McKenzie-Thorpe

February 18, 2008
Daniel Booth

Spam emails claiming to contain video reports on the US election as a lure to download malicious software are bombarding computers worldwide.

The malware onslaught has been spotted by security experts at McAfee, who detected a rise in US elections-themed spam since the Super Tuesday primaries, which took place on 15 February 2008.

The spam emails have the subject heading "Hillary Clinton Full Video !!!" and contain the message: "Hillary Clinton visited her campaign headquarters in Virginia and did satellite interviews, looking beyond Tuesday’s trio of contests and touting the importance of a March 4 vote in Ohio".

Clicking the link doesn’t take you to a video showing Clinton on the campaign trail, but redirects your browser to a malicious URL that infects your computer with malware.

The attack is suspected to originate from the notorious Russian Business Network, one of the world’s biggest cybercrime organisations and operators of the infamous Storm botnet.

www.mcafee.com

Tags: Internet Security by stevecas
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Top-performing sites of 2007 named
February 14, 2008
Web User

Google’s search engine was the most visited website in the UK in 2007 with an average of 27.1 million hits each month, according to statistics.

Though this news will hardly surprise most surfers, the fastest-growing website in the UK last year was BeatThatQuote.com with an increase in traffic of 1,165 per cent over the year.

It’s growth was far in excess of Facebook, which was the second fastest-growing site, with a traffic increase of 781 per cent, statistics from web monitor Nielsen Online showed.

"Many will be surprised to see that Facebook wasn’t the fastest growing site of the year, this honour went to price comparison site Beat That Quote – a reminder that the internet provides valuable services other than virtually poking friends and acquaintances," said Alex Burmaster of Nielsen Online.

However, in terms of websites that encourage surfers to come back again and again, Yahoo Widgets won out, with the average visitor coming back to the site 23 times in a month.

"In terms of ’stickiness’, however, services from the large portals tend to perform strongest. Yahoo’s widget service has people coming back on an almost daily basis and AOL’s email service and MSN/Windows Live Messenger visitors tend to go there two in every three days," said Burmaster.

Tags: Web Design by stevecas
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February 13, 2008
Web User

Hoax Valentine’s messages that aim to infect your PC and turn it into a bot are circulating already.

Security firms are warning that cybercriminals are attempting to infect the PCs of innocent surfers by convincing them that they have a secret admirer.

Anyone who opens the email is putting themselves at risk of losing their own personal information, as well as allowing hackers to remotely control the PC for their own ends.

The emails have subject lines such as "Love Rose", "Rockin’ Valentine" and "Just You" and contain a file called valentine.exe.

Greg Day, security analyst at McAfee, said: "This virus will try to steal the personal information you keep on your PC, try to bring down your security defences and sign your machine up to an online army.

"This means that your PC can be used to blast out millions of junk emails and to carry out denial of service attacks – by flooding a computer, system or website with so much information that it brings it down," continued Day.

Another security firm warned that sometimes the attachment isn’t actually the infected file itself, but a piece of code that directs your PC to find the malware online.

"The advantage of this method is that since it’s a hosted file, they can change the malicious code as and when they want. This enables them to churn out variants at will without having to take the pains of resending the emails again," said Govind Rammurthy of MicroWorld Technologies.

This new attack is linked to the Storm Trojan, which first emerged more than a year ago and attempts to use events such as Christmas, the New Year and Easter to spread itself.

"Like other threats, the Storm Worm continues to use world events to successfully dupe users – from New Year Celebrations in December 2006 to the European floods in April last year and now this – so we all need to stay vigilant," said McAfee’s Day.

Another security firm, F-Secure, warned that the gang behind the Storm worm would carry on beyond Valentine’s Day.

"They’ll keep on doing it as long as people keep falling for it," said F-Secure’s Wing Fei Chia.

It’s not the first time Valentine-related malware has been spotted this year either. Similar emails were circulating almost a month before 14 February.

Tags: Internet Security by stevecas
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