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‘malware’ Stories

Multiple power plant workstations slammed by malware

Brittany Hillen, Jan 16th 2013 Discuss [0]

According to the Homeland Security Department, multiple power plants in the United States were affected by malware during the beginning of October 2012. While details are relatively scarce, it was revealed that one of the power plants had been infected via a USB flash drive. The infection happened during a software update. Read The Full Story

Java tipped in Red October – may be Homeland Security’s hang-up

Chris Burns, Jan 15th 2013 Discuss [0]

Over the past several days, the US Department of Homeland Security has issued warnings against using Java due to newly discovered security weaknesses - today it's been tipped that the Red October cyberespionage attacks may have had their own Java iterations. The two have not been put together by the Israeli IT security firm Seculert, the group that today suggests Red October was implemented not just via email downloads and USB sticks, but through web-based Java exploits as well. Could that and Homeland Security's warning be timed both right here at this point in time together without any relation to one another? Read The Full Story

Operation Red October cyberattack detailed by Kaspersky Lab

Chris Burns, Jan 14th 2013 Discuss [0]

This week the Moscow-based antivirus company Kaspersky Lab has revealed details of a five year long campaign that apparently targeted diplomatic, governmental and scientific-research organizations across the former Soviet Union. This attack used software known as Operation Red October, aka Rocra, a piece of malware designed to locate and make copies of both encrypted and non-encrypted documents in a target's computer. This attack appears to have been spread across hundreds of victims since 2007 with an intent on gathering classified information as well as geopolitical intelligence. Read The Full Story

Developer releases dozens of fake apps in Google Play store, user beware

Craig Lloyd, Dec 28th 2012 Discuss [0]

Malware in the Google Play store is nothing new, and Google does their best to sift out most of the crap that makes its way in, but sometimes some of it sneaks through. A Google Play developer account by the name of "apkdeveloper" has released a ton of fake apps and games that are essentially rip-offs of other popular apps. Read The Full Story

Batchwiper malware wipes disk partitions on Iranian computers

Brittany Hillen, Dec 17th 2012 Discuss [0]

Iranian computer systems have been hit with another bout of damage, this time from the malware Batchwiper, which, as its name suggests, infects a computer and promptly proceeds to wipe its disk partitions and user profile directories. The attack is said to be simplistic and is designed to only wipe data on specific dates, with the next one being January 21. Thus far, how the malware is spreading to machines is unknown. Read The Full Story

Discovered Samsung Exynos exploit opens door to major malware problems

Eric Abent, Dec 16th 2012 Discuss [0]

It isn't that often we get to write about an exploit that is both awesome and horrible at the same time, but today we're doing just that. A user over at the XDA Developers Forum has gone searching through Samsung Exynos kernels and has found one whopper of an exploit. This exploits affects a number of Samsung-made devices, along with potentially any device using an Exynos 4412 or 4210 processor and Samsung kernels, so a lot of Android users should be on the look out this evening. Read The Full Story

Android malware scanner only detects 15% of malicious code

Craig Lloyd, Dec 10th 2012 Discuss [0]

Android 4.2 Jelly Bean features a new security tool that quickly scans downloaded apps for malicious code. It's essentially Google's way of addressing the long-time threat of malware on the company's mobile platform. However, a computer scientist at North Carolina State University found that only about 15% of malicious apps were caught by the built-in scanner. Read The Full Story

Android 4.2′s security system features real-time app scanning

Brittany Hillen, Nov 1st 2012 Discuss [0]

Google's Android 4.2 mobile operating system offers a variety of new features, one of which is a security system. This comes in light of reports about malware targeting smartphones, with Android malware levels tripling in Q2 of this year. The Android 4.2 security system is integrated into the mobile OS, and is always on the lookout for problems. Read The Full Story

IC3 warns Android users about malicious malware

Brittany Hillen, Oct 16th 2012 Discuss [0]

Friday, the Internet Crime Complaint Center, more commonly known as IC3, released a warning concerning mobile malware. This warning comes in response to the growing number of malware that targets Android, potentially leaving users' data and devices vulnerable. Following the warning is a series of safety tips aimed at helping consumers keep their mobile devices malware-free. Read The Full Story

Fake Bad Piggies app infested 82,000 Google Chrome users with adware

Craig Lloyd, Oct 9th 2012 Discuss [0]

If you happened to get in on the Bad Piggies action recently, let's hope you didn't accidentally download and install the fake version in the Google Chrome Web Store. It turns out over 80,000 Chrome users are now being affected by the adware, which installs a plug-in that displays advertisements when you visit popular websites. Read The Full Story