Rising fraud threats in virtual worlds
Virtual worlds are playgrounds not just for people who want some online fantasy role-playing, but for cybercriminals who are looking for places to launder money and steal data. The in-game economies of virtual worlds are being hijacked by criminals who attempt to hide their profits through the exchange of virtual currencies, Dr. Igor Muttik, a senior architect at McAfee's Avert Labs says in a white paper entitled "Securing Virtual Worlds Against Real Attacks--The Challenges of Online Game Development." More»
Bank phishing attacks on the rise
The number of attempts made by internet fraudsters to con people into revealing their bank account details has jumped, according to banking body Apacs.More»
Man's 'pants' password is changed
A man who chose "Lloyds is pants" as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff to "no it's not".More»
Pins and passwords boggle our minds
Consumers are having to remember an increasing number of security codes and passwords, and are taking risks with this key information, a survey claims.More»
NASA Worm Talk Underscores Spread of Online Gaming Threats
Researchers at McAfee and anti-virus vendor ESET have found virtual gaming threats are on the rise. Recent reports of the discovery of a password-stealing worm targeted at online gamers aboard the International Space Station underscore the prevalence of the problem. NASA has said no mission-critical systems were affected by the worm's presence.More»
Common usernames get more spam
The use by spammers of dictionary attacks means those whose email address begins with a less common first character are liable to get less spam.More»
Online scammers prep for Gustav, say researchers
Nearly 100 domains related to Hurricane Gustav have been registered in the past 48 hours, security experts said Sunday, some of which may be used by bogus charity and relief scams after the storm strikes the U.S. Gulf Coast.More»
Call out a phisher, get attacked by malware
Users tired of phishing attacks who retaliate by talking back are being targeted with exploits designed to hijack their computersMore»
Crimeware grifters scamming naive phishers
Security researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have confirmed that inexperienced phishers are in effect doing the legwork for more wily grifters. Many phishing kits distributed in the digital underground hand over data collected to coders. "These phishing kits target two classes of victims: the gullible users from whom they extort valuable information and the inexperienced phishers who deploy them,"More»
The Seven Deadliest Social Networking Hacks
Think you know who your real online friends are? You could be just a few hops away from a cybercriminal in today's social networksMore»
The Human Side of Hacking
The article describes a variety of hacks with have one thing in common: They exploit weaknesses in the person, not the machine. Today's "hacker battles" are fought not between man and machine, but between people. Smart hackers seek out people's weaknesses -- such as trust or greed -- and exploit them. In the long run, the best defenses will be those that not only protect machines from attack, but defend humans from themselves.More»
Snake Bytes . . . Token Security Is Just That
"Federated token-based authentication for consumers is one of those beautiful concepts in security. Think about it: It's a single choke point for all users everywhere, and all they have to do is remember a PIN and carry around a nifty little dongle thingy on their keychain. The world will be a safe place. No more stolen identities and everyone will rejoice. But with every simple security concept comes a thousand ways to ruin your day, and here they are -- in no particular order."More»