spearphishing

White House confirms 'spearphishing' intrusion

The White House has confirmed that one of its internal computer networks -- reportedly a military office in charge of the president's communications -- has been targeted in a successful "spearphishing" attack.

An article yesterday published by the conservative FreeBeacon.com Web site said that hackers with ties to China's government had recently breached an unclassified "system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands," including the so-called nuclear football.

Spearphishing means an attacker is targeting a specific person or group, typically by sending fake e-mail that masquerades as legitimate correspondence.

The … Read more

Android's a malware magnet, says McAfee

Malware targeted toward Android devices continues to surge, says a new report from McAfee, pushing 2011 to become the busiest year in history for both mobile and general malware.

The amount of malware infecting Android devices during the third quarter grew almost 37 percent from the second quarter, according to McAfee's Third-Quarter Threats Report (PDF). Android's growing demand among consumers has made it an increasingly ripe and inviting target for cybercriminals.

How inviting? Almost all new mobile malware over the third quarter was aimed squarely at Android. Legacy software being what it is, though, among all mobile platforms, … Read more

Report: U.S. leads world in spam output

The U.S. is the spam leader across the world, responsible for one out of every five junk messages sent, according to a report out today from Sophos.

The security vendor's fourth-quarter "Dirty Dozen" report of spam-relaying countries found that the United States upped its percentage of global spam from the third quarter and now accounts for 18.83 percent of all junk e-mails.

That percentage is almost three times higher than second-place India, which is responsible for deploying 6.88 percent of all spam across the globe, according to Sophos. Other countries named on the Dirty … Read more

Personal details show up in a recent spam attack

For this week's Security Watch column and Security Bites podcast, I spoke with Tod Beardsley, lead counter fraud engineer for TippingPoint, a provider of network-based intrusion prevention systems. The column and podcast talk about how social networking can be used for targeted attacks. Toward the end of the interview, I asked Beardsley what was the most interesting case he's worked on in the last six months.

"In the last six months, there was a case involving the Better Business Bureau. This is public. The story there is that the Better Business Bureau keeps these databases of all … Read more