Two New Malware Strains Attack Facebook, IM

New scams conducted via Facebook and Twitter have been wreaking havoc on users in the last several days, PandaLabs reported.

The first one, Asprox.N, has been identified as a Trojan sent via email informing users their Facebook account is being used to distribute spam. For that reason, the user’s login credentials have been changed. The email includes a bogus Word document attachment, tricking the user into believing it…

China’s Cyber Crime Situation Remains ‘Very Grave’

Police in China have solved 180 cyber attack cases and arrested more than 460 suspects as of the end of November, but the cyber crime situation in the country remains “very grave,” said an unnamed ministry official.

Additionally, 14 websites have been shut down for allegedly distributing hacker software, training hackers and organizing attacks, according to a…

Malware, Data Leaks Big Problems for Small Businesses

Viruses, Trojans, data-stealing malware, and data leaks were rated as big IT concerns among small businesses, according to Trend Micro‘s 2010 corporate end user survey.

A total of 1,600 end users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan were polled. On average, 63 percent…

Expert: Sweden Stands No Chance against Attack of Stuxnet Magnitude

Sweden would never have been able to protect itself against a worm like Stuxnet, and an attack by a similarly complex malware on the kingdom’s critical infrastructure would have had devastating–even fatal–consequences, warns a cybersecurity expert.

TrueSec‘s security expert Marcus Murray told Dagens Nyheter the 1.18 megabyte virus that infected personal…

Amazon Shoppers Warned about Bogus Email Containing Trojan Virus

Amazon has long been a target for scammers attempting to use the online retailer’s name for phishing scams in hopes of luring users to hand over personal information that can be used to empty bank accounts or steal identities.

The latest scam involving Amazon’s name comes in form of an official-looking email purporting to be from amazon.com.  With the subject line of the email being “your amazon.com order,” the…

Malware Accounts for 73 Percent of Threats in US, Microsoft Study Finds

According to a recently released Microsoft study, the vast majority of threats detected on infected computers in the U.S. are malware. The firm detected malware on 7.8 out of every 1,000 computers scanned in the U.S.

Trojans were the most common form of malware found on infected U.S. computers. The U.S., China and Brazil were the top three nations with infected computers cleaned by Microsoft software. The report also found…

Hacker Gets 37 Months in Jail for Hacking Brokerage Accounts

A hacker who broke into brokerage accounts at Charles Schwab, laundered more than $246,000, and sold stolen credit-card numbers has been sentenced by the Manhattan Federal Court to 37 months in prison.

From approximately September 2006 through December 2007, Aleksey Volynskiy and…

Richard Clarke: ‘Cyber War Has Already Begun’

“Cyber war has already begun,” writes Richard Clarke in his new book Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It. He says “nations are already preparing the battlefield” in cyberspace by “hacking into each other’s networks and infrastructures, laying in trapdoors and logic bombs — now, in peacetime. This…