SecurityWeek

A Google Android botnet has been spotted spamming messages pushing counterfeit medication. According to Sophos, the activity represents the latest way to monetize Android botnets. Traditionally, mobile malware has made money by intercepting SMS messages used as part of two-factor authentication mechanisms for online banks and charging fees for premium-rate SMS messages. This botnet however is sending messages that push Viagra and Cialis.

Apple’s closed model, while criticized by many, has kept iPhone and iPad users relatively safe from malware and other potentially malicious apps, especially when compared to Android users.While some iOS apps have been called into question before over privacy concerns and aggressive advertising tactics, Kaspersky Lab researchers are saying they have discovered an iOS app that they are outright calling malware.

A team of security researchers have demonstrated how a security flaw in Android 4.0.4 can be exploited by a rootkit.

The latest iteration of PCI compliance regulations adds to the already increasing burdens of the typical IT security professional. With it comes fear, uncertainty and doubt for those looking to execute PCI compliance controls properly and in turn to preserve their jobs. I had a chance recently to present as a guest keynote speaker at the North America CACS ISACE conference on implementing sound compliance and audit controls for key management.

In late June, Symantec reported on a form of malware that had been launching junk print jobs and wasting paper until the printer runs out. Symantec calls the malware Milicenso, or the “Printer Bomb”, and code examination marks it as a variant of a malware delivery system discovered in 2010.

Venafi, a Salt Lake City, Utah-based provider of enterprise key and certificate management solutions, has shared the results of scans performed on 450 Global 2000 companies, revealing that on average, nearly one in five digital security certificates deployed by the organizations rely on a technology that makes them open targets for Flame-, Stuxnet- and Duqu-style malware breaches.

CrowdStrike Streamlines Malware Reverse Engineering With CrowdREArmed with $26 million in venture funding, security startup CrowdStrike has released a tool designed to make it faster to reverse engineer malicious files by encouraging researchers to work together on a cloud-based collaboration platform.

Researchers at AlienVault believe an updated version of the Sykipot Trojan is being used to target the aerospace industry.

Microsoft has identified two of the 39 defendants in an ongoing legal assault on botnet activity. 

There is a saying in the InfoSec world – you can’t patch human stupidity. It isn’t hard to prove that statement depending on the situation, but a new account on Twitter is making the task a simple one. The account, @NeedADebitCard, is re-tweeting people who are openly declaring their intent to share the wealth (what little of it there is) by posting pictures of their debit and credit cards for all to see.

MasterCard and Deutsche Telekom on Monday announced a partnership in Europe designed to enable Deutsche Telekom’s 93 million mobile customers across Europe to use their mobile phones as an easy and secure way to pay.

Twitter, the ever popular, privacy respecting social network, released their first transparency report this week, after taking a cue from Google. The report isn’t glowing, but it is a solid start and another view of how a major Internet portal deals with protecting a user’s rights.

According to research from Symantec and Sophos, the Blackhole exploit kit has been upgraded with some new features recently. The latest revision includes a payload that targets an unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft XML Core Services , and new JavaScript that addresses propagation issues.

Sourcefire CEO John Burris Takes Medical Leave of AbsenceCybersecurity solutions provider Sourcefire, Inc. today said that its Chief Executive Officer, John Burris, has taken a medical leave of absence to undergo a series of treatments for colon cancer.

According to newly released data from International Data Corporation (IDC), security appliance vendors enjoyed strong continued growth during the first quarter of this year, as evidenced by recent numbers coming from the technology market research firm.

A new whitepaper from McAfee takes a look at the emergence of hacktivism and the implications of how digital protest movements may evolve in the future. The report, titled ‘Hacktivism: Cyberspace has become the new medium for political voices’, was authored by Francois Paget, a senior malware research engineer at McAfee Labs in France. The paper traces hacktivism from the first uses of the word to the people launching politically-motivated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks under the Anonymous label.

Anonymous Looks to Save the Planet by Targeting ExxonMobil, Shell and BP Last week, and continuing into the weekend, Anonymous targeted ExxonMobil and claimed to have compromised company data during Op SaveTheArctic. The attack was in response to environmental concerns, and it isn’t the first time Exxon has come under the gun with regards to the faceless hacking collective.

On June 24, with little fanfare, Stuxnet died. The malware exposed as being a government project aimed at slowing Iran’s nuclear intiatives, stopped replicating. Despite a reported link to a plant shutdown in Iran, the state run media called Stuxnet a failure.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have demonstrated how the GPS signals of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, can be hijacked by an outside source.