US-CERT is addressing the issue of spyware. According to Spyware Confidential, they’ve released a document (pdf) on the matter, including techniques to guard against spyware. Education and awareness are two elements that are highly emphasized.
Category: Spyware
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Junk mail can be REALLY nasty
As if you needed another reason to not like SPAM ( no, not the hormel product, we’re talking junk mail here.) A couple days ago I mentioned a post at the sans institute talking about an email that was circulating and the link within that email took you to a malicious site (redirected) and attempted to exploit one of the recently disclosed Windows vulnerabilities. The Security Fix talks about another in the recent round of expoit attempts and this one comes disguised as junkmail.
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My * messed up my computer
Since the massive id theft ring was uncovered, I’ve been reading the Sunbeltblog frequently. Today, they have an interesting post about the various explanations for spyware on peoples computers. They tag it the “other person syndrome”. I’ve heard this before too. “Well, the neighbors kids were over and ever since then we’ve had all sorts of problems.”, “My son was up from college and since then I just haven’t been able to…”, etc. etc. etc.
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Computer security software nets $2.6 Billion over last two years.
SecurityFix is talking about the computer security industry. Further, computer users spend $9 billion a year on computers repairs from spyware and antivirus. This reminds me of a recent story of a man that threw out a perfectly good machine because it was infested with spyware. For starters, I do computer repair. I charge $40/ hour and even at that rate I’ve had people balk at 3-4 hours of heavy cleaning versus the Dell ads. How many people take this route instead of repairs? It’s hard to say overall. In his blog, Brian Krebs lays part of the blame at Microsoft’s door and I think rightly so.
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Sunbeltblog has more info on the identity theft keylogger and will offer removal tool
There another two fascinating posts in the saga of the massive identity theft that was reported in the Sunbelt blog. For starters they detail the beast here. It sounds truly devious, MAY still be related to coolwebsearch after all. It turns off Windows firewall and runs through Internet Explorer (thereby bypassing any other software firewall.)
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Web smarts is the main defence against spyware
Over at the Security Fix, Brian Krebs is talking about spyware and the fact that keeping up-to-date on patches, and running current antivirus with current definitions is not enough to protect your machine from spyware. He sums it up by saying common sense is the best defence.
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Itunes adware?
It’s an older post, but I just discovered it…. July 21st… spware confidential reports on a virus masquerading as an itunes installer that actually brings along some adware (4 different applications) for fun. This apparently was distributed over the AIM messenger network.
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Identity theft protection and update on Massive Identity theft story
Sunbeltblog has another update related to their earlier story about the massive identity theft ring. In this story they make clear that the keylogger was NOT directly related to coolwebsearch. It was apparently seperate and independant it was discovered during a coolwebsearch infestation, but appears unrelated.
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Huge identity theft ring discovered by spyware research
Sunbelt blog, reports that they have uncovered a MASSIVE amount of personal data, ranging from usernames to passwords to banking information and much more while investigating spyware. They found keylogger transcript software with lots of personal information. Sunbelt develops software to protect against spam and spyware and other security threats. A keylogger is software that records every keystroke on a computer and these days usually uploads that data to a server for someone to peruse.
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Progress…
Well, things are shaping up a little better today on some fronts. My webhosting provider apologized for the offensive tone of the subject of their message to me. (Given that they provided the script that they warned me about.) And they’ve taken my suggestion to pass word along to ALL of their customers that have the script in their account that they should find an alternative and get rid of cgiemail. The fact is cgiemail as a script has not been maintained in several years and there are other options out there. I encourage ANYONE using it to look into replacements.
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