Robert Lemos

The Kelihos botnet, which has survived three shutdown attempts, has begun sending out phishing messages that aim to exploit consumer concerns over the recent leak of information from Apple’s iCloud service, according to security firm Symantec. The phishing campaign consists of email messages purporting to be from Apple and asking the targeted victim to authorize […]

Web servers based on both Linux and Windows are rapidly being targeted by attackers and turned into server-side botnets capable of high-bandwidth denial-of-service attacks, two security firms stated in recently published analyses. On one hand, attackers are targeting unpatched or poorly-maintained Linux systems, exploiting known vulnerabilities and installing bot software to conscript the computers into […]

Visitors to a Website dedicated to industrial simulation software and system engineering were secretly monitored by malware that had infected the site in the latest assault on businesses using what’s commonly known as a watering-hole attack. The attack, first reported in a brief Aug. 28 analysis by security firm Alien Vault, involved a legitimate Website […]

A Brazilian cyber-criminal group has attempted to hijack consumers’ traffic and redirect victims to fake banking sites by changing their router settings, according to an analysis by security firm Kaspersky Lab. The attack, which appears to have affected 3,300 victims in three days, uses an email to lure potential victims to an attacker-controlled Website. When […]

Thirteen software companies and universities have banded together to create a group focused on educating developers about how to design secure software, releasing a report offering the 10 best practices to avoid common software flaws. Called the IEEE Computer Society Center for Secure Design, the group includes participants from Google, Twitter, RSA, McAfee, Harvard University […]

The Playstation Network, Blizzard’s Battle.net and Microsoft’s Xbox Live all suffered disruptions in the last 48 hours caused by a group—or perhaps a single individual—directing denial-of-service attacks at the game networks. The vandals, who donned the monicker of “LizardSquad” on Twitter, went from juvenile to Jihad on Monday when they began posting terrorist-related images and […]

Community Health Systems announced Aug. 18 that hackers had breached its health care network of 206 facilities and stolen sensitive information on approximately 4.5 million patients. The compromise and subsequent data loss is part of a general trend in the sector. The health care industry has given short shrift to IT security, spending less on […]

Groups of attackers have targeted activists on both sides of the Syrian civil war with a new malware campaign that, while not particularly sophisticated, has grown to compromise more than 10,000 systems, according to researchers from Kaspersky Labs, which analyzed more than 100 files used by group. The attackers have sent messages through social networks, […]

Companies with lax security procedures can become a breeding ground for malware, with infection rates reaching 18.5 percent, according to network-security firm Damballa. Organizations that allow contractors and third parties to access their network do not restrict mobile devices and allow users to have administrative rights on their systems suffer much higher rates of malware […]

A digital thief used insider access to a Canadian Internet service provider’s network to hijack the efforts of at least 51 cryptocurrency mining groups and stole the payouts from individual miners who participated in the pools, according to a report by managed security service Dell Secureworks. The attack, which started with initial tests in early […]