Malware Warnings

If I offered you a way to protect your car from ever getting stolen, or your house from ever getting broken into, would you pay me for it? Lots of people would — for many people, their brand is just as important as anything else. This is why Chinese domain name scams have become so popular, and so successful.

Chinese domain name scams are rampant. In a little bit, I’ll explain exactly what these scams are, but first it’s more important to understand what started them. The effort to get businesses to register for Asian domains to “protect the brand” has been ongoing for many years. It appears this became a phenomenon as early as 2006. But it has accelerated within the past year, after the CNNIC registry announced that the Chinese .CN domains were public.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/spot-chinese-domain-name-scam/
 

A Distributed Reflective Denial of Service (DRDoS) attack is an emerging form of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) that relies on the use of publicly accessible UDP servers, as well as bandwidth amplification factors, to overwhelm a victim system with UDP traffic.

https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA14-017A

A newly discovered cross-site scripting attack uses a sly variant on an existing hack to deliver malware in a way that’s so heavily obfuscated, even experts didn’t notice it at first.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/malware/malware-hides-behind-javascript-pngs-bypass-browser-security-235594

Major hacks at retailers that include Target and Neiman Marcus have put a new spotlight on the security of point-of-sale (POS) systems. What may come as a surprise to some is that the memory-scraping malware attacks were nothing new. Last year, Visa published two "Visa Data Security Alerts" warning merchants of an increase in attacks targeting credit card data with specific references to memory-scraping malware.

http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/tech-insight-defending-point-of-sale-sys/240165629

Since Android is based on Linux, many users consider it rather safe and secure. However, this is not at all true — most malware that targets mobile devices, targets Android. For the most part though, it is easy to stay safe by only installing reputable apps from the Play Store.

What if, however, your desktop operating system was infecting your Android device without you knowing? Sadly, this can happen, as some Windows users are finding out. Symantec announces it has found such a case, and it is really nasty.

http://betanews.com/2014/01/25/some-windows-computers-are-infecting-android-devices-with-malware/

CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – There is new information from the Department of Homeland Security about the holiday data breach at Target.

Investigators are warning retailers about a malware that may have affected several stores. They did not name specific retailers.

Many people told 22News this breach is making them think twice about using their credit and debit cards.

http://www.wwlp.com/news/massachusetts/retailers-warned-about-malware-attacks

NEW YORK (AP) – The security breach that hit Target Corp. during the crucial holiday season seemed to be part of a broader and highly sophisticated scam that affected several retailers, says a report published by a global cyber intelligence firm that works with the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security.

http://www.komonews.com/news/national/Target-breach-appears-to-be-part-of-broader-scam-240649751.html

MX Lab, http://www.mxlab.eu, started to intercept a new trojan distribution campaign by email with the subject “HMRC Employer Alerts & Verification”.

This email is send from the spoofed address “HMRC <employers@alerts.hmrc.gov.uk>” and has the following body:

Thank you for your registration details which have been recorded for email alerts purposes only.

We expect to send you three email alerts a year – February, May and December.
These will give you the links to the latest Employer Bulletin and HMRC PAYE Tools (previously the Employer CD-ROM).

Please complete all relevant sections of the attached application form and attach the appropriate documents to confirm your identity.

** Do not reply to this email as this mailbox is unmonitored for incoming mail.

http://blog.mxlab.eu/2013/12/17/fake-hmrc-employer-alerts-verification-email-contains-trojan/

Equifax warns consumers to be alert to malware scams that steal their identity
Dec 17 2013 The discovery of a global identity scam, which has made over two-million consumer’s online passwords accessible to potential fraudsters, has prompted Equifax, the leading ID fraud expert, to urge consumers to be more alert to the risks of online identity fraud. Equifax believes consumers need to heighten personal security measures, or risk leaving themselves at the mercy of online fraudsters.

http://www.creditman.biz/uk/members/news-view.asp?newsviewID=19169

The Trojan program also steals SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) and POP (Post Office Protocol) credentials from email clients and sends them back to attackers so they can be used to send spam emails with malicious attachments. "These emails are typically designed to look like official notifications from a variety of services," Golovanov said.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244374/_Neverquest_trojan_threatens_online_banking_users?pageNumber=2