Malware attack targeting fans of Twilight series
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
As with many recent hot news trends, the upcoming release of the second movie based on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books has attracted the attention not just of the vampire wannabes, but of actual cyber criminals as well.
The standard search engine manipulation techniques have been applied to sites laden with Twilight-specific keywords, including the name of the author. Yahoo Tech uses just such an example in describing one listing in the Google results for "Stephanie Meyer," which redirects unsuspecting Twilight fans to a site that displays a warning that their computer has been infected with malware.
Nothing of the kind has happened, of course, but the scareware presentation is frequently convincing enough for victims to provide money and personal information to bogus anti-virus programs in return for "protection." Ironically, allowing the scareware purveyors access to a PC can even result in the malware infection that they said they would cleanse.
Scareware scams are one of the fastest-growing sectors of online criminal activity, according to experts, with organized gangs working to bilk victims of untold sums every month.
Related News:
Nearly 3,000 smartcard phones infected - 3.19.2010
Nearly 3,000 memory cards in HTC Magic smartphones released by Vodafone were infected by malware before purchase, Vodafone Spain reported on Friday. The initial scare came last week when a researcher for Panda Security discovered the breach on her newly purhcased phone.
Google removes malware-spreading site from searches - 3.19.2010
Google announced on Friday that DealsDirect, Australia's largest discount estore, was temporarily blocked from direct access by users after the search engine detected malware on the site.
Facebook bigger threat to web security than Twitter - 3.19.2010
The amount of information available on a person's Facebook profile page makes the popular social networking site more dangerous than other popular competitors such as Twitter, according to AVG Technologies.
Web security professionals skeptical of national broadband - 3.18.2010
Leading web security experts believe that the recently released National Broadband Program is potentially a major risk to national web security. As more people move from dial-up and other slower forms of internet access, they will be exposed to malware and be unable to handle it.
Authorities call for increased URL regulation - 3.18.2010
In an effort to attack malware at the root of the problem, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency submitted a new list of recommendations to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers that would make it more difficult to register a domain on the web, according to IT World Canada.
|
