The #UmbrellaMovement, #OccupyHK movement, and others fighting for democracy in Hong Kong have encountered a new threat: Remote Access Trojans (RATs). Many of the websites owned by these organizations have been infected with malware, thus slowing down their fight for revolution. Who could have done this and why? It doesn’t take a detective to list the Chinese government as the primary subject. For more details and insight on this story, click here.
Identity Guard
Identity Guard has consistently remained one of the top identity theft protection companies as they are much more than a credit monitoring service.
Another Reason to Hate YouTube Ads
Trend Micro researchers have been following a “malvertising†trend that has been affecting more than 113,000 U.S. internet users each month. The criminal’s main target? YouTube visitors.
The criminals have been successful in their latest campaign by making their ads appear on the more popular YouTube videos. They get away with this not by directly leading to the malicious sites, but passing it through two advertising sites to keep a lower profile and not get fully discovered. In other words, the criminals bought traffic from legitimate ad providers.
Fortunately, if you keep Internet Explorer updated there should be a patch installed to block them and Google is aware and will likely put a stop to it. For more information, click here.
Japan Joins Europe in Google Takedown Rush
Last week a Tokyo court issued an injunction requiring Google to take down 120 search results that implicated a Japanese citizen with past crimes. The injunction was requested when the plaintiff felt his life would be endangered by the results that would come up when his name was looked up on the search engine. This is only yet another court ruling that has serious ramifications for the website.
While Google is reviewing the preliminary injunction and the ruling is provisional, it still opens doors for further “forget me†requests like the several thousand that came in from Europe when a similar law passed. While Google is doing its best to follow local laws, “being forgotten†can only go so far. While Google can “take down†and hide URLs, it does not have the power to make them fully disappear. In fact, a website titled “Hidden from Google†puts up repository links that are censored by search engines. For more details on this story, click here.
Tic-Tac-Do’h! Android Game Malware Belongs to Security Company
Last week an announcement was made by Kaspersky Lab that a tic-tac-toe game developed for Android had a new trojan targeting the phone’s information. It contained all the usual spyware functions to record sounds and steal texts along with providing access to systems that are typically on Android phones. It could also steal emails from secure corporate accounts.
So who is the mastermind behind such a thing? Why an anti-virus company of course! Lacoon Mobile Security, an anti-malware firm, developed the game as a proof-of-concept app that was presented at BlackHat 2013 and RSA 2014. It is just a sample to test out their own security.
So how did Kaspersky get a hold of the sample? Read more on this story here.
Crush Sandworm Before It Infects Your Computer
Today, Microsoft has made available patches to secure your system from SandWorm vulnerability (named after the sci-fi novel) among other potential security risks. SandWorm might take a while to compromise your system since its reach is broad enough to effect Vista SP2 to Windows 8.1 and because its targets are usually large organizations, but that doesn’t mean you should dawdle while your system is vulnerable. While there are worse bugs out there, there is no reason that you shouldn’t get the patch and outright eliminate the threat.
Read more about SandWorm, the patch, and other current bugs to look out for here.