Matthew Hines

How well do you know Twitter tweets, or do they know you? Attacks that prey on users of the Twitter social networking service have been ramping up for some time, but researchers are pointing to increasingly complex, personalized versions of the threats in recent weeks. Rik Ferguson, a researcher with TrendLabs, recently called out a […]

Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson may not have the same celeb appeal that they had a few years ago when they routinely topped the charts as search engine fodder. However, at least in one regard, their legacy lives on in cyberspace. As we’ve seen in a number of high-profile incidents in recent weeks, when it […]

The latest malware proliferation numbers issued by McAfee only serve to reinforce that attacks continue to grow exponentially, with researchers highlighting the fact that for cyber-criminals, business appears to remain good. Malware distributors are keeping the pedal to the metal in accelerating the volume of attacks, driving the overall total of threats observed by McAfee’s […]

Some security researchers are already predicting a noticeable shift in the landscape once Windows 7 is launched by Microsoft later this year and finds its way into users’ hands over time. It’s impressive to consider how much Microsoft has been able to elevate its reputation in the security realm over the last few years, despite […]

Even in this day and age, online fraud-spewing PC killers are still trying to push users into a hot fuss by using 419 schemes to spread their scams like sawdust. The latest twist on the theme that’s sure to make you shout? Attackers are now using social networking sites to find victims who somehow pass […]

Lots of bad guys, that’s who. In the latest version of their “Who and Why Show” podcast, posted here, experts with security researchers Team Cymru highlight the growing uptake and successful use of so-called fast flux botnet infrastructure among larger numbers of cyber-criminals. Fast flux, which has been around for a good few years or […]

ESPN reporter Erin Andrews got screwed. Bigtime. Nude spy video on the Internet screwed. But in an ironic twist, malware distribution may play an unexpected role in somewhat lessening the sting of the incident. At least a little. To anyone who has followed her career as I have as a sports addict, and admittedly not […]

Security researchers are calling out the recent spread of new version of the “Sexy View” smartphone worm as having the possibility of representing one of the world’s first mobile botnet attacks. Over the last week the attack which is aimed at Symbian smartphones — long a leading edge target in the mobile malware world, with […]

The recent torrent of more sophisticated Trojan threats is producing a large volume of attacks that cannot be detected by traditional AV systems, security researchers contend. According to a new paper published by message and Web filtering specialist Commtouch, millions of Trojans easily evaded signature-based AV technologies during Q2 2009 alone. Recent Trojan outbreaks sent […]

Security researchers are tracking a new spike in activity around the distribution of the long-running Sinowal (aka Torpig) Trojan attack, with most of the sightings tied to infected Web sites. Researchers at SophosLabs reported a noticeable increase in the sheer volume of Sinowal-infecting URLs that it has observed in recent weeks, as Trojans continue to […]

Trojan threats may be well over a decade old, but they obviously still work, as the attacks still account for a lion’s share of newly discovered malware programs. At the same time, attackers continue to utilize popular new web services such as Twitter to deliver their latest attacks. According to second quarter threat analysis published […]

In the latest evidence that spam and malware techniques never truly die, they only go away for a little while, spammers have rehashed and combined two of their longest-running themes in a spate of recent campaigns. Researchers with Symantec have noted the return of spam messages hiding their content in HTML code dropped into e-mail […]