Small businesses at greatest risk from cyber crime
by Jan HarrisA debate held by hosting company UKFast, came to the conclusion that UK SME’s are not well-enough equipped to deal with the increasing threat of cyber crime.
The round table highlighted several ways that small businesses can protect themselves, including:
practicing good PC hygiene
keeping up-to-date with patch and product updates
outsourcing to more knowledgeable companies
Philippe Jan, Cyber [...]
March 16, 2010
Trend Micro introduces hosted email security for SMEs
by Jan HarrisTrend Micro has launched a new Hosted Email Security platform, offering real-time protection against e-mail borne threats.
The platform offers an email security solution for small businesses, eliminating the need to invest in dedicated IT resources to manage spam and other security threats.
“Email security is mission critical for our customers,” said James Walker, SMB product marketing [...]
March 10, 2010
US SMB’s bank accounts at risk from Cyberthieves
by Jan HarrisUS banks are failing to adequately protect the bank accounts of SMBs, according to a study carried out by Guardian Analytics and Ponemon Institute.
The study found that 55% of the businesses surveyed had experience fraud in the last year, and 40% of the defrauded businesses promptly move their accounts elsewhere.
The 2010 Business Banking Trust Study [...]
March 27, 2009
123-reg targeted by phishers
by Brian Turner123-reg, one of the UK’s largest domain registration services, joins the unenviable list of targets that includes eBay, Paypal, high street banks and Google Adwords as the latest target of phishing attacks.
The randomly emailed message claims to be from 123-reg, asking the recipient to update their payment details, but does not mention the user by [...]
November 24, 2008
Online CC fraud: a $5 billion industry
by Brian TurnerAccording to a report by Symantec, credit card thieves have such a high volume of credit card data that they theoretically have access to credit of $5 billion.
You can find the original PDF paper here, or an online HTML summary here.
The $5.3bn figure was reached by multiplying the average amount of fraud perpetrated on a [...]
November 11, 2008
The Economies of Email Spam
by Brian TurnerAn interesting investigation into the economies of email spam has found that the response rate can be less than 0.00001% – that’s only 1 in 14 million emails resulting in a sale.
However, scalability means that running a large enough network can still result in multi-million pound incomes.
The research was carried out between the University of [...]
November 1, 2008
Sinowal super trojan empties half million bank accounts
by Brian TurnerIt’s being referred to as a “super trojan”, described by RSA security as “one of the most advanced pieces of crimeware ever created“.
Already nearly three years old, the Sinowal trojan – aka Torpig or Mebroot – is typical in its behaviour of trying open up user computers – but with the added twist of phishing [...]
August 26, 2008
A million bank customer details sold on eBay
by Brian TurnerThe BBC reports that an IT worker who bought a PC for £35 on eBay, found the harddrive contained around a million customer records plus transactions from the Royal Bank of Scotland and Natwest:
Bank customer data ’sold on eBay’
The Daily Mail says an ex-worker for archiving firm Graphic Data sold it for £35 on eBay [...]
March 27, 2008
Google Adwords targeted in phishing attacks
by Brian TurnerGoogle Adwords customers are being warned to watch out for fake emails claiming to be from Google Adwords, which attempt to steal login details.
Google Adwords has become the latest service to be targeted by phishers, using spoof emails to steal user login data.
Normally targeted at banks and online financial providers, the aim is to capture [...]
March 2, 2008
Email spammers use blogspot against filters
by Brian TurnerBlogspot URLs are being used in a new deluge of spam in an attempt to circumvent anti-spam filters. Until Blogger open communications for spam reporting, this problem is just going to continue.
There’s nothing new about email spam – especially when the email spam often carries an affiliate URL.
Over the past few days, however, there’s been [...]
November 22, 2007
Government boosts Information Commissioner’s powers
by Jan HarrisFollowing HM Revenue & Customs’ loss of personal data belonging to the 25 million recipients of child benefit in the UK, the government has given the Information Commissioner the power to conduct spot checks on data security.
The Information Commissioner will be able to carry out security checks across all Government departments and agencies, which [...]
November 1, 2007
Government dismisses cyber crime recommendations
by Jan HarrisLord Erroll, a member of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, has expressed disappointment at the Government’s response to the committee’s report into personal internet security.
According to Lord Erroll, the Government has failed to react appropriately to the report and has dismissed every recommendation out of hand.
The forward-looking report addressed emerging [...]
October 26, 2007
Microsoft finds manufacturers risk data theft
by Jan HarrisAccording to the Microsoft Collaboration in High-Tech Manufacturing Survey 2007, manufacturing firms regularly use insecure forms of communication, which places their data at risk of theft
The research, which was conducted by US-based KRC Research, found that 78 per cent of business decision-makers (BDMs), and 85 per cent of technology decision-makers (TDMs), used services such as [...]
October 4, 2007
Yahoo upgrades email with DomainKeys
by Jan HarrisYahoo is upgrading Yahoo Mail with DomainKeys technology designed to block phishing spam and bogus emails purporting to come from eBay and PayPal.
Phishing scams usually consist of emails which claim to be from trusted sources. They direct the recipient to a Web site where they are instructed to enter their user name and password. [...]
October 3, 2007
Blog spammers hack archive.org
by Brian TurnerBlog spammers have exploited a vulnerability in the archive.org website, in order to redirect users to paid-for pharmaceuticals listings.
The practice has unfortunately become increasingly common, with innocent websites being hacked or otherwise exploited in order to try and capture traffic from Google.
The method arises because Google Search has an element in its ranking algorthm that [...]
Technology companies call for data breach law
by Jan HarrisAccording to a survey by Intellect, the trade association for the UK technology industry, over 50 per cent of the UK’s technology companies would support legislation requiring companies to notify customers of data breaches.
The preliminary results of the survey also show that 50 per cent of respondents believe the legislations should cover both public [...]
October 1, 2007
UK least affected by malware in Europe
by Jan HarrisA study by Panda Software, using an online malware measuring tool called Nanoscan, showed UK PCs as having the lowest level of malware infection in Europe.
France had the highest percentage of PCs with active malware, at 28.2 percent, followed by Mexico with 23.1 percent of PCs infected, Brazil with 18 percent, the US with [...]
September 3, 2007
NEC group website ‘hacked’ by Russian Spammers
by Brian TurnerPlatinax has discovered that the NEC Group website has been hacked, with pages inserted onto the site to promote pharmaceuticals sales.
A specific search on Google reveals a small number of pages added to the site, which offer to sell a variety of pharmaceutical products, including soma, phentermine, tramadol, xanax and fioricet. For example, as seen [...]
August 23, 2007
Report highlights failings in SMB’s IT security
by Jan HarrisAccording to new research commissioned by Websense Inc, employees of small and medium sized businesses (SMB’s) regularly visit high-risk sites in work time, but IT Managers are failing to implement adequate IT security measures.
The research, which was carried out by Dynamic Markets, surveyed 750 IT managers and employees in SMBs across five European countries. [...]
August 15, 2007
Researchers identify Spam’s weak spot
by Jan HarrisResearchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), believe they have identified a weak spot in the spam infrastructure which could be used to stop spammers gaining financially from their activities.
According to UCSD researchers, spammers use powerful distributed delivery networks to send out junk e-mail, but this isn’t the case for the internet [...]