McAfee: Partnering With Scumbags To Rip You Off

"Two California women have sued security company McAfee, accusing it of duping customers into subscribing to third-party services and passing consumers' credit or debit card information to the service supplier without their permission.

"The lawsuit, which was filed by Melissa Ferrington and Cheryl Schmidt, asked a San Francisco federal court to grant the case class-action status, and demanded that McAfee be barred from continuing the practice. The pair also asked for compensatory and punitive damages, which would be decided at trial.

"When customers purchase McAfee security software online, but before the download beings, a pop-up with a large "Try It Now" button appears.

"`The pop-up, mimicking the look of the other pages on the McAfee site, thanks the customer for purchasing McAfee software, and prompts McAfee's customers to click a red button to 'Try it Now,'` the lawsuit alleged.

"`The pop-up contains no obvious visual cues or conspicuous text indicating that it is an advertisement for another product, or that clicking on 'Try it Now' will lead not to the delivery of the McAfee product but rather to the purchase of a completely different product. Instead, all the visual cues suggest that 'Try It Now' is a necessary step in downloading the McAfee software.`

"By clicking on the pop-up, users agree to a $4.95 per month fee charged by Arpu, a company that creates Web ads "enabling an advertised product or service to be obtained with a single click," according to the Washington D.C. firm's Web site.

"Arpu's site lists McAfee as one of its partners...

"`A single click on the deceptive pop-up causes the purchase of an unwanted product from Arpu, a sale made without the knowledge or authorization of customers, using credit/debit card billing information that they have entrusted solely to McAfee,` said the women's lawsuit."

More at ComputerWorld...

McAfee To Leverage "Captive Audience" Marketing

"Facebook announced late Tuesday that it is offering free computer security software for six months to all of its 350 million members to head off increasing threats of hackers and computer viruses on the social network.

"Facebook has cut a deal with anti-virus maker McAfee Inc. of Santa Clara to provide the security software, available on McAffe's Facebook fan page.

"McAfee's Internet Security Software Suite will be free for six months and available for a "special discount subscription" afterwards, the companies said in a statement. The announcement did not detail how much the paid subscription would cost once the free period ends..."

More at SFGate...

First, We Hack All The Lawyers...

"The FBI has some advice for law firms: Be careful.

"The agency recently issued a warning alerting firms that what may appear to be e-mails from clients or contacts could instead be from hackers trying to infiltrate law firm databases.

"The FBI says it has `high confidence` that hackers are targeting legal and public relations firms.

"`Opening a message will not directly compromise the system or network because the malicious payload lies in the attachment or linked domain,` the warning reads. `Infection occurs once someone opens the attachment or clicks the link, which launches a self-executing file and, through a variety of malicious processes, attempts to download another file.`

"... It’s no surprise that law firms are being targeted, said Rohyt Belani, co-founder of the New York-based Intrepidus Group, an information security consulting and software company. `If I can get on a senior partner’s machine or the system administrator’s machine, I’ll get access to the keys to the kingdom for the entire network. A law firm is a place where a lot of sensitive data for different [companies] is collected.`"

More at the Wisconsin Law Journal...

The REAL Threat: Unemployed Advertising Agents

"Remember when the global economic crisis was supposed to drive legions of desperate, unemployed computer programmers into cybercrime? It turns out the real threat comes from unemployed advertising agents.

"Scammers posing as the well known ad agency Spark-SMG tricked Gawker Media into running a fake Suzuki ad last week that served malicious code, according to a report in Silicon Alley Insider. A similar scam hit the New York Times in September, but unlike the newspaper, Gawker has released the e-mails it exchanged with the scammers, and the messages show just how confidently the perps navigated the ad-buy process..."

More at Wired...

1. PWN 2. LULZ 3. PROFIT!!!!!

"Cybercriminals are growing rich by franchising out scareware distribution operations.

"The trade in rogue anti-virus application can make top-tier distributors an estimated $1.2m a year, net security firm Symantec estimates. A study by Symantec into the psychology of the scam found that 93 per cent of users deliberately downloaded and installed scareware packages, albeit without realising what they were getting for their money.

"Scareware slingers use trickery to mimic the look and feel of legitimate security packages, tapping into users' fears in order to trick them into buying worthless software packages. Some malicious sites use legitimate online payment services to process credit card purchases, offering receipts and serial numbers.

"Marks ended up running scareware packages of little or no utility, at best. Some of these packages install malicious code or reduce the overall security of a client PC, while in other cases users' payment details are used to facilitate further forms of fraud.

"The comparatively low-risk, fast-growing form of cybercrime typically uses an affiliate-based sales model. Symantec’s study found that the top ten sales affiliates of scareware distribution site TrafficConverter.biz earned an average of $23,000 per week."

From The Register...

Gartner Tries To Inflate Server Sales With Dire Predicitons

"Despite an improving economy, companies aren't moving quickly replace servers, PCs and printers, which will likely cause an increase in failure rates over the next two years, according to Gartner Inc.

"In round numbers, the scheduled replacement of some 3 million servers worldwide, or about 3% of all servers, has been delayed, Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's global head of research, said today at the research firm's Symposium/ITxpo 2009 conference here. He added that the number of delayed replacements should reach 10% of all servers by 2010.

"As a result, Sondergaard said, IT operations `are going to have to start to plan for the impact of increased equipment failure rates.`"

From ComputerWorld...

Blackhat SEO Poisons Google Searches - AGAIN

"A new attack that peppers Google search results with malicious links is spreading quickly, the U.S. Computer Emergence Response Team warned on Monday.

"The attack, which has intensified in recent days, can be found on several thousand legitimate Web sites, according to security experts. It targets known flaws in Adobe's software and uses them to install a malicious program on victims' machines, CERT said.

"The program then steals FTP login credentials from victims and uses that information to spread further. It also hijacks the victim's browser, replacing Google search results with links chosen by the attackers..."

From ComputerWorld...

Hackers Pig Out On Swine Flu Concerns

"Computer scammers are feeding off swine flu fears to entice people to download viruses or purchase bogus products.

"Emails titled `Are you worried about flu outbreak?` and `Global panic as swine flu spreads to Europe` are luring people into clicking on links or opening attachments that could be malicious, computer security company PC Tools said.

"PC Tools spokeswoman Magida Ezzat said cyber criminals were also using the celebrity angle, with email titles such as `Swine flu in Hollywood` and `Madonna caught swine flu`.

"`Hackers will play on any big event or celebrities and we've recently seen a lot of scams around the financial crisis as well as the inauguration of Barack Obama,` she said.

"The spam emails usually contain a link to a malicious website or what appears to be a PDF file, but is in fact a program that tries to steal user names and passwords."

From news.com.au...

Barnum's Law Aids Cybercrime

"Optimistic and kind-natured people are more likely to fall victim to cybercrime than those who are greedy and materialistic, according to an organisation set up to help victims of e-crime.

"E-Victims says that cybercrime is a growing problem because criminals are getting more sophisticated and manipulative.

"...Online dating scams, where a criminal deceives victims by feigning an emotional bond before asking for money, are common. ...this is because although people often suspect that they're being scammed, they don't really believe it because they've invested time and effort into this individual online.

"And in some cases, particularly with young people, victims aren't used to encountering people with malicious intent, and are therefore easily taken in by official-looking logos and job titles that scammers use in their emails..."

More at PC Pro...

Freepers Targeted in Latest Malware Scam

"Sites claiming President-Elect Barack Obama will refuse to take the oath of office Tuesday are serving up attack code believed to be programmed by the same hackers responsible for the notorious Storm bot Trojan, researchers said this weekend.

"According to researchers at several security companies, including F-Secure Corp., MX Logic Inc. and Trend Micro Inc., spam campaigns are in gear that try to trick users into visiting malicious Web sites hosting variations of `Waledec,` the Trojan horse thought to be the successor to Storm."

More at ComputerWorld...

Your Facebook account May Be Worth More Than Your CC#

"Computer hackers are selling stolen Facebook social networking accounts to gangs for only 89p.

"The cyber thieves steal the account entry details from users before selling them on to gangs behind online fraud who in turn send viruses to other computer users.

"These gangs send 'spam' messages on to millions of other computer users, urging people to click on false video or photo links.

"By clicking on the links, people's computers become infected with spyware viruses that can track keystrokes and copy details such as passwords to online bank accounts.

"Other profiles being sought by the gangs include login details for MySpace and internet phone company Skype."

From Telegraph.co.uk...

ICANN's Panties in Bunch Over CheckFree DNS Hack

Phishers now hijacking websites, warns ICANN

"Domain name owners are being warned by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers about a new phishing scam that may already have seen the largest bill payment website in the US being hijacked by cyber criminals."

More at ITBRIEF (no pun intended)...

Even "The Good Guys" are Crooks

Fugitive Danish IT chief surrenders to LA police

"The head of a Danish software company who was sought by Interpol on alleged fraud and conspiracy charges turned himself in Saturday at a Los Angeles police station, according to a newspaper report.

"... early last week, following investigative reports about the company by Computerworld Denmark, IT Factory filed for bankruptcy. Chairman Asger Jensby estimated that 90 percent of the company's turnover had been fictitious.

"IT Factory allegedly created contracts for nonexistent products with companies that did not exist, and sold the contracts to banks and other investors."

Full story at ComputerWorld...