Gmail users hit by ViddyHo phishing chat attack

Fans of Google's email system have been the target of phishing campaign spreading via the Google Talk chat system.



The unsolicited instant messages urge Gmail users to "check out this video" by clicking on a link via the TinyURL service. The link, however, directs users to a website called ViddyHo - which asks surfers to enter their Gmail usernames and passwords.



This is, of course, a classic attempt to phish credentials from the unwary. The hackers behind ViddyHo could use the credentials they have stolen via their site to break into accounts, grab identity information and impact your wallet.

Because people are more used to receiving suspicious communications via email than instant messaging chat sessions, there's a chance that some users may be more likely to fall into the trap.

If you were unfortunate enough to fall for this scam - make sure to change your Gmail password immediately. In fact, also change your passwords on any other site where you might be using the same password as on Gmail.

As some 41% of people use the same password for every website they access, you can understand how letting your credentials fall into the wrong hands could be disastrous.

Potentially a hacker who has grabbed your Gmail password could have accessed your entire address book and scooped up all of your correspondence - including information that you may have archived about other online accounts.

The message is simple. You should always be wary of clicking on unsolicited links and be extremely careful whenever a website asks you for a username and password.

TinyURL has now blacklisted the site, meaning that their link will no longer work. However, there is nothing to stop the hackers using other URL shortening sites or setting up alternative phishing sites to try and steal from the unwary.

Publishing your email publicly?

Sometimes I'm marveled and get amused by the gullibility of girls / women in forums. Please do not get me wrong, not trying to be a sexist here. I just want to highlight a potential serious problem.

More often than not, I never fail to come across such a thread in any kind of forums:

• Facebook? Anyone?
• Friendster list, pls add
• Come add everyone in facebook/friendster/myspace

And what do we get? A nice list of email accounts, without wasting any efforts to pharm for or whatsoever.

Here's what I mean:

A list of email addresses posted willingly and without guard in a lady-dominated forum. **Note: Just because it's a lady-dominated forum doesn't = safe. There's no technology so far as yet to verify the actual gender of the person signing up to join the forum.

And using the email addresses to perform a search in facebook/friendster/myspace, you should get this:

What can we do with such results? In this scenario of Facebook, if your profile is not protected, people can start sniffing out your profile info, pictures, etc. This is how identify theft begins. =)

Here's a perfect case study.

I shall not elaborate into details on the other malicious intents people can use them for. But I don't think you would very much like to get your email address to be circulated around half the globe. Unless you're an ADS (Attention Deficit Syndrome) sufferer.

Furthermore, this is one of the causes why you receive SPAM in your INBOX.

So, surf safe k?

Romanian Hacker Breaches Third Security Vendor Site

The hacker who broke through the Website defenses of two prominent security vendors earlier this week has claimed a third victim. F-Secure joins Kaspersky, BitDefender as victim of SQL injection attack .

According to a posting on hackersblog.com, the Romanian attacker who launched SQL injection attacks on Kaspersky and BitDefender has now successfully penetrated the Web defenses of F-Secure, as well.

The attacker, however, did not publish any sensitive data even though he could have gained access to it, Kaspersky said.

Read more about this here.

Microsoft plugs eight security holes

Microsoft published four patches on Tuesday to close serious vulnerabilities in its Internet Explorer browser, Exchange e-mail server and Microsoft SQL server.

Read more about the updates here.

Trojan Attacks Via Parking Violation Notices

Cybercriminals took their malware to the streets in Grand Forks, N.D., where some motorists recently found parking violation notices on their windshields instructing them to visit a URL to view photos of their purported infraction. The phony parking tickets contained a malicious URL that requires them to download a toolbar, which is actually a Trojan.

The "toolbar" shows photos of parked cars in the area; the user is prompted with a pop-up with a fake security alert, attempting to lure the victim into installing phony antivirus software to clean up their machine.

"The malicious programs were run-of-the-mill; however, the use of flyers was an innovative way of social-engineering potential victims into visiting a malicious website," said Lenny Zeltser, a SANS Internet Storm Center analyst in a blog post on the attack.

Zeltser, who analyzed the malware and the attack, says the initial malware is automatically installed as a browser helper object for Internet Explorer. It then downloads code from a notoriously bad domain that's well-known among security researchers (childhe.com), and then uses the fake security alert to trick the victim into installing more malware.

"Attackers continue to come up with creative ways of tricking potential victims into installing malicious software. Merging physical and virtual worlds via objects that point to websites is one way to do this. I imagine we'll be seeing such approaches more often," Zeltser blogged.

Source

Mozilla shutters seven Firefox flaws

Mozilla released its latest update to its Firefox browser on Tuesday, closing seven security holes, including two critical issues, according to the company's release notes.

The critical flaws occur in the program's layout and Javascript engines, which can be used to crash the program and possibly run malicious code, the company said in an advisory. The flaw also affects Mozilla's SeaMonkey all-in-one Internet suite and the Thunderbird e-mail client, if Javascript is enabled, which is not the default setting.

Firefox users can download and apply the update, by choosing the "Check for Updates..." command in the file menu.

Read more here.