One bot-infected PC = 600,000 spam messages a day
Some bot-infected PCs can crank out as many as 25,000 spam messages per hour, new research released Wednesday claimed.
Gregg Keizer | 23 Apr | Read more
Stories by Gregg Keizer
Mozilla patches 12 Firefox bugs, a third of them critical
Mozilla Corp. on Tuesday patched 12 security vulnerabilities in Firefox 3, just days before it hopes to roll out the newest beta of its next open-source browser, Firefox 3.5.
Gregg Keizer | 22 Apr | Read more
Researcher wants hacker groups hounded mercilessly
Criminal cyber gangs must be harried, hounded and hunted until they're driven out of business, a noted botnet researcher said today as he prepared to pitch a new anti-malware strategy later this week at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.
Gregg Keizer | 22 Apr | Read more
Hackers break into US gov't travel site, feed users attack code
A travel reservations Web site used by several US federal agencies was hacked last week, and shunted unsuspecting users to a malicious domain, according to information Computerworld has obtained.
Gregg Keizer | 19 Feb | Read more
Hackers jump on newest IE7 bug
Attackers are already exploiting a bug in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) that Microsoft patched just last week, security researchers warned Tuesday.
Gregg Keizer | 19 Feb | Read more
Bot busts newest Hotmail CAPTCHA
Spammers have cracked Microsoft's latest defense against abuse of its Live Hotmail e-mail service using a sophisticated network of hacked computers that receive encrypted instructions from a central server, a security company has reported.
Gregg Keizer | 19 Feb | Read more
Fannie Mae engineer indicted for planting server bomb
A former Unix engineer for the US Federal National Mortgage Association, better known as Fannie Mae, has been accused of planting malicious code on the corporation's network that was to "destroy and alter" all of the data on the company's servers this Saturday, court documents show.
Gregg Keizer | 30 Jan | Read more
No nude celebs from LinkedIn, just malware
Hackers have seeded LinkedIn, the business networking service, with bogus celebrity profiles.
Gregg Keizer | 08 Jan | Read more
Russian 'cyber militia' knocks Kyrgyzstan offline
A Russian "cyber militia" has knocked the central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan off the Internet, a security researcher said Wednesday, demonstrating that the hackers are able to respond even faster than last year, when they waged a digital war against another former Soviet republic, Georgia.
Gregg Keizer | 29 Jan | Read more
New botnet resurrects Storm's Valentine's Day ruse
Spam trumpeting the power of love is nothing more than an old trick dressed up in new clothes, more evidence that the backers of the Waledec bot Trojan are the same bunch that hammered users last year with Storm, security companies are warning.
Gregg Keizer | 28 Jan | Read more
US-CERT: Microsoft's advice on Downadup is flawed
Microsoft's advice on disabling Windows' "Autorun" feature is flawed, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) said Wednesday, and leaves users who rely on its guidelines to protect their PCs against the fast-spreading Downadup worm open to attack.
Gregg Keizer | 22 Jan | Read more
Researcher: Worm infects 1.1M Windows PCs in 24 hours
The computer worm that exploits a months-old Windows bug has infected more than a million PCs in the past 24 hours, a security company said Wednesday.
Gregg Keizer | 15 Jan | Read more
Virtually every Windows PC at risk, says Secunia
More than 98% of Windows computers harbor at least one unpatched application, and nearly half contain 11 or more programs at risk from attack, a Danish security company said Wednesday.
Gregg Keizer | 04 Dec | Read more
Crooks can make $5M a year shilling fake security software
Criminals can make as much as US$5 million a year by planting nearly-worthless security software on PCs, then badgering users with so many bogus malware warnings that they fork over their credit card, a noted crimeware researcher said Friday.
Gregg Keizer | 03 Nov | Read more
Experts: Georgian cyberattacks suggest Russian involvement
The hackers who launched cyberattacks against the former Soviet republic of Georgia two months ago probably had links to the Russian government, even though no hard evidence has been uncovered of official involvement, a report by an all-volunteer group of experts said Friday.
Gregg Keizer | 20 Oct | Read more