Linux Privacy - Page 35 - Results from #680

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Flash Phishing

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We've now seen several phishing web sites that are using flash-based content instead of normal HTML. Probably the main to reason to do this is to try to avoid phishing toolbars that analyze page content. Two recent examples, both targeting PayPal: www.ppal-form-ssl.com and www.welcome-ppl.com.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jan 07, 2007

Image Spam Becoming a Growing Challenge

Image spam is a serious and growing problem, not least because of its ability to circumvent traditional email spam filters to clog servers and inboxes. In just half a year, the problem of image spam has become general enough to be representative of 35 per cent of all junk mail. Not only this, but image spam is taking up 70 per cent of the bandwidth bulge on account of the large file sizes every single one represents.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jan 05, 2007

Anti-phishing tips for a secure 2007

Phishing is a type of fraud that involves email messages designed to redirect users to malicious websites especially designed to steal banking data from unwitting users. In this way,

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jan 03, 2007

Intent Based Filtering of Spam

Intent-Based Filtering represents a true technological breakthrough in the proper identification of unwanted junk email, or

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jan 03, 2007

Computer Warming a Privacy Risk

A security researcher has a devised a novel attack on online anonymity systems in which he literally takes a computer's temperature over the internet. The attack uses a phenomenon called "clock skew" -- the tendency for the precise clocks in modern computers to drift off of the correct time at slightly different rates, which can be affected by heat. "When a crystal is manufactured, it has a clock skew, and it's different for each crystal (throughout its) lifetime," explains Steven J. Murdoch, a Cambridge University researcher who discussed his work at the Chaos Communications Congress on Thursday.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jan 02, 2007

Computer Security Expert Joins EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) welcomes the newest member of its Board of Directors, computer security expert Edward W. Felten. A professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University, Felten recently demonstrated the ability to manipulate results on a Diebold electronic voting machine -- showing that the equipment was extremely vulnerable to "vote-stealing" attacks that would undermine the accuracy of vote counts. Felten's research interests include computer security and privacy -- especially relating to media and consumer products -- and technology law and policy. He has published about 80 papers in the research literature and two books. Felten was the lead computer science expert witness for the Department of Justice in the Microsoft antitrust case. He has also testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on digital television technology and regulation and before the House Administration Committee on electronic voting.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Dec 28, 2006

Copyright Tool Will Scan Web For Violations

To deal with the mounting copyright issues swirling around video and other content online, a start-up founded by some respected Silicon Valley executives is taking a novel approach: combing the entire Web for unauthorized uses. Privately held Attributor Corp. of Redwood City, Calif., has begun testing a system to scan the billions of pages on the Web for clients' audio, video, images and text -- potentially making it easier for owners to request that Web sites take content down or provide payment for its use. The start-up, which was founded last year and has been in "stealth" mode, is emerging into the public eye today, at a time when some media and entertainment companies' frustration with difficulties identifying infringing uses of their content online is increasing. The problem has intensified with the proliferation and increasing usage of sites such as Google Inc.'s YouTube, which lets consumers post video clips.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Dec 21, 2006

Web Facial Matching Stirs Privacy Worries

A startup boasted on Tuesday that it had created a technology to recognize people's faces from photos posted online, causing a stir among some privacy advocates who worry about the implications of automated matching. The tool--from Swedish startup Polar Rose--converts two-dimensional images into three-dimensional profiles to compensate for colors and shadows and then applies a facial recognition algorithm to the result. The company is relying on its users to enter the names of known people into the database, turning a neat technological trick into valuable data.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Dec 21, 2006

Auditory Eavesdropping

In the information age, surveillance isn't just for the police. Marketers want to watch you, too: what you do, where you go, what you buy. Integrated Media Measurement, Inc. wants to know what you watch and what you listen to -- wherever you are. They do this by turning traditional ratings collection on its head. Instead of a Neilsen-like system, which monitors individual televisions in an effort to figure out who's watching, IMMI measures individual people and tries to figure out what they're watching (or listening to).

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Dec 20, 2006

Report: Spam, Phishing Attacks Growing More Sophisticated

Though botnets have caused a large volume of junk email in recent months, security researchers are more alarmed at the rise in their level of sophistication, warning that targeted phishing attacks are making their way into corporate email servers. "They've reached a level of sophistication that we usually associate with commercial grade products," said Mark Sunner, chief security analyst at MessageLabs in New York. "We've seen the activity change and now botnets are spammed out in discrete chunks." In November, the global amount of spam in email traffic grew to nearly 90% of all global email traffic, according to statistics kept by MessageLabs. And that percentage is expected to hold in December. In addition, the vendor reported that 1 in 200 emails contained some type of phishing attack. MessageLabs said more than 68% of all malicious emails intercepted recently have been phishing attacks, a steady increase over the previous months.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Dec 19, 2006

Who's Behind the Spam Surge

As I discussed several weeks ago, everyone's seen that there has been a massive surge in spam over the last couple of months. More researchers are weighing in on what's behind it. One point many sources make, and I made in my last column, is that there was a "Christmas Spike" last year too. Spam shot up roughly from November 2005 through January 2006 and then tailed off until the late '06 surge, yielding a bowl-shaped curve for the year.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Dec 18, 2006

Tips for preventing identity theft

Whether you enjoy the hustle and bustle of shopping in stores or prefer the flexibility and convenience of online shopping, be careful to not give the gift of your personal information to an identity thief.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Dec 08, 2006

A Hard Lesson in Privacy

Sometimes I hear a story that is simply breathtaking in its stupidity and potential for disaster. For your delectation, horror, and amazement, here is one relayed to me by a good friend a few days ago. He's living in a European country that shall remain unnamed; in addition, the names and some details have been changed to protect the guilty (and the very dumb). It was transmitted to me via Skype, so I've also cleaned up the spelling and punctuation common to IM conversations so that it's more readable.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Nov 30, 2006

Spam Now Worse than Ever Before

A new report from e-mail vendor Postini indicates that spam -- or unsolicited commercial e-mail -- is worse than it has even been. According to the San Carlos, California-based firm, the percentage of spam grew by 59 percent among the 70 billion e-mails that Postini processed from September to November alone, bringing the level of junk e-mail to a striking 91 percent of all e-mails sent. According to Postini, total levels of spam have risen by 120 percent in the last year. And, just as bad, spam is growing more complex.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Nov 30, 2006

9 Out Of 10 E-mails Now Spam

Criminal gangs using hijacked computers are behind a surge in unwanted e-mails peddling sex, drugs and stock tips. The number of "spam" messages has tripled since June and now accounts for as many as nine out of 10 e-mails sent worldwide, according to U.S. email security company Postini. As Christmas approaches, the daily trawl through in-boxes clogged with offers of fake Viagra, loans and sex aids is tipped to take even longer. "E-mail systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up with all the spam," said Dan Druker, a vice president at Postini.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Nov 28, 2006

Security: Using the Internet

As I mentioned in my DEFCON highlights article back in September, I learned about a group called kaos.theory who discussed an anonymity tool called SAMAEL (Secure, Anonymizing, Megalomaniacal, Autonomous, Encrypting Linux). I haven

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Nov 24, 2006

Hacking Email: 99 Tips To Make You More Secure And Productive

When people read out a phone number, they use "phone rhythm." No one has to explain "phone rhythm," we all just seem to do it automatically, "

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Nov 22, 2006

"PRIVACY IS DEAD" Audio Online

We have all three hours of the audio for the recent "Privacy is Dead" talk available at the HOPE Number Six site. You can either stream it or download it, just like all the other HOPE talks.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Nov 21, 2006

SpamThru Statistics

In an earlier analysis, we revealed a botnet created by a trojan sometimes called SpamThru. By working with the anti-spam group SpamHaus and the ISP, we were able to receive access to files from the SpamThru control server. We have analyzed the files, and in this report we will look at some of the statistics and interesting finds. SpamThru operates in a limited peer-to-peer capacity, but all bots report to a central control server. The bots are segmented into different server ports, determined by which variant of the trojan is installed. The bots are further segmented into peer groups of no more than 512 bots, keeping the overhead involved in exchanging information about other peers to a minimum. In the following graph, the total count as recorded by the control server is shown for each control port.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Nov 15, 2006

Phishing kits banned by new Fraud Act

The new law aims to close a number of loopholes in preceding anti-fraud legislation, which the Government said was unsuited to modern fraud. Until now there has been no single, general fraud law in English law, but an untidy mess of eight specific statutory crimes, such as 'obtaining property by deception,' and a vague common law offence of 'conspiracy to defraud'. Scotland does have a common law crime of fraud, committed when someone achieves a practical result by a false pretence.

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Nov 14, 2006

Linux Privacy - Page 35

Enhancing Online Privacy and Anonymity with Whonix as Your Digital Shield

Explore Tor Browser 14.0 Updates: Enhanced Privacy and Security Features

Practical Tips for Protecting Email Privacy on Linux