Archive for July, 2009

New Russian Ransomware Trojan

Suddenly an ad appears on the webpage on your screen. You try to delete it, but nothing works. You go to another page. And another and another. The ad keeps following you. It’s the newest ransomware scam from Russian hackers. The Ransomware Trojan is either dropped onto  systems already compromised by other strains of malware, [...]

Dark side leads technology

Sometimes it seems that the dark side is leading in the development of new technology. Technical journals and reports abound with examples. Last week there was a reference to quality control services for malware makers in a report from Cisco. The report cited a Russian site that for a fee tests malicious files against the [...]

New malware trick

Warren Franklin, a fellow cyber crime fighter, writes this morning, … you shouldn’t be too surprised to learn that there is a new malware trick.  It’s called “quality assurance.”  Malware distributors are outsourcing for quality assurance going to sites like virtest.com. According to Cisco, for a fee the site tests malicious files against the latest [...]

Fake Software: Cybercrime product of the year

In its midyear report on cyber security, Cisco Systems names rogue anti-virus software the cybercrime product of the year. There is a lot of great software that you can get for little or nothing from the freeware and shareware communities. There is also a lot of very dangerous free software being pushed by cyber criminals. [...]