Malware

Another Small Company Takes a Financial Hit on the Cyber Chin

Matthew Gardiner writes: Similar to the case of Hillary Machinery that I previously blogged about, another small company, DKG Enterprises, has recently taken a nearly $100K hit from cyber thieves.  Very simply the thieves stole the corporate controller’s banking credentials, fraudulently transferred money to multiple mules, and voila, goodbye $100K.  The headline of the...

Penn State warns of more cyber-breaches

An ongoing cyber-security sweep at Penn State found the Social Security numbers of another 25,000 individuals may have been exposed due to infected computers. The university said there is no evidence the data had been accessed after the computers were hit by malicious software, though individuals affected by the breach have been notified as...

Privacy Breaches May Expose More Social Security Data At Penn State

Adam Smeltz reports: As many as 25,572 Social Security numbers once stored on Penn State computer systems may have been exposed during security breaches in recent weeks, the university reported Wednesday. But Penn State has no evidence that any unauthorized people have accessed the Social Security numbers, which appear to belong to alumni, spokesman...

Jp: 2 held over fraud using computer virus

Two men were arrested on suspicion of using a computer virus to steal personal information and leak it onto the Internet and then defrauding people of money by offering to resecure the data. This is the first arrest in the nation in a case of fraud using a computer virus, and it is only...

Oops! IBM Hands Out Malware On USB Sticks

Stephanie Hoffman reports: BM booth attendees at the AusCERT conference on Australia’s Gold Coast received more than just a complimentary USB stick after it was found Friday that the token gifts were infected malware. IBM broke the news to AusCERT delegates in an e-mail, alerting them that the USB sticks the company handed out...

Hacked US Treasury websites serve visitors malware

Dan Goodin reports: Websites operated by the US Treasury Department are redirecting visitors to websites that attempt to install malware on their PCs, a security researcher warned on Monday. The infection buries an invisible iframe in bep.treas.gov, moneyfactory.gov, and bep.gov that invokes malicious scripts from grepad.com, Roger Thompson, chief research officer of AVG Technologies,...

Texas man set to admit building botnet-for-hire

Robert McMillan reports: A Mesquite, Texas, man is set to plead guilty to training his 22,000-PC botnet on a local ISP — just to show off its firepower to a potential customer. David Anthony Edwards will plead guilty to charges that he and another man, Thomas James Frederick Smith, built a custom botnet, called...

Pub Looking Into Credit Card ‘Processing Error’

Hailee Lampert reports: An investigation is under way following several incidents of credit card fraud. Louisville Metro Police told WLKY the U.S. Secret Service is investigating this case. The Secret Service said as a matter of policy, they do not comment on open cases, even to confirm there is one. An owner of O’Shea’s...

Cyberattack on Google Said to Hit Password System

John Markoff reports: Ever since Google disclosed in January that Internet intruders had stolen information from its computers, the exact nature and extent of the theft has been a closely guarded company secret. But a person with direct knowledge of the investigation now says that the losses included one of Google’s crown jewels, a...

Germany named Europe’s top computer virus culprit

Germany hung onto its dubious title as Europe’s leader in spreading computer viruses in 2009, though its share of malicious activity in the region dropped slightly, a survey has found. Some 12 percent of malicious software circulating in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2009 was deliberately spread via computers in Germany, the...