Fahmida Y. Rashid

The first post-Epsilon phishing emails have been spotted. In this case, cyber-crooks are targeting bank customers with a phony warning and a malicious link. An email purporting to be from Chase Bank that tells users that their account will be deleted unless prompt action is taken is currently making the rounds, the Better Business Bureau […]

A network engineer at Gucci America was indicted on charges of illegally accessing the company’s network and deleting documents shortly after he was fired. His IT rampage cost Gucci an estimated $200,000 in lost sales, diminished productivity, restoration and remediation expenses. Sam Chihlung Yin was charged on April 4 with 50 counts, including computer tampering, […]

As email-marketing company Epsilon continues to deal with the fallout related to the revelation that some of its clients’ customer data has been exposed to a third-party, it becomes clear that this incident affects all service providers as organizations renew their focus on data security. In addition, this latest data breach calls into question how […]

On the heels of recent reports noting the increase in attacks against mobile devices, Panda Security’s latest quarterly malware report found smartphone malware dominated the security landscape during the first quarter of 2011. There was virus activity in the first quarter of 2011 than there was in the last quarter of 2010, Panda Security’s anti-malware […]

Small and midsized businesses are more susceptible to online-banking fraud, compared with larger businesses and enterprises, according to a new security report from the Ponemon Institute. What’s worse is that many financial institutions are not doing enough to protect smaller businesses from cyber-crooks. Over half, or 56 percent, of the surveyed companies reported experiencing some […]

Hacktivist group Anonymous took a break from attacking banks, government sites and online services to focus on Sony in retaliation for the company’s legal action against PlayStation 3 hacker Geohot. Several Sony sites, including PlayStation.com and the PlayStation Store, were hit by distributed denial-of-service attacks as part of “OpSony” on April 4. The company handling […]

A scammer managed to spear phish media giant Conde Nast and walk off with $8 million after he posed as a legitimate business. With the specter of spear phishing looming in the post-Epsilon-and-Silverpop world, the Conde Nast incident is a timely reminder of how easy it is to fall for a scam. The steps were […]

Symantec identified more than 286 million new threats in 2010, according to its annual threat security report. The report highlighted increasingly sophisticated attacks, the growth of networking sites as an attack vector, using Java to spread malware, an increase in rootkits and a shift toward smartphone attacks. Not only were there more threats in 2010, […]

If you are even remotely concerned about online privacy, you might reconsider using the Color mobile application, as it is worthless if you aren’t willing to share your location information. Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, pointed out on the NakedSecurity blog that Color is up-front about the lack of privacy in its […]

Epsilon, a large email marketing services company with a roster of A-list clients, reported a data breach that is impacting practically anyone who has ever signed up to receive a retail offer or alert through its email account. The company warned that thieves may use the information to launch a phishing campaign to trick users […]

Data breaches dominated headlines this week, but there were also some good news from the botnet front to finish out the month of March. The week began with a gloating email from the person claiming to have been behind the attack on Comodo partners that resulted in nine fraudulent SSL certificates being issued. While Iranian, […]

Cyber-attackers shifted away from traditional methods to Web-based attacks in 2010, thanks to the proliferation of Web-based plug-ins and attack toolkits, according to a new security report compiled by Hewlett-Packard. Web-based attacks jumped from only a tenth of all attacks at the beginning of 2010 to more than 70 percent of all attacks by the […]