selling meds, with the following subject line: “Subject: Wikipedia e-mail address confirmation”. The spoofed Wikipedia page is a ploy to give legitimacy to the sale of meds online. The embedded URL in the message navigates to a fake online pharmacy site that is dressed up as a Wikipedia Web page. Furthermore, to give the email a legitimate look, the spammer has added the recipient’s IP address in the body of the spam mail. Needless to say this IP does not belong to the user. ...

Cnet: Forrester’s CEO isn’t the only one spouting doom and gloom for Apple today. Now Eugene Kaspersky, the CEO of security firm Kaspersky Lab, says Apple is headed for a rough patch. However, this one’s in the world of computer security, and he says Apple is already getting into the thick of it. Speaking to Computer Business Review at Info Security 2012 show in London this week, Kaspersky said that when it comes to computer security, Apple’s Mac platform was a decade behind Microsoft‘s, and that it’s got some things to learn from its rival. ...

The H-Online: Online forums have, for some time, apparently been the target of hackers who inject additional code. However, the attackers aren’t interested in publishing cool slogans or political messages, they’re looking for money. They steal Google traffic from the forums and exploit this traffic via ads. Their main targets appear to be forums that are based on the vBulletin software. Unlike the “Look how cool I am” crackers, these attackers have very discreet working methods. They hide their code deeply within the system and ensure that their redirections don’t attract much attention. Only users who visit forum pages for the first time via a search engine such as Google are redirected to a url123.info URL. This site initially displays a strange blocking alert (“Access denied”) followed by some arbitrary text and then loads a full-page ad by InfinityAds. The ads are probably a direct source of income for the intruders even though each ad is only worth a few pennies. However, as some forum operators have reported that their traffic has dropped by more than 70 per cent, and the phenomenon seems to be a rather wide-spread one, the overall yield is likely to be considerable. ...

Facebook and security. Is it a marriage that has any legs? The social networking giant today announced its partnership with a number of security vendors. A Facebook blogger writes: Nothing is more important to us than the safety of the people who use Facebook, and the security of their data...That’s why we’re thrilled to announce the Antivirus Marketplace and welcome Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos, and Symantec to the Facebook Security family. ...

Symantec Connect: Phishers are constantly developing new strategies in an effort to trick end users. In April 2012, phishers created sites spoofing the Apple brand with fake offers for Apple discount cards. In this phishing attack, customers were targeted by region: namely, the UK and Australia. The phishing sites mimicked the webpage of Apple and prompted customers for their Apple ID. The phishing page stated the customer’s long-term loyalty toward the brand gave them eligibility for an Apple discount card as a reward. Upon entering an Apple ID and clicking the “Next” button, the customer was redirected to a page that asked for more confidential information: ...