ESET Threat Blog

On the "old hoaxes never die" tack,it seems that last year's Christmas Tree App "virus" warning is circulating again: at any rate, Facecrooks has found it necessary to put a warning on its Facebook page against spreading it.
There is plenty of information available about this little beauty, so I'll just give you a few pointers:

Facecrooks … Read More…

Old hoaxes never die. They just get transplanted to Facebook. Sometimes literally, when a classic email hoax starts to spread with minor emendations through Facebook message or news feeds. In this case, the actual message (at least, as I received it) is still email, but it's been adapted to appeal to the more than 800 million Facebook … Read More…

No, Craig Shergold doesn't need a heart transplant. Others do, but Facebook sharing isn't the best way to accomplish that. "Craig who?" you may be asking…
Back in 1989, the most successful sympathy (semi-)hoax of all time set out on its weary trek towards the Guinness Book of Records. The bare facts (as I understand them):  the story grew … Read More…

…though I did describe Facebook as the natural home of hoaxes, in a blog referring to an article for SC Magazine in which I described a very specific hoax. However, if you came across that reference in an article by Jay Decenella, you could become very confused.
Delcenella includes the quote, totally out of context, in an … Read More…

You may have noticed a lot of excitement about Facebook's latest attempts to prune your privacy, and you'll probably see more commentary on this blog.
Here's something a little different: a good old-fashioned chainletter that seems to be flourishing despite all its logical flaws. The story is at SC Magazine's Cybercrime Corner, to which I regularly … Read More…

I picked up a post today at bleepingcomputer.com about the “botnet 4.0 undetectable virus“, Well, you can probably guess what I think about the idea of an undetectable virus, and if not (and you actually care what I think about anything!) you can check out my blog Undetectable Virus Plays a Cool Hand.
(Clue: the Chainmailcheck blog … Read More…

One of the (few) blessings of having been so long in this industry is that I remember a time when most malware was viral and Trojans were rare: so rare, in fact, that there was at one time a notorious "dirty dozen" set of Trojans. 
At around the same time, there were innumerable hoaxes describing malware with some … Read More…

The death of Osama bin Laden has gone viral, with blogs, social media and search engines pumping terabytes of rumor, innuendo and conspiracy theories at the speed of light, along with the occasional kilobyte of truth.  As the number of people searching for pictures and videos of bin Laden’s execution has skyrocketed, the criminal syndicates … Read More…

[NOTE:  As we were publishing this articl, our Latin American office discovered another Black Hat SEO campaign incorporating promises of Osama bin Laden videos on Facebook.  Click here to view their article in Spanish. We will follow up on this shortly.  AG]
The malware phenomenon started by the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death continues unabated, … Read More…

Not using Twitter or Facebook is, in these times, akin to not owning or using a mobile ‘phone. Last night’s events – the reported death of Osama Bin Laden – proved that we are well and truly in the Twitter era (Twitter reported that over 4000 tweets per second were made immediately preceding the President’s … Read More…