Matthew Hines

Chinese malware distributors are hammering on a time-honored method for distributing their wares to unsuspecting users, forwarding an attack accompanying an anti-virus program, in this case one offered by industry giant Trend Micro. Trend Micro itself reported the attack, which is plugged as its own iClean malware removal client but harbors a backdoor-breeding Trojan. As […]

An interesting new angle emerged in the arena of data breach fallout last week, as the issue of just who should be forced to repay banks and other card issuers when incidents force them to distribute new cards to their customers took an interesting legal turn. Banks, credit unions and card companies themselves typically bear […]

Security researchers have identified a serious flaw in the RealPlayer multimedia software program that could be exploited remotely via malware attacks. According to an advisory posted by research firm Secunia on Friday, experts have isolated a “design error” related to the handling of frames in the program’s Shockwave Flash (SWF) files that could potentially be […]

With Black Hat only a few weeks away and the security industry gearing up for its yearly feast of cutting-edge research and exploit demonstrations, one of the trends most highly touted at the show for the last several years continues to flourish–as hackers and malware distributors rush to launch more of their attacks via so-called […]

A report published by researchers at the University of Michigan finds that a vast majority of online banking sites are open to some form of exploitation and subsequent data or asset theft. According to the report issued by Wolverine researcher Atul Prakash, a professor in U.M.’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and two […]

Illegal steroid sales are still all the rage online in the U.S.A. While sports officials on all levels continue their push to drive anabolic steroid use out of athletic competition, lawmakers have apparently been unable stop online sales of the illegal performance enhancers. A new report published by LegitScript.com, an online pharmacy verification service, and […]

Security researchers have reported a serious vulnerability in a handful of BEA Weblogic Server products that could be targeted in DoS attacks. Ranked by researchers at Secunia as “highly critical,” the fourth most serious rating of its five-level scale, the Weblogic vulnerability is related to a boundary error within the software’s Apache connector and could […]

After the emergence of the Trojan.JS.Encrypted.A attack last week — yet another in a long line of variants built off of the long-running Storm Worm code base — more activity has been reported along the same lines. In a blog posted on the Malware City information portal, which is backed by anti-virus vendor BitDefender, researcher […]

A malware researcher with the SANS Internet Storm Center has uncovered a new twist on the fast-flux botnet infrastructure model that could make networks of zombie PCs even harder to take down. For the last several years fast flux has proved to be an efficient technique for botnet herders seeking to insulate their networks of […]

Mobile malware hasn’t materialized to the extent that some experts were predicting it would several years ago, but that doesn’t mean that threats won’t emerge targeting popular handhelds. That’s why it’s interesting to keep tabs on flaws discovered in mobile device infrastructure, such as the Enterprise Server PDF Processing Vulnerability acknowledged by Research In Motion […]

Anti-virus specialist Panda Security has issued a listing of the most unique and unusual malware specimens that its researchers uncovered during the first six months of 2008. And much like the crowd of basement-dwelling, fashion-defying miscreants that likely created many of the code samples, the list is populated by some truly strange and perplexing examples. […]

According to a new report published by experts at security filtering specialist Finjan, the company observed more than 1,000 unique Web site domains serving up the well-publicized Asprox malware attack over the first two weeks of July 2008 alone, including many URLs belonging to some of the world’s most recognizable businesses and institutions. Among the […]