Matthew Hines

ESPN reporter Erin Andrews got screwed. Bigtime. Nude spy video on the Internet screwed. But in an ironic twist, malware distribution may play an unexpected role in somewhat lessening the sting of the incident. At least a little. To anyone who has followed her career as I have as a sports addict, and admittedly not […]

Security researchers are calling out the recent spread of new version of the “Sexy View” smartphone worm as having the possibility of representing one of the world’s first mobile botnet attacks. Over the last week the attack which is aimed at Symbian smartphones — long a leading edge target in the mobile malware world, with […]

The recent torrent of more sophisticated Trojan threats is producing a large volume of attacks that cannot be detected by traditional AV systems, security researchers contend. According to a new paper published by message and Web filtering specialist Commtouch, millions of Trojans easily evaded signature-based AV technologies during Q2 2009 alone. Recent Trojan outbreaks sent […]

Security researchers are tracking a new spike in activity around the distribution of the long-running Sinowal (aka Torpig) Trojan attack, with most of the sightings tied to infected Web sites. Researchers at SophosLabs reported a noticeable increase in the sheer volume of Sinowal-infecting URLs that it has observed in recent weeks, as Trojans continue to […]

Trojan threats may be well over a decade old, but they obviously still work, as the attacks still account for a lion’s share of newly discovered malware programs. At the same time, attackers continue to utilize popular new web services such as Twitter to deliver their latest attacks. According to second quarter threat analysis published […]

In the latest evidence that spam and malware techniques never truly die, they only go away for a little while, spammers have rehashed and combined two of their longest-running themes in a spate of recent campaigns. Researchers with Symantec have noted the return of spam messages hiding their content in HTML code dropped into e-mail […]

Researchers are increasingly noting the use of botnet infrastructure as the primary delivery means for badware, adware, spam and everything else, with zombie networks having become so ubiquitous in general that well-known iterations thereof are frequently being rolled out for use specifically over certain events or holidays. No better example of this may exist than […]

Windows security software maker Sunbelt has signed on to play a more active role in the Harvard-based Stopbadware.org effort, which already boasts some powerful friendships in the form of its work filtering Web search results with Google — in addition to being backed by Harvard Law School, Oxford University and Consumer Reports WebWatch. The nonprofit […]

It’s all about the information baby. The central theme in the world of cyber-crime has been data theft for years, and despite the evolution of more complex models including cyber-espionage and cyber-terrorism, malware attacks of all kinds remain focused on stealing electronic information, regardless of what endgame they’re pursuing, according to a new research report. […]

Experts with Gartner tabbed botnet infrastructure as the primary delivery model for malware in years to come while presenting their research conclusions at the company’s ongoing Information Security Summit today. That’s likely no surprise to anyone who has been watching the major threat trends lately, as attacks including Gumblar and Conficker have ripped their way […]