Securelist / Blog
Securelist / Blog
  • The Winlock numbers, the Winlock laws

    While Eugene’s busy taking bets (wonder how much he’s going to make?), I’ve been having a think about the Winlock case.

    Russian law enforcement is estimating that the bad guys could have raked in as much as $1 billion. While it’s difficult to be certain about the exact amounts involved (obviously they spread their money across a lot of different accounts to avoid attracting attention), a little bit of simple math makes me think this figure isn’t as crazy as it might sound.


    Our statistical analysis tells us there could be around a million people who’ve been infected. 10 cybercriminals, each getting a cut of a ransom between $10 and $30 - even though they were paying out $3 per infection to the people willing to spread this malware, the numbers add up pretty quickly.

  • Understanding Current Trends in the Fake Anti-Virus/Scareware Ecosystem
    The cyber-criminal groups behind fake anti-virus (scareware/rogueware) infections have run into some significant roadblocks over the last few years, but there is much more to the overall story.


    Some groups have been arrested. Some have had their operations and entire call support centers
    shut down.

    Some groups attracted too much attention, picked off
    the low hanging fruit and eventually walked away from their botnets.

    In some cases, the groups just weren't very skilled
    at developing anti-anti-malware techniques, blackhat SEO, and malware distribution. They couldn't keep up with the changes in anti-malware technologies,
    weren't exactly dedicated     to the effort, and simply fell off the map.


    However, some of the remaining scareware distribution gangs upped the ante and are aggressively developing difficult-to-detect polymorphic installers and difficult-to-remove support components. And the newest of these malware components include some of the first ITW 64-bit malware components to be taken seriously. But, for the most part, the scareware program itself remains the same. The development continues to change and progress, all for the purpose of evading anti-malware solutions and helping coerce the end-user to pay for the fake product, including support/rootkit components like TDSS (and its extreme complexities) or the more recent Black Internet (also known as "Trojan-Clicker.Win32.Cycler") support/rootkit components. These complex Mbr infectors and other rootkit components meant to maintain money-making scareware on the system are signs of this somewhat extreme development effort.

  • The Winlock case - I'm taking bets!

    Interesting news on Trojan SMS Blockers (Winlock etc). These programs block Windows and demand a ransom in the form of a text message which is sent to short number for a fee. It's a very popular type of racket at the moment, both in Russia and a few other countries.


    The whole affair has now reached the General Prosecutor’s office of Russia – the criminals have been identified and detained (or so it seems) and will be prosecuted in Moscow soon.

    Altogether the criminals have earned an estimated 790,000 roubles, or $25K. Moreover, they have caused other damages by blocking or crashing a yet to be determined number of personal and company PCs. Very often people have needed to re-install the OS and all software and then restore data from backups - even after paying the ransom.




    But I wanted to focus on the outcome – or the possible outcome of this incident, not on the investigation, arrests and so forth.
 
SpywareGuide Articles
Articles on Spyware, Adware, Malware and privacy in general
SpywareGuide Articles
  • DATA-THEFT WORM TARGETING GOOGLE'S ORKUT
    FaceTime Security Labs announced the discovery of a worm that steals users? banking details, usernames and passwords. The worm, known as MW.Orc, is propagating through Orkut, Google?s social networking site, as users launch an executable file disguised as a JPEG. Google has a temporary fix in place
  • The Digital Underground: Interview with RinCe
    This is Part TWO of a series of write-ups focusing on the recent threat to E-Commerce systems via potential IM (Instant Messaging) attack vectors and more besides, by way of a remotely installed administration tool and custom-built scripts, designed to find vulnerabilities in third-party payment sys
  • Property Values, Satellite Maps and Zillow
    A new service called Zillow allows you to easily access the value of your home...and your neighbors and even their neighbors. SpywareGuide articles are sponsored by FaceTime Communications, providing solutions for securing and controlling IM, P2P and Spyware Greynets.
5 Things That Annoy Internet Users PDF Print E-mail
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Submitted by:  Luke Petterson
 
With Internet use comes frustration. There is inevitably going to be situations that annoy you to no end when using the Internet for both work or play. This is my list, I am sure you can relate!

#5 - Email Spam

I'm starting this off at #5 because spam can be addressed somewhat easily these days with some of the better spam filtering services that are available. Spam is still out there though, and it's still very annoying.

Trying to prevent spam and trying to deal with spam that is already being sent your way will probably take up some of your valuable time if you use email to any degree. Plus, those people that are new to email might be put off by spam, or even the stigma surrounding it, and might even be scared of the Internet without even really getting into it because of this fear. Not a good thing.

#4 - Pop-up or Annoying Ads

I don't think ads on the Internet are bad as a whole. People need to make money on the Internet and ads help do that. Ads can be implemented in a good way too, but in a lot of cases they are implemented in an annoying fashion.

What I don't like, and what most Internet users will find frustrating is the highly obtrusive ads that either pop-up or have other highly annoying behaviors such as sliding in on the screen or even crashing a browser for some reason. The wrong type of ad implementation, even on a good web site, can just flat out kill the user experience.

#3 - Hard-to-use Online Forms

How many times have you tried to fill out a form on a web site only to get the form to error somehow? This can result from not putting enough characters in your username, forgetting to fill a required field, or any number of other requirements that the form employs. After trying to submit a form for the first time unsuccessfully you might end up needing to either re-fill a bunch of fields, or you might even manage to completely reset the form contents. Very annoying!

Many web sites have horrible form usability. Some forms don't tell you what is required while entering data, leaving you to find out that you entered something incorrectly only after you try to submit the form. Web forms should always let the user know what to expect!

In some cases a web form might somehow manage to erase data that you took 5-10 minutes to carefully fill out. This can also be very annoying and waste your time.

In other cases a web form might have wacky tab ordering. When you hit the tab key the cursor might not jump to the next logical field. This can get annoying really fast too!

I don't know how many times I've become frustrated with the usability of a web form. Usually it's the larger forms that frustrate me when they don't work right, but any size form can set me off if it's unusable. Granted, there are many web sites that implement forms very well, but you will always run into web forms that will test your patience at some point. It's just part of using the Internet.

#2 - Too Many User Accounts and Passwords

I have a spreadsheet (yes, a spreadsheet) to manage my various Internet accounts and passwords. This spreadsheet probably houses over a hundred different username/password combinations for many different web sites. Online banking, eBay, blog sites, web forum accounts... the list goes on and on.

I am sure that I am not alone.

Any Internet user that likes to interact with web sites will compile a large list of accounts to remember and keep track of. This can get to be very annoying after a while, especially if you have a bad habit of not keeping your records updated properly like I do!

#1 - Internet Connection Interruptions and Outages

There really is nothing more annoying than an Internet connection dropping when you need it to work. Considering the short attention span of most Internet users, including myself, I would say that even 1-2 minutes of downtime on an Internet connection is enough to drive somebody insane and crazy.

People use the Internet because information can be accessed very quickly and efficiently. It is very annoying when a spotty Internet connection interrupts this convenience.

All in all, there are probably a lot more situations that can frustrate or annoy Internet users to no end. At the end of the day, patience prevails, even on the Internet. Next time you are being annoyed by something Internet related just take a deep breath, relax, and keep on trucking!


About the Author

Luke Petterson is a long-time computer user and risk taker, which has led him to many interesting computer-related situations, good and bad.

Visit Luke's blog, Smart Computer Use?, at smartcomputeruse.com to read about daily computer over-use and all of the situations that can arise from it.

 Originally submitted at:   http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1138207
 
 

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