Brian Prince

Malware threats, Facebook privacy and criminal charges all made their way into various security stories in the past week. The week started out with another battle tied to privacy and security on Facebook, this time stemming from the social network’s decision to allow applications to access users’ mobile phone and address information. Facebook eventually backed […]

Google responded Jan. 21 to complaints about the quality of its search results. During the past month, a number of bloggers and others have criticized Google for returning poor search results. At issue is what is known as Web spam, which Google defines as junk search results that pop up when Websites cheat their way […]

Allegations against WikiLeaks have spotlighted a key avenue for data leaks: peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. According to Tiversa, which specializes in monitoring P2P networks, WikiLeaks has mined popular applications such as Kazaa and LimeWire for data in the past-despite statements from WikiLeaks that it does not actively search for information. As an example, Tiversa contends that […]

Researchers at Imperva have discovered administrative access to numerous military, government and education Websites being advertised on an underground hacker forum. The owners of the sites have all been notified of the situation, Imperva told eWEEK. Among them are sites belonging to the Department of Defense PharmacoEconomic Center, the University of South Carolina Beaufort and […]

PandaLabs, Panda Security’s research arm, released a sweeping report today on the cyber-underground. In the report, PandaLabs chronicles a vast network selling stolen bank credentials and more on Internet forums and more than 50 dedicated online stores. Through their research, Panda got its hands on a trove of data about how the market for stolen […]

Thousands of Twitter users are believed to have been hit with malicious links tied to a rogue antivirus scam circulating the microblog service. The scam is spreading through malicious links abusing the goo.gl URL shortening service. According to Kaspersky Lab, the malicious links redirect users to different domains with an “m28sx.html” page. That HTML page […]

Trapster.com, creator of a popular mobile application that warns users about speed traps, notified users this week that their passwords may have been exposed due to an attack. The company released few details about the incident. In an e-mail, the company said it understood how the attack occurred and had already rewritten code to prevent […]

Enterprises are not the only ones interested in cloud security products. Malware authors have their eyes on them too – something exemplified by the Bohu Trojan, which blocks connections from Windows machines to cloud anti-virus technologies to disable users’ defenses. The malware was first spotted by Microsoft researchers in China targeting popular anti-virus products there. […]

The FBI issued a warning today about scammers targeting businesses by responding to job postings with malware. According to the feds, an unidentified business was recently scammed for $150,000 via an unauthorized wire transfer. The scammer targeted the business with an e-mail containing malware. The e-mail was in response to a job posting the business […]

Cisco is looking to bolster wireless security with an eye toward going above and beyond compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) requirements. Part of that starts with the addition of new PCI compliance reporting capabilities for the Cisco Wireless Control (WCS). On top of its previous PCI reporting functionality, WCS now offers a PCI summary […]

Facebook is sparring with security firm Sophos over a threat report touching on malware on social networks. In a report looking back (pdf) on 2010, Sophos reported that a survey of 1,273 people in December 2010 found that 40 percent had been sent malware via social networks, up from 36 percent in December 2009. Additionally, […]

Facebook has temporarily backed away from its decision to allow applications to access users’ mobile phone and address information. The decision to share the information touched off days of controversy as privacy advocates and security pros aired concerns the feature could be abused. According to Facebook, the idea was to make applications more efficient. The […]