Contributor: Avdhoot Patil

Phishers have already shown interest in the violence that erupted recently in various parts of the Arab world. The phishing attack involving Syria is a good example. Phishers are now taking advantage of the political unrest in Egypt as protests in the country continue. In March 2013, phishers promoted former Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik in a phishing site. The phishing site was hosted on servers based in North Carolina, USA. The name “Ahmed Shafik” was used in the domain name of the phishing site.

Figure 1. Phishing site designed as a fake official website of Ahmed Shafik

The phishing site was designed to look like an official page of the politician. It...

Contributor: Avdhoot Patil

Phishers continue to target Indian movies with phishing scams. The phishing site featuring the movie “Bodyguard” is one example, and this month Symantec observed a phishing attack in which phishers used a song from the Telugu movie “Brindavanam” as bait.

The phishing site displayed a picture of a musical number from the movie “Brindavanam” starring Telugu actresses Samantha and Kajal Aggarwal in the left side of the phishing page. There is also a plot summary of the movie below the image. The phishing page then encouraged users to enter their login credentials stating that, after logging in, they could watch the video. The pictured musical number from the movie was taken from the legitimate movie website. After...

The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) 2013 reveals how the threat landscape is evolving, compiling information from more than 69 million attack sensors in 157 countries around the world. This year’s report shows more targeted attacks, an increasing focus on smaller businesses, and the continued development of new threats.

Targeted attacks, hacktivism, and data breaches

Targeted attacks saw a 42 percent increase in 2012, bringing the average number up to 116 per day, with a corresponding increase in data theft and incidents of industrial espionage. Attackers appear to be changing their targets as well. Small businesses make up a larger percentage of those targeted for attack than in 2011—a threefold increase—with 31 percent of all targeted attacks directed at companies with fewer than 250 employees. Attackers are evidently finding valuable data to steal from such small companies and fewer defenses in place to stop them....

Hello, welcome to this month's blog on the Microsoft patch release. This month the vendor is releasing nine bulletins covering a total of 14 vulnerabilities. Four 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 April releases can be found here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-Apr

The following is a breakdown of the issues...