Cyber-criminals are increasingly harnessing the popularity of group discount  deals.

According to a third quarter study conducted by Kaspersky Lab, there has  been a rise in the number of malicious emails disguised as official  advertisements and notifications from coupon services. This type of email,  which Kaspersky calls “an ideal disguise for malicious users,” now accounts for  3.9 per cent of all email traffic. The figure stood at three per cent during the  second quarter.

“Kaspersky Lab experts expected to see the appearance of this type of spam  since coupons are very popular among Internet users, and they trust coupon  services,” wrote Kaspersky.

Worryingly, this form of attack is increasing in quality as well as quantity. The study notes that the layout  of the emails has been improved upon, making them more intelligent and  subtle. The first such email – initially detected by Kaspersky Lab in July – contained an attached executable ZIP file called Gift coupon.exe, which in  turn held a Trojan. All links in the email itself safely led to Groupon’s  website.

In contrast, the newest emails have dropped all attachments, and instead  harbour malicious links.

Kaspersky has offered two pieces of advice to concerned Internet users:  “First of all, coupon services will never include attachments in their emails – especially in the form of a ZIP file or an executable.

“Second, users can and should always make sure that an email that is  apparently from a well-known service should at the very least have the correct  sender name in the FROM field, and that all of the links lead to the site that  they claim to (check this by hovering the mouse over the link).”

The study indicates that malicious imitations of  emails sent by Groupon appear to be the most widespread, though fakes claiming  to have been sent from banks, social networks, online stores and other services  were also numerous.

Elsewhere, the overall detection of email spam in the UK fell by 1.7 per  cent, to 5.57 per cent – the fifth highest in the world.

by Aatif Sulleyman,

It’s thought the passwords and email addresses of more than 6,000 users of YP Chat were put at risk.

In a statement, YouPorn said YP Chat is “operated by a third party and is in no way associated with YouPorn”.

The company say the chat site has been temporarily disabled and will remain offline until an investigation has been carried out.

Brad Black, the vice-president of operations at YouPorn, put the leak down to “poor security practices” at YP Chat.

‘Disheartening’

Writing on YouPorn’s official blog, Black said: “As soon as we became aware of the issue we took immediate steps to block access to YP Chat entirely and a thorough investigation was launched.”

He added: “The security of our users’ information has always been of paramount importance to us.

“The fact that a third-party service provider’s poor security practices could have such a negative impact on YouPorn users is disheartening to say the least.”

A spokesperson for YouPorn’s parent company, Manwin Holding SARL, said: “YouPorn continues to ensure that all appropriate measures and tools are in place to safeguard the privacy of its users.”

Manwin Holding run some of the world’s most popular online pornography sites.

YouPorn is one of the 100 most popular websites in the world, according to web analysis company Alexa.

Symantec has detected a Trojan which targets an already patched Microsoft Office security flaw. This Trojan is delivered via an e-mail which contains a Microsoft Word document and a .dll (Dynamic Link Library) file.

The moment a user opens the email that user’s system would be infected with the Trojan. In an official Symantec blog, Takayoshi Nakayama, a researcher at Symantec, stated that the exploiter has utilised an ActiveX control that has been embedded in the Word document and further stated “When the Word document is opened, the ActiveX control calls fputlsat.dll which has the identical file name as the legitimate .dll file used for the Microsoft Office FrontPage Client Utility Library.”

Symantec has named this Trojan as “Trojan.Activehijack” and has revealed that it exploits the vulnerability which was rated as “important” and patched by the Redmond based software giant in the month of September 2011 with MS11-073 bulletin.

The cyber ring used a class of malware called DNSChanger to infect approximately 4 million computers in more than 100 countries.

DNS (Domain Name System) is a critical internet service that converts user-friendly domain names into numerical addresses that allow computers to talk to each other.

The FBI raided two datacentres in New York City and Chicago which had a command and control infrastructure comprising over 100 servers. At the same time the Estonian police arrested six suspected cyber criminals in Estonia. The US is seeking to extradite them.

“They were organised and operating as a traditional business but profiting illegally as the result of the malware,” said an FBI agent who worked the case. “There was a level of complexity here that we haven’t seen before.”

The cyber crime group controlled every step, from infection with Trojans to monetising the infected bots. The cyber ring was an Estonian company called Rove Digital, according to network and antivirus company Trend Micro, which had been monitoring the botnet since 2007.

In conjunction with the arrests, US authorities seized computers and rogue DNS servers at various locations. As part of a federal court order, the rogue DNS servers have been replaced with legitimate servers in the hope that users who were infected will not have their internet access disrupted, said the FBI.

Source: Computer Weekly

Microsoft Corp said hackers exploited a previously unknown bug in its Windows operating system to infect computers with the Duqu virus, which some security experts say could be the next big cyber threat.

“We are working diligently to address this issue and will release a security update for customers,” Microsoft said on Tuesday in a short statement.

News of Duqu surfaced in October when security software maker Symantec Corp said it had found a mysterious computer virus that contained code similar to Stuxnet, a piece of malicious software believed to have wreaked havoc on Iran‘s nuclear program.

Government and private investigators around the world are racing to unlock the secret of Duqu, with early analysis suggesting that it was developed by sophisticated hackers to help lay the groundwork for attacks on critical infrastructure such as power plants, oil refineries and pipelines.

Details on how Duqu got onto infected machines emerged for the first time on Tuesday as Microsoft disclosed its link to the infection.

Separately, Symantec researchers said they believe hackers sent the virus to targeted victims via emails with tainted Microsoft Word documents attached.

If a recipient opened the Word document and infected the PC, the attacker could take control of the machine and reach into an organization’s network to propagate itself and hunt for data, Symantec researcher Kevin Haley told Reuters.

He said some of the source code used in Duqu was also used in Stuxnet, a cyber weapon believed to have crippled centrifuges that Iran uses to enrich uranium.

That suggests that the attackers behind Stuxnet either gave that code to the developers of Duqu, allowed it to be stolen, or are the same people who built Duqu, Haley said.

“We believe it is the latter,” he said.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle. Editing by Robert MacMillan)

Email doesn’t have to consume your life. Here are 7 ideas for turning email into the tool it is, rather than the be-all and end-all of your days.

1. Lower the volume. When you email the same people too many times per day, they pay less attention. Ideally, your emails will be like eagerly awaited letters that, as a kid, you used to check the mail box for (remember that?)

2. Don’t ask to be kept “in the loop.” Trust your employees to do their jobs without your constant oversight. If you don’t think they’ll execute against goals you’ve set unless you’re cc-ed on every email, get a new team.

3. Return email in batches. Rather than answer each email as it comes in, set windows twice per day (when you’re not concentrating on more focused work) when you can crank out 10 replies at once.

4. Be clear. If something could be misconstrued or misunderstood, requiring a 20-email chain to clarify, pick up the phone or go talk in person.

5. Spell correctly. Use correct grammar. Not only does it look more professional, in this day and age you never know when emails will wind up in the newspaper or forwarded somewhere you never intended. You’ll look like a fool if you type like a teen sending texts.

6. Leave the iPhone or Blackberry at your desk sometimes. You don’t need to check email in line at the deli counter. Really. It can wait. Say hi to the person making your sandwich instead.

7. Remember, email is not your job. Like meetings and conference calls, it is a tool to do your job.  If all you’re doing is filing and answering emails, you’re probably not getting anywhere. Focus on results, not your inbox, and you’ll get a lot more done.

How much time do you spend on email each day?

Source: Laura Vanderkram

Windows maker Microsoft Corp. went on to patch its antivirus software on Friday that was incorrectly targeting Google’s Chrome Web browser, the company announced.

The antivirus program in question, the company’s own product – Microsoft Security Essentials, accidentally targeted the massively popular browser after an update containing faulty signatures was pushed, and it had already lasted for about three hours before it was finally taken care of. Almost 3000 users were affected due to the same, Microsoft admitted.

“An incorrect detection for PWS:Win32/Zbot was identified and as a result, Google Chrome was inadvertently blocked and in some cases removed from customers’ PCs” (personal computers), Microsoft said on Malware Protection Center.

According to reports, Google Chrome was perceived by the security software as a part of the infamous Zeus malware family.

Microsoft, however, regretted for the inconvenience the affected users had to face, and reassured them that the problem had been since identified, and eventually taken care of with updated signatures.

The Education Secretary in the UK government, Michael Gove, along with a number of his advisers have been subjected to a probe after evidence surfaced, suggesting that they were trying to hide sensitive e-mailed discussions from freedom of information requests.

According to the allegations, Mr. Gove and his associates were using their private email IDs to communicate on some sensitive issues, so as to exclude these conversations from unfurling in case of a freedom of information request from the public.

The Information Commissioner is currently investigating the procedure followed by the Department for Education Business while handling freedom of information requests.

However, the government is currently in a denial mode stating that there was no such wrong doing on the parts of Mr. Gove or his special advisers Dominic Cummings, whatsoever.

“Mr Cummings’ email was not to civil servants and concerned Conservative Party spring conference 2011,” a Department for Education Business statement read, according to BBC News.

“Mr Cummings was telling Conservative Party officials not to use his departmental account for political business. The FT story gives an entirely misleading impression of Mr Cummings’ email,” it added.

The United States received the highest amount of malicious emails by cybercriminals in the month of August, it has been revealed.

According to Russian security software maker Kaspersky, a whopping 10.1 percent of malicious emails were sent to web users in the United States during the month of August.

The company said hackers were sending malicious emails masquerading as business emails to web users all over the world.

Russia received the maximum amount of malware-ridden emails after the United States, with 8.96 percent of the malicious emails targeted at the country. Russia was followed by the UK, Germany and India, which received 7.36 percent, 5.45 percent and 5.1 percent respectively.

“Erotic photos of girls ‘waiting to meet you’ can be found all over the Internet, while a company’s internal documents are more likely to pique an Internet user’s interest,” said Kaspersky Lab Senior Spam Analyst, Maria Namestnikova.

“After all, how many people are going to sleep soundly after they delete an email that appears to have come from the police asking the recipient to print out details of a driving offence and send it to a municipal court,” she added.

New research has shown how common spelling or punctuation mistakes may make it easier for cyber criminals to steal email containing sensitive information.

Researchers Peter Kim and Garrett Gee from the cyber security outfit Godai Group created doppelganger Web domains of some high-profile companies to test this theory. To everyone’s horror, they managed to gather as much as 20 GB of sensitive information belonging to these companies.

A doppelganger domain is a web domain that looks just like its legitimate counterpart, but with a minor spelling or punctuation error.

And even worse, the companies whose data were intercepted by the two researchers were all Fortune 500 companies.

Apparently, the loophole exploited by the researchers is based on methodology known as “typosquatting” which is used by many hackers. This technique could be devastating when deployed against businesses instead of individuals.

“Doppelganger domains have a potent impact via email as attackers could gather information such as trade secrets, user names and passwords, and other employee information,” wrote the researchers in a paper detailing their work, as reported by BBC News.

Source: Erica Thinesen