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While America sleeps, and the drive-by media obsesses over who will buy the U.S. presidency, billions of internet users' dollars are being put to work for online crime... and ICANN, the people who bring you the internet, are planning their escape from Washington, D.C. ... Not good news!
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Among the biggest shifts from the findings of the company's previous report was a dramatic spike in 2007 in the prevalence of cyber-squatting, or the practice of occupying a URL that either contains or is constructed to appear similar to the name of an established corporate brand for the sake of deceiving users or carrying out some form of fraud. MarkMonitor, which bases its results on investigations of public records, including URL registration applications filed with Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), estimates that cyber-squatting rose by 33 percent in 2007 compared to the previous year. InfoWorld - San Francisco, CA, USA
For example, Web 2.0 has been especially good to phishing attackers. Phishing sites built using Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) appear so legitimate that even seasoned users and early-generation security solutions are fooled. Nomadic attack patterns make it almost impossible to track down the attackers. Among other techniques, attackers can now manipulate the DNS protocol to mask a malicious website as legitimate in order to gain access to the corporate network via the user's browser and virtually any information the user can access. A chilling possibility. iT News - Australia
On Wednesday, in a talk at Black Hat DC 2008, two researchers set out to see whether phishing sites were created by the "Einsteinian, ninja hackers -- Nitesh Dhanjani and Billy Rios found not a sophisticated gang of elite coders, but hundreds of bad coders all copying one another, and often stealing from each other. CNET News.com - San Francisco, CA, USA
You may have heard of Cyveillance through its reports on phishing, identity theft and malware threats and other security risks TechJournal South - Research Triangle Park, NC, USA
A phishing attack targeting victims of the HMRC data loss debacle has been spotted on the net. The bogus emails offering recipient the false opportunity to claim a tax refund of £215 from the UK Government over the potential exposure of confidential data. The email contains a web link to a suspect site, reports security firm McAfee, which spotted the ruse. (picture) Register - London, England, UK
Trend Micro has warned that hackers are intensifying attacks on legitimate websites to spread malware. The security firm's 2007 Threat Report and 2008 Forecast debunked the myth about "not visiting questionable sites". Just because a user visits a gambling or adult-content site does not necessarily mean that web threats are lurking in the shadows.
But legitimate sites with the latest sports news, or links in a search engine result, could potentially infect visitors with malware. Apple also had to contend with the Zlob gang, proving that even alternative operating systems are not safe havens for the online user. VNUNet.com - UK
Monster has dodged a bullet from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission related to a major data breach last year. The data breach in question first came to light last August. Monster said employer client login credentials had been compromised and used to download information such as names, home addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses for 1.3 million job seekers with résumés posted on Monster.com. Workforce Management - Irvine, Ca, USA
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