ESET Threat Blog

This weekend there will be street protests in Europe against ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. I want to put on record ESET North America’s opposition to ratification of this agreement while applauding the actions of countries such as Poland, Slovakia, Latvia, the Czech Republic and Germany in withholding or delaying ratification. I would encourage anyone … Read More…

Yesterday’s announcement by the US Department of Justice that the operators of file-sharing site Megaupload had been indicted for operating a criminal enterprise that generated over $175 million by trafficking in over half a billion dollars of pirated copyrighted material has sent shockwaves across the Internet.  The accuracy of those figures may be questionable, but … Read More…

Tomorrow, on January 18, 2012, dozens of popular websites covering a diverse range of subjects will be blacking out their home pages in protest of the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).  Some of these websites are well-known, such as the English language web site for the encyclopedic Wikipedia and quirky news site Boing Boing, … Read More…

This article was written in collaboration with my colleague Jean-Ian Boutin.
The Wigon botnet (also known as Cutwail) is being used in a massive spam campaign. A multitude of ruses are used to get the user to click on a link: fake LinkedIn or Facebook notifications, free Windows licenses, fake deliveries etc. The links are pointing … Read More…

Introduction

Facebook and Skype announced the launch of Video Chat on Facebook using the Skype platform.  Users must download the newest version 5.3 (although 5.5 beta is also acceptable).  If a person takes the plunge and installs the new version, logs in and grants Skype permission to one’s profile on Facebook then pay attention please.  The … Read More…

Introduction
LinkedIn is a social network platform whose specialty is connecting professionals together to build relationships and create business opportunity. Recently the company became publicly traded and grabbed the attention of the world as its initial public stock offering more than doubled on the first day. Here we focus tools and options for user privacy on … Read More…

Introduction
As the sun is setting and I breathe some of the night time air I am inspired to write about Facebook.  Yes, *the* Facebook, the third largest country if it were a physical place with boundaries under a common rule of law and government.  When many people use a service such as this, it bears … Read More…

What do these two topics have in common? More than you might think.
The obvious is that neither has arrived yet.
There is no proof of existence of either, you have to take it on faith.
Neither will be here tomorrow… take my word for that.
A story at http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/23/uk-linkedin-security-idUSLNE74M02820110523 explains how dreadfully poor security practices at LinkedIn can … Read More…

[Part 6 of an occasional series, updating a blog series I ran in early 2009 to reflect changes in the threat landscape. This series will also be available shortly as a white paper.]
Social Networks Can Be Very Anti-Social
Don’t disclose sensitive information on websites like FaceBook or LinkedIn if you can’t be sure that you can limit … Read More…

"Now may I suggest some of the things we must do if we are to make the American dream a reality. First, I think all of us must develop a world perspective if we are to survive. The American dream will not become a reality devoid of the larger dream of brotherhood and peace and … Read More…