Cyber criminals based in Ukraine stole $415,000 from the coffers of Bullitt County, Kentucky this week. The crooks were aided by more than two dozen co-conspirators in the United States, as well as a strain of malicious software capable of defeating online security measures put in place by many banks. Bullitt County Attorney Walt Sholar said the trouble began on June 22, when someone started making unauthorized wire transfers of $10,000 or less from the county's payroll to accounts belonging to at least 25 individuals around the country (some individuals received multiple payments). On June 29, the county's bank realized something was wrong, and began requesting that the banks receiving those transfers start reversing them, Sholar said. "Our bank told us they would know by Thursday how many of those transactions would be able to be reversed," Sholar said. "They told us they thought we would get some of the
Google published a report on spam rates this past quarter indicating that spam volumes declined roughly 30 percent following the Federal Trade Commission's takedown of the troubled online hosting provider 3FN early last month. Google says spammers have already made up a significant amount of ground, climbing 14 percent from the initial drop. The stats differ from other figures Security Fix collected about the impact of the 3FN takedown. Google's spam data was drawn from Postini, the company's e-mail security and archiving service. The following graph shows Postini's view of spam volumes over the past six months: Read more about Google's view of spam trends, at their quarterly report, available here.
This past week has been a bustling one for cyber justice. The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement in its ongoing case against scareware purveyors; a notorious hacker admitted stealing roughly two million credit card numbers; the Justice Department has charged a software developer from Arkansas with launching a series of debilitating online attacks against several online news sites that carried embarrassing stories about him. Finally, a federal appeals court decision gives security vendors added protection against spurious lawsuits by adware companies. -- Last week, the FTC said it had settled with James Reno and his company ByteHosting Internet Services LLC. Both were named in the commission's broad sweep last year against purveyors of "scareware," programs that uses bogus security alerts to frighten people into paying for worthless security software. The settlement imposes a judgment of $1.9 million against Reno and Bytehosting, yet the court overseeing the case suspended all
Every so often, a new piece of malicious software comes along that introduces a subtle yet evolutionary technological leap, a quickly-mimicked shift that allows cyber crooks to be far more stealthy in plying their trade. According to research released last week, this happened most recently in the realm of click fraud, a rapidly growing problem that inflates online advertising costs for legitimate companies and ad networks. For years, hackers have used malicious software to perpetrate click fraud by hijacking the results displayed when users search for something online. The trouble is, these scams can be rather clumsy: Victims often figure out pretty quickly that something is wrong, usually because their searches are redirected to an unfamiliar search portal, as opposed to their regular default search provider. But a new Trojan horse program being distributed by tens of thousands of recently hacked Web sites hijacks search results so that Google.com users
Former Department of Homeland Security cyber chief Rod A. Beckstrom has been tapped to be the new president of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the California based non-profit that oversees the Internet's address system. Most recently, Beckstrom was director of the National Cyber Security Center -- an organization created to coordinate security efforts across the intelligence community. Beckstrom resigned that post in March, citing a lack of funding and authority. Beckstrom joins ICANN as the Internet governance body faces some of the most complex and contentious proposed changes to the Internet's addressing system in the organization's entire 11-year history. For example: -- The United States is under considerable pressure to give up control over ICANN and turn it over to international supervision and management. ICANN currently operates under a Joint Project Agreement with the U.S. government, but that agreement is due to expire at the end
Adobe Systems Inc. on Tuesday issued a software update to fix a critical security flaw in its Shockwave Player, a commonly installed Web browser plug-in. According to Adobe, a malicious or hacked site could use the security hole to install malicious software if the visitor merely browses the site with a vulnerable version of the media player software. The flaw exists in Shockwave Player (also known as Macromedia Shockwave Player) version 11.5.0.596 and earlier. To find out whether Shockwave is installed and which version may be on your PC, visit this site. In a posting to its security blog, Adobe said it is not aware of any exploits in the wild for this vulnerability. Adobe recommends Shockwave Player users on Windows uninstall Shockwave version 11.5.0.596 and earlier on their systems, restart and install Shockwave version 11.5.0.600, available here. Readers should be aware that by default this patch will also try
Microsoft on Tuesday released a beta version of its new free anti-virus offering, Microsoft Security Essentials (a.k.a "Morro"). My review, in short: the program is a fast, easy to use and unobtrusive new addition to the stable of free anti-virus options available today. MSE is basically the next generation of Microsoft's Windows Live Onecare anti-virus and anti-spyware service, but without all of the extras, such as a firewall, data backup solution or PC performance tuning (Microsoft announced in Nov. 2008 that it would stop selling Onecare through its retail channels at the end of June 2009). The toughest part was getting the program installed. MSE can run on Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions), but it failed to install on an XP Pro system I tried to use as my initial test machine -- leaving me with nothing more than a failure message and cryptic
Alan Ralsky, a 64-year-old Michigan man that federal investigators say was among the world's top spam kingpins, pleaded guilty on Monday to running a multi-million dollar international stock fraud scam powered by junk e-mail. Ralsky (pictured at right, courtesy of Spamhaus) and his son-in-law and chief financial officer Scott K. Bradley, 38, also of Michigan, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and to violate the CAN-SPAM Act. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Ralsky faces as much as 87 months in prison and a $1 million fine, while Bradley could get as much as 78 months in prison and a $1 million fine under the federal sentencing guidelines. The Ralsky plea caps a long effort by the government to nab one of the most prolific spammers. In September 2005, the FBI raided Ralsky's home, but it wasn't until early 2008 that the government indicted Ralsky
For the most part, cyber gangs that create malicious software and spread spam operate as shadowy, exclusive organizations that toil in secrecy, usually in Eastern Europe. But with just a few clicks, anyone can jump into business with even the most notorious of these organizations by opening up the equivalent of a franchise operation. Some of the most active of these franchises help distribute malicious software through so-called pay-per-install programs, which pay tiny commissions to the franchise operators, or so-called affiliates, each time a supplied program is installed on an unsuspecting victim's PC. These installer programs will often hijack the victim's search results, or steal data from the infected computer. Typically, affiliates will secretly bundle the installers with popular pirated software titles that are made available for download on peer-to-peer file-trading sites. In other cases, the installers are stitched into legitimate, hacked Web sites and quietly foisted upon PCs when
