Matthew Hines

Security researchers at Secunia published an eye-opening report in a blog post today, saying in the note that based on their observations, less than 2 percent of all active Windows PCs are fully patched against known security vulnerabilities. Cripes! We’ve been hearing for years that being fully patched is fairly unrealistic, but less than 2 […]

The phony AV malware model continues to find popularity among attackers, as demonstrated by Sophos in a recent report tracking the twists and turns of one particular breed of the so-called “scareware” social engineering technique, through which distributors of the programs convince end users to download malicious files disguised as security applications that actually include […]

Significant advancement in the complexity of spam, malware and botnet attacks was the key trend tracked by researchers at MessageLabs during 2008, according to the company’s Annual Security Report. Experts at the messaging security specialist, which was recently acquired by industry giant Symantec, contend that calendar 2008 was a “pivotal” year for development among cyber-criminals […]

UTM specialist Fortinet is reporting that online threats and spam dropped noticeably during the month of November, continuing their downward trend since such activity peaked for the calendar year during September. According to the vendor’s Nov. Threatscape Report, the slowdown in attacks and unsolicited e-mail will likely reverse its course during the month of December, […]

Malware-building toolkits have seen a dramatic rise in popularity over the last few years, as some of the smartest bad guys have decided to distance themselves from the act of carrying out attacks on their own and moved into creating products that allow others to do so in an automated fashion. As a result, legions […]

While legitimate financial markets may be struggling to maintain any sense of momentum, underground cybercrime networks are thriving and becoming more self-dependent, a new report from security giant Symantec maintains. Based on its assessment of Web servers used by cybercriminals to advertise and sell-off stolen data, the underground is not slowing down in parallel to […]

While researchers have long predicted an impending onslaught of malware programs designed to attack mobile devices, examples of such programs observed in the wild have proven rather few and far between. There have been some notable instances of the attacks, such as with the Cabir Bluetooth-borne worm virus that targets Symbian smartphones, but for the […]

There’s more evidence suggesting that major botnets are feeling a serious pinch in the wake of the takedown of notorious hosting provider McColo last week. Anti-botnet specialist FireEye reported earlier this week that it had observed over 450,000 stranded bots fruitlessly attempting to connect back to command and control servers that had been swept offline […]

Desktop anti-virus and management applications provider PC Tools, acquired by Symantec in August, is predicting that Nov. 24 will repeat as the annual high-water mark for overall malware threat volume. PC Tools and other security researchers bestowed the title of “Black Monday” on the date in 2007 when nefarious cyber-activity peaked on the Monday before […]

Security researchers are starting to hammer home the idea that the current economic climate is resulting in higher volumes of malware and phishing attacks. As threats have continued to increase in overall numbers at a fairly consistent rate for many years now, I’m still not quite sold on the whole concept, but it is an […]