Crime me a river

There`s a new spyware package doing the rounds that disguises itself as a Firefox Web browser extension. FormSpy poses as the legitimate NumberedLinks 0.9 extension and is programmed to steal confidential information from compromised machines.

FormSpy is normally downloaded onto compromised machines that have already been infected by Downloader-AXM, another Trojan program.

PandaLabs is warning against a new adware program called ProtectionBar. Users are tricked into installing it by being made to believe that it is a security program. This program does a system scan, brings up a list of fake viruses and then bullies the user into purchasing a licence in order to have the baddies removed from their system.

Unfortunately, it is the very cyber criminals that create fear, that are using it to their advantage in clever social engineering tricks like these.

The latest in 419 scams is playing on human fear and compassion through an e-mail claiming to have found a cure for AIDS.

According to Sophos, the e-mail, coming from a 19-year old correspondent, says he has found a herbal root that has aided in the successful recovery of AIDS. He is seeking help to bring this miracle cure to English speaking market.

Please don`t fall for this one - you may think you are helping the world fight AIDS, but all these guys want is your identity.

It is the very cyber criminals that create fear who are using it to their advantage in clever social engineering tricks.

Ilva Pieterse, ITWeb journalist

Spam creators are becoming cleverer these days, using image-embedded e-mails to bypass common filtering techniques used by anti-spam programs.

In fact, these image-based spam messages now account for as much as 30% of all spam traffic. Another downer to this is the increased e-mail message file size, which averages about 19KB, which is more than triple the size of a text-based spam e-mail.

Anti-virus firm Sophos has identified the top 12 spam-relaying countries for April to June 2006. These are US (23%), China/Hong Kong (20%), South Korea (8%), France (5%), Spain (5%), Poland (4%), Brazil (3%), Italy (3%), Germany (3%), UK (2%), Taiwan (2%), and Japan (2%).

Sophos also notes the conspicuous absence of Russia in the list, saying evidence shows Russian spammers are controlling a vast network of zombie PCs.

There has been a rise in OS X security vulnerabilities compared to last year. Kapersky Lab says although vulnerabilities in the core operating system are on the decrease, more vulnerabilities have been reported in OS X programs that can be controlled remotely, such as the Safari Web browser, Mail Application and QuickTime media player.

These results follow a Sophos warning, encouraging users to switch to Mac.

Hackers are always upping their game... Cyber criminals have begun to use artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to find application vulnerabilities.

Called "fuzzing", the AI tool checks allowed input for a given application, to try to force abnormal responses to see whether unexpected results can be generated.

Once a bug is found, further research determines whether it can be exploited as a vulnerability and then packaged neatly as an exploit to be sold or used at will.

* Sources used: The Register, Vnunet, Computerworld, PandaLabs, Sophos, PC Magazine, SearchSecurity.