Matthew Hines

Malware distributors have moved to a new vehicle (think big brown vans) for delivering their wares, tapping into the popularity of overnight giant UPS’ e-mail delivery notifications in an attempt to lure users into taking their bait. Security researchers including those working for AV provider Panda Security highlighted the UPS-themed spam/malware attacks on Tuesday, reporting […]

Following on some interesting vulnerability research in the area by vendors who shall go unnamed for the purpose of avoiding conflicts of interest (ahem…) SCADA security experts Uniloc have published a top 10 list of tips for keeping the systems safe from attacks. This is encouraging stuff, seeing as how not too long ago the […]

Shocking news arrived over the last day from Hawaii, where the body of Webroot founder Steven Thomas was discovered post mortem. Thomas, 36, had apparently run upon some troubled days after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and, according to a report in the newswires (UPI), failing to take his medication. He had been missing for […]

DLP vendors (and really any other security and encryption technology providers), take heart: Most IT executives are still uneasy about their ability to keep sensitive corporate data from walking out the door, floating over the transom or being ripped from their grasp by opportunistic cyber-thieves. Or at least data-handling regulations like the PCI DSS standard […]

Researchers at gateway security specialist Secure Computing have identified a new Trojan virus being distributed in the wild via infected multimedia files. First detailed in a report posted to the company’s TrustedSource research blog, Secure Computing experts said the Trojan specifically infects multimedia files stored on a victim’s computer, embedding its content via the ASF […]

Hats off to Google for chipping in a new (free) tool to help Web site builders scour their URLs for potential security vulnerabilities. The tool was first detailed in a blog post July 1 by Michal Zalewski, a highly respected security researcher who has gone to work for the company that aims to “do no […]

E-mail security specialists Commtouch Software have released their latest security trends report, which illustrates the major hand that botnet-controlled machines continue to play in the distribution of spam and malware. According to the company’s Q2 2008 E-mail Threats Trend Report, roughly 10 million zombie computers were actively distributing spam and e-mail-based malware on average every […]

AV maker Panda Software published its report on malware trends for the second quarter of 2008 and finds that Trojan attacks were by far the most common form of threat being created between April and June. According to the report, more than 63 percent of the new malicious code samples unearthed by Panda’s researchers during […]

It’s not all that surprising, as current events have long been a staple among the lures employed by malware distributors seeking to trick people into clicking on their attack-laden URLs or e-mail attachments, but the latest run of threats advertised under the guise of a fake news story about U.S. troops invading Iran would seem […]

Well, as if having a security threat research site modeled in direct imitation of Grand Theft Auto (over 6 million copies sold in a week) weren’t reinforcement enough that malware has gone ultra-mainstream, now malware has truly entered into the general lexicon. Quite literally, that is. Dictionary standard-bearer Merriam-Webster announced July 7 that “malware” is […]

Security software giant McAfee recently published the results of an interesting month-long project aimed at putting a fix on just how bad the issue of unsolicited e-mail remains — along with gaining added insight into some geographic and content-based trends around the ever-present nuisance messages. In a novel approach to tracking the flow of spam, […]

It would seem that multimedia playing software programs are always among the most popular sources of high-level security risks, and this time it’s the lesser-known but well thought-of VLC music and video system that has turned up on the vulnerability scrolls. Secunia researchers have issued a “highly critical” warning for the free VLC player, affecting […]