ESET Threat Blog

Barely had I blogged at (ISC)2 about the Proudhonist contention that “(Intellectual) Property is Theft” than I came upon an article by Andrew Orlowski for The Register in which he uses a similar tag line (“Property is theft, man. So we're taking yours”). While both articles are concerned with breaches of copyright and IP abuse, … Read More…

Even as a home user, you know you should back up your data. Perhaps you're scrupulous about getting stuff on your hard disk copied onto other media. Perhaps you even make sure you have off-site copies. If your workplace falls into the SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) or further along the continuum between micro enterprises and big business, it's … Read More…

Here's a diagnostic window that your shouldn't panic over, certainly if some cold-calling scammer directs you to it by persuading you to run a diagnostic on your own system.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
You might think I've blogged more than enough about support scams already – you know, where someone calls you out of the … Read More…

Having worked several times and in various roles for the UK's National Health Service in the course of an embarrassingly long career, I feel I have a certain professional interest in its welfare, apart from a vested interest in seeing its health preserved so that it can continue to preserve mine.
It was interesting, therefore, to notice on the … Read More…

That Magic Lantern thing just keeps raising its head (and an ugly little head it is too, poor thing…) Earlier this week I was in Krems, Austria, for the EICAR conference,and the story was alluded to in a paper by Eric Filiol and Alan Zaccardelle called “Magic Lantern… Reloaded/Anti-Viral psychosis McAfee Case," though it was kind … Read More…

* Sorry, but I couldn't resist a Crosby reference.
I was more than a little irritated over the weekend – see Faith, Hope, Charity and Manipulation - by Microsoft's use of the Japanese disaster to give the Bing search engine a little extra exposure using a chaintweet technique:
How you can #SupportJapan – http://binged.it/fEh7iT. For every retweet, @bing will … Read More…

Here's a somewhat novel social engineering attack, flagged by John Leyden in The Register: a voicemail phishing scam (vishing, if you must) that threatens victims with heavy fines and even imprisonment as a result of their visiting the Wikileaks site. The attacker leaves a message including a number victims are supposed to ring to sort … Read More…

Added to the Stuxnet resources article 19th January 2011:

The H Online: Stuxnet not such a masterpiece after all?
John Leyden in The Register: Lame Stuxnet worm 'full of errors', says security consultant: My teenage son could code better
Wayne Madsen: Stuxnet: A Violation of US Computer Security Law – c/p with permission from Wayne Madsen Reports
Byron Acohido in USA … Read More…

While most of the recent media interest in Stuxnet has centred on the New York Times story, there’s been some thoughtful research published that considers it as just one aspect of larger issues: cyberwarfare, cyberespionage, cybersabotage and so on.
The Register and SC Magazine commented on a study by OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) … Read More…

[Updated 21st January because when going back to check on something I'd said here, I noticed that I'd had a slip of concentration and said something so stupid, I'm not going to tell you what it was. ]
It was to be expected that there'd be a lot of media interest following the New York … Read More…