Posted on behalf of Matt Charman, Marketing Manager

No-one can deny the phenomenal success of the World Wide Web. But its increasing prominence and importance come at a price. Quite apart from the big risks that businesses can find themselves exposed to as a result of inappropriate web use by their employees, cyber-criminals are focusing more of their resources on transforming the web into a malware minefield. Just one visit to a website infected with a virus or spyware can have serious revenue-reducing, reputation-eroding consequences for your business.

Globally, an estimated 1-1.5 billion people use the internet. Every day hundreds of millions of visits are made to websites worldwide. But as usage continues to climb upwards, some accepted truths about the web have broken down. Take ‘safe surfing’, for instance. A few years ago, common sense was all you really needed to keep your computer free from infection by the malware that...

Posted on behalf of Martin Lee, Senior Malware Analyst, Symantec Hosted Services

This sophisticated attack was recently intercepted by MessageLabs Intelligence. One
particularly interesting feature was the degree of preparation undertaken
by the attacker, and the fact that it involved two separate defense contractors.

The first step in the attack was for the attacker to gain unauthorised access
to the web site of Defense Contractor A and to create a fake 'press release'
directory. Into this newly created directory, the attacker uploaded a landing
page, a page of obfuscated Javascript containing an exploit and a malicious
binary.

The second step was for the attacker to research Defense Contractor B and
identify email addresses within that organisation. To these addresses the
attacker sent a series of emails purporting to be from a webmail address
reporting the arrest of Defense Contractor B...

Posted on behalf of Dan Bleaken, Senior Malware Analyst, Symantec Hosted Services

As reported in the June MessageLabs Intelligence Report, MessageLabs Intelligence is seeing a great variety of different threats relating to the upcoming FIFA World Cup.

We’ve seen 419-style scams, including emails offering tickets to games; fake accommodation providers; offers of contracts to supply clothing and boots; offers of free mobile phones; scams looking for companies to provide additional electricity/power for the World Cup; and more.  All designed to ultimately obtain the recipient’s personal details, and/or money by means of deception and fraud.  

MessageLabs Intelligence has also seen fake World Cup tickets for sale on well known auction websites, or advertisements offering tickets, that in reality are unlikely to give the buyer access to any games.  

Moreover, we...

Posted on behalf of Nick Johnston, Senior Software Engineer, Symantec Hosted Services

The FIFA World Cup, which officially started in South Africa last Friday, has been the subject of intense public interest for the past months. This interest in football has been noticed by scammers and malware authors, who are skilled at using high profile events to try to entice unsuspecting users into opening their malicious messages.

MessageLabs Intelligence recently saw some spam for a pharmaceutical site using the World Cup to try to entice users to open the message. The subject of these messages was:

Subject: FIFA World Cup South Africa... bad news

The exact motives of the spammer are unclear, but it's likely that they hope that recipients will read this subject and think that perhaps the tournament has been disrupted somehow (perhaps like the Africa Cup of Nations earlier this year), and then quickly open the message. The body of the message contains more...