An unfortunate side effect of any news-worthy disasters of the modern day is that a wave of malware will often follow in the virtual world after the initial event in the physical world. The large earthquake (8.3 on the Richter scale) last night recorded off the coast of Western Samoa and the subsequent tsunami that followed caused much destruction and loss of life to the islands near the epicentre of the quake. As with any large scale disasters that quickly become major news events, people want to know what happened and to know that loved ones are safe. The Web, being a major source of information to many people around the world, is one of the first places to see such information-seeking activity. For many people, search engines are the gateway to the masses of information available and because of this, it is also one of the first places to be targeted by malware creators. They waste no time in getting their malicious software and web sites set up and poisoning the Web...
Back in the 90's, Jamiroquai had a hit album named "Travelling without Moving." The title gives an apt description of some of the fantastic things that you can now do on the Internet. For example, we can now literally travel the world without moving beyond the comfort of the armchair. Applications such as Google Earth and Google Maps (with its Street View feature) enable anybody with a decent Internet connection to literally drop in to virtually any location on this planet.
These applications are great for planning visits-you can see exactly how far your hotel is from the train station, where there is parking, or even plot your full itinerary. You can also use these applications to get a feel for an area before you go there; for example, if you were visiting an unfamiliar area it's really useful to see what the building or location you are going to actually looks like before you get there. Addresses are sometimes hard to recognize and as the saying goes, a...
A timely warning to those wishing to purchase last minute tickets for the Beijing Olympic Games of 2008 to beware of scams and rip offs. There are some fake but very well crafted ticketing Web sites that have been duping unsuspecting members of the public out of their hard earned cash by posing as legitimate suppliers for Olympic events. In particular, one such scam site (beijingticketing.com and its mirror site beijingticketing2008.com) has, according to media reports, already ripped off many individuals, some to the tune of US $57,000.
This scam site claims to be able to source tickets for sold out sporting events, playing on the fact that many Olympic event tickets are already sold out due to huge demand. I checked out the site today and found that tickets for the opening ceremony...
Many great things have been touted about Web 2.0, such as that it will bring about a richer, freer, and more community-driven experience for all users. Technologies like wikis and blogs, along with services like Flickr and YouTube are prime examples of how the Web has evolved to bring about increased community participation. What these services really do is bring about freedom of speech to the masses. Unfortunately, the masses also include the “bad”.
Wikipedia has long been a target for mischief makers who abuse the ability for anyone to freely create and edit entries in the encyclopedia. Usually the abuses only involve providing false information in articles on the site. Recently, we received reports that the German version of Wikipedia has been used by malware creators to distribute their creations by modifying a page to point to their malicious programs. According to the reports, a Wikipedia entry regarding W32.Blaster was modified to point at fake...
