Thread: Security News-10/09/05

UK users desert online banks

According to a survey from Forrester Research, more than half a million UK internet users have stopped banking online because of security fears, IT Week reports.

Some 600,000 of the UK's 15 million internet banking customers have turned away from online financial transactions because of concerns about keystroke logging software and phishing emails aimed at stealing customer funds.

Forty-two per cent of internet banking customers have received phishing emails, according to the survey.

To try to combat the threat, half of internet users have installed firewalls and anti-virus software, says Forrester.

Read the full story:
http://www.itweek.co.uk/computing/ne...t-online-banks


Officials warn against hurricane aid scams
Online September 6, 2005

U.S. government officials warned on Tuesday that scam artists will try to profit from the outpouring of donations to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina, Reuters reports.

After last year's Asian tsunami that killed nearly 300,000 people, the FBI investigated more than 170 Web sites that were preying on donors by mimicking the sites of well-known charities.

While no evidence has emerged of criminals attempting to divert money destined for hurricane victims, authorities are on high alert.

Private donors should avoid giving personal data such as social security numbers, dates of birth and bank account information to any organization that says it is seeking disaster aid, and should make sure they are giving money to a legitimate organization, officials said.

Read the full story:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...T-SCAMS-DC.XML


'Islamic Trojan' disrupts porn surfing
Online September 6, 2005

Virus writers have created a Trojan horse which tries to disrupt visits to pornographic websites by displaying messages from the Koran, The Register reports.

The low-risk Yusufali.A Trojan horse monitors the websites Windows users are visiting. If the malware sees one of a set of trigger words (such as "teen", "sex" or "penis") in the url it minimises the window so the user cannot see its content and displays a message from the Koran instead. The message, partly written in Arabic, contains the following English text:

"Yusufali: Know, therefore, that there is no god but Allah, and ask forgiveness for thy fault, and for the men and women who believe: for Allah knows how ye move about and how ye dwell in your homes."

Once the message is displayed the malware performs a variety of other actions before forcing infected users to shutdown. All very disconcerting but there's no need for undue alarm since the Yusufali.A Trojan is not yet in the wild. It's unclear whether the malware was written as a joke, or as a serious attempt to clean up the habits of internet users.

Read the full story:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09...soring_trojan/


Mytob dominates August virus charts
Online September 3, 2005

Security vendors are now reporting on the August virus figures, and it looks as though Mytob has topped all the charts, Computing reports.

Mytob variants accounted for over half of the virus infections found in August. The author of the original worm is thought to be one of the men arrested over the release of the Zotob worm.

"Mytob and Zotob may spread in different ways, but the source code is very similar," said Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos.

"Moreover, the Zotob author's nickname, Diabl0, appears in more than 20 of the Mytob variants, suggesting that they may have been created by the same person.

The Zotob worm itself seems to have caused little damage, and does not appear in any of the virus charts.

Read the full story:
http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/ne...s-august-virus

See the August top ten virus chart from Sophos:
http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/pr...901topten.html


Read more news at http://www.bullguard.com/news
'till next week


The BullGuard Team
BullGuard Limited, 823 Salisbury House, 29 Finsbury Circus, EC2M 5QQ London, United Kingdom

Well, well, it seems that all the looters, criminals and rapists were not centered in New Orleans, huh? They like to spread their goodwill around, you know?

hz