One of the more widespread malware efforts over the past few years was the DNSChanger scam, which installed a Trojan horse that would change the DNS server settings on affected computers to divert traffic to rogue servers. The DNS system is essentially the Internet’s phone book that allows your computer to resolve a URL to [...]

In a world that is constantly connected, it seems these days you are never alone, whether you know it or not. “People are online around the clock,” said computer expert Jake DeWoskin. DeWoskin is with the Twin Cities business consulting firm KDV. He agreed to be our ‘bad guy’ in an experiment to show how [...]

Mozilla has released the latest version of its browser, Firefox 10, with fixes for nine security flaws, including five critical vulnerabilities. One of the critical vulnerabilities opens users up to cross-site scripting attacks because the browser did not run proper security checks, Mozilla said in its security advisory. The flaw “allows for cross-site scripting attacks [...]

The PHP developers are working to fix a critical security vulnerability in PHP that they introduced with a recent security patch. The current stable release is affected; however, it is not yet clear whether the questionable patch was also applied to older versions. The cause of the problem is the security update to PHP 5.3.9, [...]

One of the principle maintainers of the Linux kernel, Greg Kroah-Hartman, has joined the Linux Foundation as a fellow, the same position held by Linux creator Linus Torvalds, the foundation announced. Kroah-Hartman previously worked at Suse Linux, also as a fellow.Kroah-Hartman is one of the chief developers working on the Linux kernel and handles a [...]

Several successful hacks of VeriSign’s network, in 2010, might have compromised critical information relating to the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). According to information released by VeriSign in October 2011, “we have investigated and do not believe these attacks breached the servers that support our domain name system network.” But the company didn’t rule out [...]

A member of the computer hacking group Anonymous has hacked into a telephone conference between the FBI and Scotland Yard and posted it on the internet. The hacker apparently managed to access the call after getting into an FBI agent’s email which gave details of the call. The email was also posted online. The conversation [...]

Following a joint operation by Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab last September to disrupt Kelihos, the botnet is now said to be making a comeback and using new techniques. According to a report on Securelist, which is run by Kaspersky Lab, new samples of the Kelihos botnet have been discovered that appear to be “very similar [...]

I am honoured to have been invited back to present at the prestigious e-Crime Congress to be held in London, March this year. However it caused a flash-back to the last occasion I presented at Congress in 2009, when things seemed to be very different. It was around that time when myself, and a small [...]

On the night of Monday, January 23, the hacktivist group UGNazi hijacked Coach.com, the Internet domain name of luxury goods manufacturer Coach. For several hours, fashionistas who wanted to ogle Coach’s new Willis handbag on Coach.com or get a deal on its Penelope shoulder bag at Coachfactory.com were redirected to UGNazi’s cryptic website. Imagine the [...]