Co-Author: Avdhoot Patil

Phishers continue to target Indonesian celebrities with adult scams. Phishing attacks on rock star Ahmad Dhani have already been seen. In July 2012, Symantec observed a phishing site that claimed to have an adult video of Indonesian actress and singer Aura Kasih. The phishing site spoofed a social networking brand and was hosted on a free Web hosting site.

The adult scam came in light of a recent scandal surrounding the singer. An adult video, allegedly of Aura Kasih and pop star Nazril Irham, has been circulating recently in Indonesia over the internet and mobile phones. It is rumored that the video started appearing after Nazril Irham’s laptop was stolen.

Phishers created the phishing site with an image of a video link of Aura Kasih. A message in Indonesian on the image prompted users to login to view the video. The message also...

An issue that many smartphone users have with their phones is that their device battery just does not last long enough; it needs to be recharged. While the battery may last a whole day for some, power users who use their phone more often have to come up with various tricks to get their battery to last a full day. There are many ways to reduce battery use and, of course, there are many apps to help maximize battery performance. These do help—but for many it does not solve the issue.

So what if, one day, you find out about a special app that can reduce battery use by half? Exactly. This is the strategy being used to deceive innocent Android users into installing an app that is supposed to reduce battery use, but in reality does nothing but steal the user's contacts data stored on the device.

Recently, Japanese spam email has been circulating attempting to lure users into clicking on a link which downloads and installs a malicious app. The app can exfiltrate...

Contributor: Andrew Watson

A coordinated effort lead by security researchers at FireEye and Spamhaus has resulted in the takedown of one of the largest spam botnets in the threat landscape. The botnet, known as Grum, was reportedly responsible for close to a third of the world’s spam email traffic.

We’ve been watching the developments carefully here at Symantec and have noticed a decided drop in spam traffic coming from the Grum botnet. Around 5:00 p.m. on July 17, the botnet sent a batch of around 40,000 spam emails. The next hour that number dropped to around 30,000. The next hour 16,000, followed by 11,000. The numbers continued to decline to the point where, yesterday afternoon, the botnet sent only a handful of spam messages.

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Co-contributor: Paul Thomas

Over the last few days, we have seen reports of an Android botnet hijacking mail clients on Android devices and sending spam promoting stocks, finance, and pharmaceuticals. While an Android botnet is a possible culprit, other scenarios are more likely—such as spam originating from compromised computers.

To begin, here is a sample of a spam email sent on July 3:

Sample subject lines may appear as:

• Wall Street SHOCK ahead!
• Leading Edge Market Analysis
• RE RE: Controlled Prescriptions
• Special Situation Report
• Fwd: Ground Breaking News Report

Two indicators suggest these spam messages originate from a hijacked Android mail client:

• Message includes the string "androidMobile" in...