Contributor: Avdhoot Patil

Celebrity scandals are always popular and phishers are keen on incorporating them into their phishing sites. Recently, we observed a phishing site featuring British singer and actress Rita Ora. The phishing site was hosted on a free Web hosting site.

The phishing site prompted for Facebook login credentials that called the video a “social plugin”. The phishing page contained an image of a fake YouTube video of Rita in the background. The title of the video in question described it as an adult video of Rita Ora. A recent event involving an accidental exposure of Rita instigated phishers into devising this bait. The phishing site gave the impression that users could view the video shown in the background when login credentials are entered. In reality, after login credentials are entered,...

Hello, welcome to this month's blog on the Microsoft patch release. This month the vendor is releasing 10 bulletins covering a total of 33 vulnerabilities. Eleven of this month's issues are rated ’Critical’.

As always, customers are advised to follow these security best practices:

• Install vendor patches as soon as they are available.
• Run all software with the least privileges required while still maintaining functionality.
• Avoid handling files from unknown or questionable sources.
• Never visit sites of unknown or questionable integrity.
• Block external access at the network perimeter to all key systems unless specific access is required.

Microsoft's summary of the May releases can be found here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-May

The following is a breakdown of the issues...

In the last few months, we have witnessed a rise in the number of cases of modified Web servers that inject malicious redirections into every website that it hosts. One example was the malicious Apache module (Linux.Chapro and Trojan.Apmod) that we blogged about recently. A newer example is Linux.Cdorked, about which our friends at ESET also wrote.

With Linux.Cdorked, instead of adding a malicious Apache module to the configuration list, the attackers instead replaced the main httpd binary file...

Contributor: Binny Kuriakose

People dream big when buying expensive items like a car or a property. When those dreams are seen with very affordable price tags it certainly attracts everybody’s interest. There are lots of websites available that allow people to post free classified advertisements online and one of the biggest categories is that of used cars. This is the new breeding ground for the old escrow tricksters.

This blog will discuss an interesting case of how a free classified advertisement and an escrow service turned out to be an online scam.
 

What are escrow services?

Escrow services are essentially mediators in trade that ensure all terms, agreed by both parties, are met. Escrow companies take the payment from the buyer and ‘hold it’ until the seller delivers the goods to the buyer and all the terms of sale are met. If you are buying an item from an unknown party without meeting face-...