The most stressful thing about Halloween has always been deciding on a costume. Second place: making sure to have enough candy around for trick-or-treaters who may come a-knocking. All pretty straightforward stuff, right? This time around, though, it looks like the folks behind various rogue security software packages are using Halloween-related search engine poisoning techniques to hoist their fake scanners and other malware onto the computers of unsuspecting users.
While searching for a Halloween costume, one of my Security Response colleagues found a number of pages that – following the usual chain of JavaScript redirects – employ various techniques to coerce the user into installing one of several rogue security applications. Poisoned search terms discovered by us include ‘Halloween costumes’, ‘Best Halloween recipes’ and ‘Halloween theme music’, and it’s likely that there are many more where those came from.
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…”
Over the past week, Symantec has been observing an increasing number of computers affected by Trojan.Brisv.A. This particular Trojan infects .asf, .mp2, .mp3, .wma, and .wmv movie and music files with malicious code that causes Microsoft Windows Media Player to access a malicious URL when the files are played, which results in more malware being downloaded on to the compromised computer.
In a further twist to the Trojan’s payload, all .mp2 and .mp3 files found on the computer are converted to the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. This creates problems for security researchers writing software to remove the infected code from the files and restore them to their previous states. It is difficult to ascertain which files contain legitimate Digital...
There’s nothing like coffee one-upmanship to make the blood boil. “You’re still drinking lattes? With actual milk from a cow? Good grief, where have you been?” Nowadays though, it seems that coffee one-upmanship is no longer enough to secure the seemingly coveted “hippest person in the café” crown. Now that portable devices are actually portable, cafés and other public spaces seem to be prime territory for people keen to show off their technological gadgetry.
I’ve been keeping an eye out during my recent café trips – doppio, natch – and usually around half of the customers are tapping away on notebooks, ultra-portables and tablet devices. This is, admittedly, in tech-enamored Tokyo, but the use of truly portable and network-capable machines is clearly going to increase as specs go up and costs come down. Cafés are finding that free Wi-Fi access is now expected by their gizmo-toting customers.
