Matthew Hines

Never underestimate the power of one good security research report, as it appears that the ripple effect touched off by KnujOn’s phantom domain paper from a couple of weeks back is still shaking things up. Here’s the latest domino to fall: EstDomains, a domain registrar that was recently identified in the report as a shady […]

If you’re one of those people of the belief that the much-publicized Large Hadron Collider buried under the border between France and Switzerland could potentially put an end to the world as we know it by mistakenly creating an Earth-consuming black hole, you might not want to read the rest of this post. Because, European […]

It’s not often that you might associate spyware with a positive situation, as typically the programs’ impact involves data theft, cyber-stalking or at best password theft and online account hijacking of some sort. However, a case reported by local papers in the United Kingdom Sept. 9 illustrates how sometimes spyware programs can produce beneficial results, […]

Adding to a spate of recent threats launched via social networking portals and other Web 2.0 sites including MySpace and Facebook, researchers at PandaLabs have unearthed a program used by attackers to create fake YouTube pages that are meant to lure in unsuspecting end users. Dubbed “YTFakeCreator,” the widget creates realistic YouTube URL spoofs that […]

Many of us who have been following the cyber-crime scene for a few years have openly griped about the lack of success that law enforcement officials have had in bringing the bad guys to justice. LEOs themselves have long blamed a lack of dedicated resources and the need to more aggressively pursue criminals in the […]

The lesson of this story? If you believe in the quality of your work, don’t let anyone try to move you off your spot. Over a week after anti-spam research house KnujOn first called out India-based registrar Directi for allowing its business partners to support illegal online pharmacies, the registrar has sought a truce with […]

Well, they went straight for the jugular. You knew there was bound to be plenty of election-themed spam and malware generated during the current U.S. presidential campaign of 2008, as social engineering tactics have been following popular news trends for quite some time. But, apparently the bad guys aren’t going to be satisfied simply to […]

You may have seen my blog filed from this year’s Black Hat show regarding an interesting demonstration by a pair of researchers about the potential security risks related to implanted medical devices. The presentation, delivered by researchers Tadayoshi Kohno and Kevin Fu, outlined the lack of sufficient security controls built into today’s implanted medical gizmos, […]

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s what the malware community appears to be saying, as the time-honored Trojan attack model, in all its varied iterations, continues to dominate the threat rankings, researchers report. While it’s true that a lot of different types of attacks, from simple malware downloaders to annoying adware to sophisticated […]

Badware distribution schemes hidden under the guise of legitimate anti-virus applications continue to suck in unsuspecting end users, according to new research released by AV vendor Panda Software. According to a paper issues by Panda on Thursday, the fake AV technique is actually growing in popularity among attackers, likely in response to the growing publicity […]