Japanese one-click fraud apps on Google Play made their debut at the beginning of the year and have now become a regular on the market as new variants appear on an almost daily basis. I was curious to see whether the scammers had attempted to target other mobile platforms, so I did some investigative work. The result of which was I didn’t find any one-click fraud on other platforms, but I did came across a dodgy app in the Apple App Store that uses a strategy that is similar to one-click fraud apps.

Once opened, the app accesses certain URLs and displays content from them within the app. The app itself pretty much acts as a frame for the fraudulent site. The particular app leads to fake dating services, called “sakura” sites in Japan, rather than one-click fraud apps that attempt to fool users into paying for an adult video service.

The app was introduced on the App Store as a game and certainly does not look like it is related to a dating service on...

Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, once said that, “without music, life would be a mistake.” This resonates with me, as someone with a profound love and appreciation for music. Like many fans, I’m an avid concert and festival attendee. Just last year, I attended a number of music festivals, from Coachella to Rock The Bells.

Last year’s Coachella music festival sold out quickly. While my friends and I managed to secure tickets, not everyone was so lucky. Shortly after ticket sales ended, I observed a Facebook fan page offering “free tickets” to users who liked the page. It had close to 10,000 likes but contained little information. I started warning friends that the page was a scam. The page was eventually taken down, with no free tickets awarded after all.

These types of online ticket scams may not seem common, but that perception is precisely why an offer like this—whether through social networking or email—may...

Malware authors are notorious for quickly leveraging new exploits in the public domain for nefarious purposes. The recent discovery of a Linux Kernel CVE-2013-2094 Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability (CVE-2013-2094) in the Performance Counters for Linux (PCL)—currently being exploited on various platforms—has now been modified to work on the Android operating system.  

For anyone unfamiliar with the Android operating system, it is based off the open source Linux operating system. This means that many of the discovered Linux kernel based vulnerabilities have the possibility of being exploited in Android devices. However, with different Android devices using different versions of the Linux kernel, only certain devices may be affected by a particular exploit.

Contributor: Vivek Krishnamurthi

The International Dance Competition “Dance Grand Prix Europe” is set to begin June 12 and will be hosted in Spain. The purpose of the competition is to showcase all the top dancers from various dance schools and this major event attracts choreographic talent from around the world. Spammers also don’t want to miss this event and the opportunity to circulate a scam.
 

Figure 1. Dance Grand Prix Europe 2013 spam
 

To grab the reader’s attention, the spam email reveals some appealing facts about the event along with "only a little fee" required but no additional charges for participation in the event. Clicking the URL will automatically redirect the user to a website containing a bogus...