In the last couple of years, we have seen highly sophisticated malware used to sabotage the business activities of chosen targets. We have seen malware such as W32.Stuxnet designed to tamper with industrial automation systems and other destructive examples such as W32.Disstrack and W32.Flamer, which can both wiped out data and files from hard disks. All of these threats can badly disrupt the activities of those affected.

Following along that theme, we recently came across an interesting threat that has another method of causing chaos, this time, by targeting and modifying corporate databases. We detect this threat as...

Some events familiar among people in the United States are commencing this month, including: Thanksgiving—a great occasion to thank dear friends and family for their kindness; and Black Friday—a day after Thanksgiving, usually the busiest retail shopping day of the year. Spam messages related to these events have begun flowing into the Symantec Probe Network. Many of the spam samples observed are encouraging users to take advantage of e-cards, clearance sales of cars and trucks, products bidding to get the best deals, replica watches. Clicking the URL will automatically redirect the user to a fake offer website.
 

Figure 1: An e-card for Thanksgiving...

Cybercriminals have for some time now recognized that ransomware can be a highly profitable endeavor. This has led to a significant increase of different ransomware in the wild with no sign of it leaving the threat landscape anytime soon.

So, how effective is ransomware on Windows 8 compared to other operating systems? To answer this question, Symantec ran several prevalent ransomware samples currently found in the wild in a default Windows 8 environment. While some samples ran poorly on Windows 8, it did not take long to find a ransomware variant (Trojan.Ransomlock.U) that successfully locked a Windows 8 system, effectively holding it to ransom.
 

...

Hello, welcome to this month's blog on the Microsoft patch release. This month the vendor is releasing six bulletins covering a total of 19 vulnerabilities. Seven 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 November releases can be found here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms12-Nov

The following is a breakdown of the issues...