Spammers Favorite Topic Now: FIFA World Cup

In its June 2010 MessageLabs Intelligence Report, Symantec highlighted how the amount of spam related to the keywords of soccer and football since March 2010 has reached 25 percent of overall spam as the World Cup continues.

Holidays such as St. Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween and Christmas are occasions that receive a great deal of attention from spammers. Newsworthy events, including celebrity deaths and natural disasters as well as…

Smarter Security for the Smartphone

With the increasing number of smartphone theft and incidents with malware attacking mobile platforms, computer security businesses have realized the demand for a service that will protect consumers’ privacy and personal information.

In an effort to protect consumers from losing vital information stored on their cellphones, F-Secure has launched a product that makes it possible to remotely wipe all data…

Indian IT Hub Launches Cyber-Awareness Site

As the IT hub of the Indian state of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram has seen its share of cyber crime and is now making strides to educate the public’s awareness by launching a website that will focus primarily Internet safety, New Kerala reports.

During today’s press conference in Thiruvananthapuram, Avanzo Charitable Trust Managing Trustee Pattathil Dhany said the initiative was the…

White House Lifts Ban on Cookies

White House officials recently announced the proposed abolishment of a decade-long ban on browser cookies after talks with public groups and privacy advocates.

According to the Federal Register notice on the topic, the goal of the review is for the federal government to continue protecting the privacy of those visiting its websites while simultaneously making these websites…

Aussie Broadband News Site Hit by DDoS Attacks

Australian broadband news website Whirlpool.net.au was hit yesterday by several distributed denial of service attacks, but founder Simon Wright did not seem too concerned as he told ZDNet Australia he was not “really fazed by a few hours of downtime.”

Wright said the site’s downtime might have given users a chance to do other things.

“Perhaps a few more people went outside this morning; that can only be a good…

Lance Cottrell of Abraxas: ‘Substantial Civil-Liberty Impacts’ But No Security Benefits with Large-Scale Internet Surveillance

It may not sound like the most straightforward avenue into cybersecurity, but Abraxas’ chief scientist and cyber expert Lance Cottrell began his career as an astronomer. Pursuing graduate studies in astrophysics in San Diego in the early 1990s, Cottrell had direct access to the Internet, the web, and high-speed backbones at a time where no one outside the scientific…

June Busy Month for Cyber Criminals Targeting Colleges

Three U.S. universities were recently targeted by separate cyber attacks attempting to either dupe students into revealing personal information or extract student data by hacking school computer systems.

SPAMFighter reports how some students at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., fell for an email scam claiming to be from the “Webmail Administrator” of the school. The email urged recipients to click on an embedded link.

A systems security communications manager said…

Maine’s Online Database of Legislative Activity Hacked

An unknown hacker last week broke into Maine’s online database of legislative activity and attempted to manipulate the code of the website, according to The Portland Press Herald.

Last Thursday, the legislature’s IT staff shut down the website’s bill status function, which allows users to follow legislation such as roll calls, committee votes, amendments and fiscal notes. The manipulated code inserted the addresses of extraneous websites that could have exposed…

US to Help Nigeria Battle Cyber Crime

Nigeria is trying to salvage its reputation of being an axis for cyber crime and infamous scams by partnering with the U.S. government to take strides toward improving its image and bolstering monitoring and investigations skills.

Bashir Gwandu, the acting executive vice chairman of the Nigeria Communications Commission, told NEXT how email scams claiming to be from Nigerian institutions have…

Naval Academy Plans $100M Cyber-Warfare Education Center

The Naval Academy is planning on building a $100 million cyber-warfare education center in Annapolis, Md., to give midshipmen full training in cyber warfare, top officials said yesterday.

Navy Times reports although academy leaders have yet to formally pitch the idea to top Navy leadership in the Pentagon, they said if the fleet wants better cyber-qualified …