ESET Threat Blog

Internet scams are not new, and some of the strategies they use are not unique to the Internet, but there is no doubt that the Internet can provide a multiplier effect for people intent on defrauding others. I discovered a "good" example of this when I started looking for a place to live in San … Read More…

Yeah, yeah, yet another coldcall scam post, but featuring a ploy I haven't come across before, intended to convince you that the scammer really knows something about your system, so that you're likelier to fall for the scam. 
Rebecca Herold reports for InfosecIsland that she was contacted by one of those helpful "support desk" people who … Read More…

Sitting in an airport you rarely frequent, you grab your laptop and snap out a couple e-mails to send, and look, there’s a free WiFi hotspot. Bang, you connect and send, and are off on your way. What you don’t know is the free WiFi may come with a price: your login credentials and network … Read More…

Recession? What recession?
According to my colleague Urban Schrott, the UK is awash with so much money that the Prime Minister is mailing Irish citizens to tell them that their Overdue Inheritance payment of £2.5 million is waiting for them. The British Prime Minister, that is.
For the geographically and/or politically challenged, the Republic of Ireland hasn't … 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…

The US Department of Justice's announcement yesterday of the takedown of the command and  control (C&C) servers for the Coreflood bots (detected by ESET as Win32/AFCore) and seizure of their domains marks another step in the growing awareness that crime, whether it is committed with bullets or with botnets, is still crime. 
This particular botnet, about … Read More…

Here’s a little information from ESET’s point of view about the Coreflood botnet, whose C&C (Command and Control) servers were taken down yesterday by the Department of Justice. The Coreflood bot is detected by ESET products as Win32/Afcore and has been active since the early years of the last decade (certainly since 2001), though our … Read More…

I've added some commentary and resources on the Japan earthquake/tsunami disasters to an independent blog I maintain that specializes in hoaxes, scams and so forth, but here are a few of the same resources that aren't already included in my recent blogs here on the topic:

Analysis from Kimberley at stopmalvertising.com: http://stopmalvertising.com/blackhat-seo/recent-japanese-earthquake-search-results-lead-to-fakeav.html
Guy Bruneau at Internet Storm Center: … Read More…

David Harley: "My colleague Urban Schrott, from ESET Ireland, wrote a nice feature article for our monthly ThreatSense report (which is now available on the Threat Center page) on seasonal scams. As the scam season is starting to get into full swing, we thought it might be good to give it a wider audience here. … Read More…