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This is the ‘12 scams of Christmas’ I mentioned in last post: Pipers tout fake gold rings as Maids are ‘a-phishing’ to milk bank accounts On what is traditionally the busiest online shopping day of the year (1), consumers are being warned not to become victims of the ‘12 Scams of Christmas’ and to take extra care with personal and IT security. The ‘12 Scams of Christmas’ developed by the National Fraud Authority (NFA), The UK Cards Association and the City of London Police (CoLP) highlight the greatest holiday fraud threats and how to spot them. ...

Tanya has just posted over on Kaspersky Russian site about losses caused by Internet fraudsters in England and Wales. If you want to practice your Russian, hop over there, and take a look! I know that most people in the UK prefer to get their news in English. So here’s a few facts and figures: In a recent statement, the Office of Fair Trading estimated that losses caused by Internet fraud amounted to £14 billion per year. That’s a lot of money! It’s also a lot of victims! ...

Crime traditionally increases during the holiday season, and cybercrime is no different. The malware writers, spammers and scammers are out in force. They’ve recently hit “Odnoklassniki” with this message: “Hi! I’ve got a New year surprise for you [emoticon] send 2133 279 (must be with a space) to 4460 and you’ll be pleasantly surprised! If you don’t take a look, I’ll be very grouchy with you [emoticon]” This message is clearly designed to make the bad guys a bit of holiday cash: an SMS sent to the number given in the message costs between $5 and $12 dollars, depending on the mobile service provider. ...

After months of negotiations, US President Barack Obama has finally chosen a Chief of CyberSecurity – Mr Howard A Schmidt. Confirmation of the appointment is expected shortly. Mr Schmidt, who previously served with the Bush administration as a cyber security official, comes to the job with an impressively lengthy list of credentials. The new Chief will essentially be the administration’s go-to man for any coordinated efforts to deal with cyber threats and will be reporting to the National Security Council. ...

I was just looking at Facebook to check for spam and scams when I found this: I’ve blurred out a few things for privacy, and, most crucially, safety. The point of this post is the domain name. The spaces around the dot and the zero in “C0M” are just as they were in the original spam message. If spammers are going to the trouble to obfuscate their messages, it seems to show that Facebook’s spam filters are having some effect. Malformed links mean that you have to make an serious effort to actually go and visit the spammer site. And consequently, if someone’s going to go through all that trouble, they’re more likely to buy into whatever scam is at the other end. Click on the link, and you immediately get redirected, even though you won’t notice: ...

I ran into a few strange IMs over the weekend. When I was not shoveling out my driveway from the 15 inches of snow that covered it I was logged into Facebook telling people about it…. It was then that I started receiving some VERY interesting IMs from a friend extolling the virtues of a clean colon (yep – you read that right): This lead to the following questionable site, which had some very interesting comments on McAfee SiteAdvisor site: ...

Just a quick note – the sudden death of Hollywood celebrity Brittany Murphy last Sunday (BBC report here) has prompted a spike in searches on the subject – and of course, an SEO attack. Users who click on a poisoned search result link will be redirected to a website that will display a scare message trying to panic users into downloading rogue AV software: Screenshots of the rogue AV: ...

Well, it didn’t take long for the Christmas E-Card scams to start. Recently we have seen email messages pretending to be from Hallmark, suggesting that you have received an E-card from a friend. The complete email message looks like this:You have recieved a Hallmark E-Card from your friend. To see it, check the link below: http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/Occasion/ChristmasE-CardsThere’s something special about that E-Card feeling. We invite you to make a friend’s day and send one.Hope to see you soon, Your friends at Hallmark ...

ProtectPC’s is a nasty rogue antivirus program, or phony security software, used to scam people out of their money. If your PC is infected with ProtectPC’s you should remove it immediately. ProtecPC’s poses a serious security risk for all PC users. Symptoms of a ProtecPC infection can include: Web Browser redirecting spontaneously System scans that result in reports showing multiple infections Pop-Ups and system alerts stating the PC is infected Programs being shut down or unable to open Click Here to learn how to remove these kind of malware.