Lyjotoblog

Proofpoint has presented its assessment of the security threat landscape for the first half of 2015, and it makes for grim reading for IT managers.
The good news is that the volume of unsolicited email has declined to levels not seen since since 2012. The EU incidentally is the largest generator (15 percent) of total unsolicited emails, followed by the USA, China, Russia and even Indonesia and Argentina.
This finding backs up Symantec’s research last month, which found that spam emails have fallen to its lowest rate for 12 years.

Malicious Attachments
But the Proofpoint report also revealed that threat landscape is evolving, and IT managers should be aware of the major trends that has emerged so far this year, and educate their staff accordingly.
Whilst the decline of unsolicited email is to be welcomed, it seems the loss in volume is more than made up for in maliciousness.
Indeed, there seems to have been a shift from cyber-attacks that rely on URLs, to email campaigns that contain a malicious document attachment.
“The most striking development of the first six months of 2015 was a massive shift of threat activity from the URL-based campaigns that had dominated 2014, to campaigns that relied on malicious document attachments to deliver malware payloads,” said Proofpoint. “Malicious attachments have dominated the campaigns of 2015 to date, driven by the massive volumes of attachments and messages delivered by the Dridex campaigners as well as other botnets.”

Phishing Lures
Meanwhile another trend to have emerged concerns that of phishing attacks, whereby someone impersonates a trustworthy source with the purpose of acquiring sensitive information. In the past these attacks were focused on consumers, but it seems that business users are increasingly being targetted.
The most commonly used phishing lures in the previous year are social network communications, whereby attackers use social network invitations and connection requests (fake LinkedIn connection requests etc).
Another popular lure are financial account warnings (emails supposedly from your bank, credit card etc). Finally, order confirmation messages are also being used as a phishing lure.
And it seems that social media is also a viable way for attackers to distribute malicious content. “A single phishing lure, malware link or spam message posted to a high profile corporate social media destination may be viewed by ten thousand or more potential victims,” warned Proofpoint.

Report Recommendations
So the advice for IT managers is simple. Proofpoint recommends that organisations make use of threat solutions that utilise dynamic malware analysis and predictive analysis. It also says that firms should automate their threat response in order to reduce the time from detection to containment.
Businesses should also build-in comprehensive threat intelligence into their digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) tools and processes.
And finally firms should integrate security, content enforcement (encryption, DLP, etc) and archiving for email and social media to safeguard these vital communication channels.

Here’s a Twitter spam campaign which looks out for regional references in Tweets, then fires “you have won the Lottery” messages to lucky(?) recipients.

The above tweets say

This tweet is the winner of the March Twitter lottery from [username removed]. Claim your
winnings at @_UK_Lottery_

Visiting the second spam profile (called UK Lottery Claim) reveals an account touting a large Twitter themed banner and a single Bio message:

You have been confirmed by our systems as the March Twitter Lottery winner from your city.
Proceed to the link below to claim your winnings. USE THIS LINK [bit.ly URL removed]

The Bit.ly URL has had 3,318 clicks since yesterday.

It leads to

claimyourgifthere(dot)pw

which eventually redirects the clicker to a “voucher & win” sign-up, asking for name, email, DOB, home address and phone number. There’s a “guaranteed prize draw” mentioned, so I guess the prize for winning the so-called Twitter Lottery is…another lottery?

Both Twitter accounts have already been suspended. Giveaways are all well and good, but random spam sent your way rarely pays dividends. In fact, you could say it’s a bit of a gamble…

 (Thanks to MrTom for sending over)

Hello, we are calling from Windows and your computer looks like it is infected. Our Microsoft Certified Technician can fix it for you.

Sound familiar? Whether you have just been scammed or simply want to find out more on the topic, you have come to the right place.

Tech support scams are a million-dollar industry and have been around since 2008. Every single day, innocent people are tricked into spending hundreds of dollars on non-existent computer problems.

There is no sign of these scams slowing down despite several actions taken by the Federal Trade Commission.

Perhaps even worse, companies right here in North America are now pulling the same tricks and taking advantage of existing and prospect customers replying to online ads.

Since we wrote our very first blog post on the subject and subsequent articles (A look behind the curtain, Turning the tables), we’ve received much feedback and many people have shared their own experiences. We believe tech support scams are despicable and need to be exposed for the greater good.

The purpose of this page is to gather all the information we have collected over time into one place which you can use as a goto resource when you need it.

Read more

Apps created by a parent has been popping up on state news now and then for the past few months.

A mom from Houston who created Ignore No More, a mobile app designed to completely shut down a phone should kids choose not to answer calls or text messages from parents, may have come to mind.

Or the dad from Arizona who built a company around My Job Chart, which enables parents to assign jobs to their kids, helping them earn points that translates to money.

And what about the father from Brentwood behind Remember the Kids, another unique and helpful app that reminds parents who may accidentally leave or lock their kids inside cars?

Recently, a parent from New York have found a way to help teens report cyberbullying, whether it’s happening to them or to someone else: Stop!t.

According to an article on Fast Coexist, Stop!t is “designed to make it as simple as possible for students to anonymously report Facebook taunts or tormenting text messages that parents or schools might not otherwise see.”

Todd Schobel, the founder and creator of the app, in an interview said that the story of Amanda Todd inspired him to come up with a solution for cyberbullying.

The newest version of Stop!t, which is set to launch in spring, will have a new “panic button” feature that allows users to report cyberbullying quickly and easily. They don’t have to load the app in order to do this.

Another nifty feature allows users to report physical bullying by either capturing pictures of the bully or recording the entire event via video.

With cyberbullying doubling in certain parts of the globe, having an app like this on hand would not only encourage users to come forward anonymously but hopefully bullies online and off would think twice before making a move against their targets.