Tag archive: Symantec

Released in a Pastebin dump earlier today, members of Anonymous published a long series of emails between Anonymous member “Yamatough” and a representative of Symantec going by the name of Sam Thomas. While there's no Sam Thomas listed on LinkedIn as working at Symantec, the IP address within the header of the exchange linked to the original “sam_thomas@symantec.com” email account can be traced back to… Read More

Security firm Symantec raised eyebrows last week with a security notice about software it has dubbed Android.Counterclank, malware that the company claims can be found in over a dozen apps in the official Android market that have been installed as many as 5 million times. According to Symantec, CounterClank is a “bot-like” threat that, once installed on an Android device, can steal information and pass it along to a malicious host,… Read More

According to new information from researchers at Symantec, a group of spammers have created a group of 87 spam-friendly, public URL shortening services and are actively using them to circumvent spam filters on popular sites. Using URL shortening scripts that are free and open source, the spammers are churning spam through the service and the public is also free to create links through the URL shorteners, perhaps an attempt to pass off the links… Read More

Symantec has released its Norton CyberCrime Report for 2011, and if you thought business was good for smartphone and mobile device makers…well, business appears to be good for cybercriminals too. According to Symantec, some 431 million adults worldwide were victims of cybercrime in the last year, with the total cost of those crimes amounting to some $114 billion. And when Symantec figures in the value of the time victims lost to that… Read More

Last week, Google launch an unusual security initiative by releasing its own “Android Market Security Tools March 2011″ to remove the trojan DroidDream from infected users Android phones and devices. The action was unusual in that it was initiated by Google itself, rather than released to mobile operators who, in turn, pushed it out to customers. Now, attackers seem to be using Google's release as a new attack vector:… Read More

Symantec and research group Ponemon Institute released a report today detailing the cost of data breaches in 2010. The study, titled 2010 Annual Study: US Cost of a Data Breach, accounted for last year's cybersecurity failures and found that the cost these malicious, often criminal infiltrations have caused has increased 43 percent since 2009. 2010 became synonymous with terms like DDoS, Stuxnet, and of course Anonymous. Unfortunately for… Read More

According to security firm Symantec, an Android app that found itself in the hands of Chinese hackers is hijacking infected smartphones and charging clueless owners. The free app is called Steamy Window, which was modified with a backdoor Trojan added to its code. It was then rereleased to unapproved third-party app vendors, where it’s been picked up by Android owners and since then wreaking havoc on their texting bills. The original Steamy… Read More

Cyber security firm Symantec released its quarterly report yesterday, revealing that targeted attacks to steal company data have increased. The report specifically focuses on the Hydraq Trojan and the Stuxnet worm, and the damage they caused and concern for future attacks involving each. “Past targeted attacks…are important because they demonstrate that there are vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure sectors – specifically, in the power and… Read More

A funny thing happened over the end-of-year 2010 holiday season: levels of spam email on the Internet declined precipitously, with Symantec's MessageLabs reporting that levels have dropped to the lowest point since the shutdown of spam-friendly ISP McColo back in 2008. And while the decline seems to be attributable to three major botnets shutting down…nobody knows why those botnets might have gone quiet. “At present we… Read More

The future of warfare may have just begun, but rather than being heralded by an explosion, it began without a sound or a single casualty. It is the first of its kind, and could be a signal of the ways all wars are fought from now on. It is a cyber weapon so precise that it can destroy a target more effectively than a conventional explosive, and then simply delete itself, leaving the victims left to blame themselves. It is a weapon that is so… Read More

Today is Windows 7′s first birthday and Microsoft has reason to celebrate. License sales of Windows 7 have eclipsed 240 million copies in just a year, reports Datamation. The company claims that 17.1 percent of all PCs are running the freshman operating system, surpassing the marketshare of Microsoft's last operating system, Windows Vista. 93 percent of new PCs are shipping with it and all of the company's more than 18,000… Read More

A new malicious worm is being spread through e-mails with the subject line, “Here you have,” said security giant Symantec on its Security Response blog. The Security Response team is actively monitoring the threat. The e-mail asks the recipient to click on a link embedded in the message. Disguised as a PDF file, this link points to a malicious program file online. When the user clicks on this link, the program file is downloaded and executed,… Read More

Adobe identified a critical vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat and Reader on Tuesday, but said today that attackers were already exploiting this bug. All versions of Acrobat and Reader 8 and 9 for Windows, Macintosh, and Unix are open to attack. Even the latest versions, 8.2.4 and 9.3.4 are not safe. Other PDF reading alternatives, such as Foxit Reader, are not affected. Masquerading as a harmless PDF file, this exploit has malformed font and image… Read More

A new study from Internet security giant Symantec shows cybercrime affects everyone everywhere, and US Internet users are particularly vulnerable. Almost three-quarters of US Internet users are cybercrime victims, and the US ranks third on the list of countries attacked the most. When looked at globally, the number is still eye-opening, affecting about two-thirds of Internet users. Cybercrime includes computer viruses, online credit card fraud,… Read More

It has been a record-setting day for Microsoft. Whether that is a good thing or not depends on your point of view. Today, Symantec issued a press release stating that Microsoft would be setting a record for the number of patches sent out in a single month, and it would tie the record for the total number of vulnerabilities since it began its “Patch Tuesday” program of releasing weekly patches when necessary. Good news for… Read More