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Cyber Attackers Pose as New York Times

Symantec’s MessageLabs tells WebProNews there is a new targeted attack using emails pretending to be from the New York Times. MessageLabs Intelligence tracked the attack yesterday, which used emails pretending to come from the NYT’s "Times Reader" software, hitting six different domains. One domain was a public sector domain, one was a law firm, and three were to chemical companies,...

Enterprises Seeing Increased Complexity at Data Centers

Symantec has put together its "State of the Data Center" report, which is the product of a survey of 573 businesses in 26 countries. "Although mid-sized enterprises tend to evaluate and adopt new technologies at a faster rate than larger organizations, they still face similar data center complexities that are compounded by adopting new initiatives," says Deepak Mohan, senior vice...

Beware Tiger Woods Accident Information Sources

The Tiger Woods car accident has had the web abuzz over the weekend. Like nearly anything else that creates such buzz, cyber-criminals will find a way to exploit it. This incident is no exception. According to security company Symantec, interest in Tiger’s accident and rumors surrounding its cause has given scareware peddlers "ripe opportunity" to "poison web search engines."...

Security A Concern For Online Holiday Shoppers

As Americans prepare for the holiday shopping season, online security plays a major part in consumers’ purchasing decision, according to a new poll by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and Symantec. More than half (63%) of online shoppers said they did not complete a purchase because of security concerns. The most common reasons for not making an online purchase include:   41...

Spam is Getting More Malicious

Symantec has released two new reports for the month of November – the State of Spam, and the State of Phishing (both PDFs). The reports highlight a dramatic increase in spam that contains malware. On top of that, junk and malicious email now accounts for close to 9 out of 10 email messages. The security firm says that a new generation of "Spam Princes" are rising, and that the Asia...

Beware the Emails of Halloween

Symantec’s MessageLabs released its Intelligence Report for the month of October, and it reveals the that the spammers behind the biggest botnets – Cutwail, Rustock and Donbot – are using the upcoming major holidays and world events as the themes for their the latest spam runs. This is not particularly surprising news, but it is news that people should be aware of nevertheless. According...

Earthquake and Tsunami Searchers Targeted By Malware

You have probably heard about the Indonesian Earthquake that took place last night, claiming the lives of many. Shameless cybercriminals have not wasted anytime exploiting the disaster targeting people around the world who search for information on the subject. According to Symantec, malware creators have devised malicious software and websites designed to make money from concerned members of the...

Top 10 Most Spammed States in the US

Symantec’s MessageLabs revealed a list of the most spammed states in the US today, with some somewhat surprising results. And the award for state that receives the most spam is…Idaho. According to MessageLabs, Idaho is the spam capital of the US with 93.8% spam, far exceeding the global spam rate for September of 86.4%. MessageLabs says Idaho has jumped 43 spots since 2008, when it was...

Phishing Down, But Probably Only Temporarily

Spam is rising as we get closer to the Christmas holiday season according to Symantec, although they do say that phishing is down. The company has shared some findings from its September State of Phishing report. According to the report, there was a 45% reduction in phishing attacks between July and August. Symantec says this will likely be a short-term lull, however, reflecting the end of a particular...

Short URL Spam a Big Threat in August

Spammers are taking particular advantage of the heightened interest in health-related issues like swine flu and healthcare reform to distribute large shortened-URL spam runs using the Donbot botnet, according to Symantec’s MessageLabs. "In August, the ongoing abuse of shortened-URLs as a delivery mechanism resulted in a number of legitimate URL-shortening services being forced to close...

What Kids Are Searching For Online

The most popular search terms kids are searching for include sites like YouTube, eBay and Craigslist, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, according to a new report from Symantec. The words "sex" and "porn" also made it to the top, ranking number four and six respectively. Number nine on the list was "fred", for Fred Figglehorn, popular fictional...