The gang behind the infamous Koobface worm has responded to a post by a security researcher on their activities and motives with an answer buried in the latest version of their malware. Noted security researcher Dancho Danchev posted a list of "10 things you didn't know about the Koobface gang" in a blog post back in February …

Increased standardisation across mobile devices will make it easier for miscreants to write malicious code, a Gartner analyst has warned - but the familiar prediction overlooks a bigger threat. The warning makes for a repeat of a long-standing anti-virus industry prediction that has yet to come to fruition. Meanwhile, the …

Miscreants have created a tool that dumbs down the process of using fake YouTube websites to spread malware. The YFakeCreator tool allows budding VXers to set up a fake site and configure options such as the properties of a supposed video. Typically users are required to download a fake codec to view content, which is not …

A widespread spam campaign claims that a nuclear power plant on the outskirts of London exploded on Tuesday afternoon. No such plant exists anywhere near London. The nearest is probably Dungeness B in south east Kent, some 77 miles (124km) by road from the capital. The email claims to offer pictures of victims. In reality, …

False claims that presidential candidate Barack Obama is a sex tourist are being used to trick users into getting infected by malware. Prospective marks are encouraged to check out a video implausibly showing the married Democrat in action with a Ukrainian strumpet. Gullible folks who fall for the ruse are shown a bongo clip …

Websites carrying news of the Olympic games have been targeted in a new wave of SQL injection attacks. Vulnerabilities in sites including New Delhi Television Limited's NDTV.com have been booby-trapped with exploits designed to install malware onto users' computers. NDTV is syndicating AFP’s Olympic content but has failed to …

Miscreants have created a pair of worms targeting MySpace and Facebook users. Two variants of a new worm - dubbed Koobface - are the first to use social engineering sites to press-gang infected machines into botnets, warns net security firm Kaspersky Lab. When a user with an infected machine accesses his MySpace account the …

An FBI-backed organisation has warned computer users to ignore claims that the Feds are scouring Facebook for terrorists. A new batch of junk mail messages claims the FBI is on the hunt for Jihadist fans of the social networking site. The claims are a ruse to try and persuade prospective marks to click a link that promises …

Virus writer toolkits and the general ease of creating new variants of established malware strains mean anti-virus firms have begun to need three alphabetical letters for some Trojan families. It's tough at the coalface, fighting the never-ending malware in email menace, so it's understandable that techies chuckled when they …

Malware purveyors deliberately left USB sticks loaded with a Trojan in a London car park in a bid to trick users into getting infected. The attack was designed to propagate Trojan banking software that swiped users' login credentials from compromised machines. Check Point regional director Nick Lowe mentioned the ruse during …

Pond-dwelling virus writers have crafted a malware attack that poses as camera phone footage of the shootings at Virginia Tech University that claimed 32 lives on Monday. Spam email messages carry a photograph of gunman Cho Seung-hui and claim to link to a Brazilian movie website carrying footage of the campus shootings. …

The Sdbot and Gaobot malware families are responsible for most botnets worldwide. The two strains were responsible for 80 per cent of detections related to bots during the first quarter of 2007, Spanish anti-virus firm Panda Software reports. Other culprits, although on a lesser scale, included Oscarbot, IRCbot or RXbot. The …

Microsoft's trustworthy computing initiative is five years-old but the software giant is still making bone-headed design decisions that favour usability over basic security. A good example comes from the folks at F-Secure who noticed that Vista continues to hide extensions for known file types by default, just like older …

Comment It's the end of yet another RSA security conference, and we're tempted to trade our PCs for an abacus and hole up in the basement while the nightmarish robot invasion on mankind plays out. Malware, we were repeatedly told over the past five days, is lurking everywhere - in PCs, phones and online bazaars - and is waiting for the …