Rogue Apps Might Spoil Your Fun around Champions League Final

Placing a bet in favor of your favorite team around the Champions league final can get real ugly for your bank account
E-mail lotteries, last minute tickets bargains, surprise ticket winnings and promo vacation package for the Champions League final are flooding the Internet this month. It may be difficult for you to be able to filter all that’s coming to you these weeks, since all these scams are ever more perfected as they prove to be extremely rewarding for the crooks.
Taking advantage by the increased search queries placed with popular search engines around highly-mediatized events such as football cup finals, concerts, royal weddings or famous people’s death, cyber-criminals set up both old and new traps for enthusiastic and curious computer users. The Champions League final is no exception to the rule as various baits are thrown at fans who might get lured into taking a costly “opportunity”.
These past years, our labs saw a couple of social engineering-based scams especially crafted to take advantage of fans around important soccer competitions. One of them is the Champions League E-mail Lottery according to which “the Local Organizing Committee of the European Champions League” was “glad to announce to the world the giving away of the sum of SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS to 100 lucky email addresses all over the world.” The users’ e-mails were claimed to have been randomly chosen “through a computer ballot system drawn from over 1,500,000 companies and individual E-mail addresses database”. All they need to do was fill in a form with a lot of sensitive data amongst which name, address, e-mail, occupation, country and credit card info. The crooks were this way able to put their hands on a large amount of info, which later on could be used for malicious activities such as spam, money mulling or impersonations. 
Another malicious initiative spotted around the Champions League final was a spam campaigns meant to target UK-based football fans that were of course eager to get a ticket to the final. The scam ran like this: the users had to send an SMS message to a short telephone number and vote for their favorite team in order to sign-up for a free-ticket lottery. This SMS, however, cost the UK football fans “£5 excluding VAT," which alone brought the crooks a significant gain. Needless to say, that no one ever won a ticket to the final out of that scam.
Euphoria, friends, favorite team might end up badly. For this year, I would like you to imagine the following scenario: it is Saturday, 28^th of May and you are with your friends watching the confrontation between FC Barcelona and Manchester United FC. The game turns out to be as you’ve anticipated and you decide even to place a bet. But make sure this bet doesn’t cost you too much in the end. Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones present a high risk with respect to the privacy of your data transfer. The login credentials can be intercepted somewhere in between your smartphone, PC or laptop and the betting website.
The Internet is full of rogue applications containing dodgy code meant to steal sensitive data from your smartphone. All these applications are “malformed” versions of legal apps (such as Photo Editor,Scientific Calculator, Super History Eraser, Super Guitar Solo, APP Uninstaller only to name a few) which could easily make them pass as safe since some of the users have already downloaded a few of the legit ones. This is what we call hiding in plain sight.
Google has banned a lot of these dangerous applications from the Android Market in order to protect the unwary users from becoming targets. However, it is not safe to say that all the malicious apps are out, since around events their number usually starts growing and they become targeted, thus harder to spot. And once downloaded onto the mobiles, these well-disguised spies “agents” start gathering critical data that is immediately sent to crooks while also leaving a backdoor open for future remote wrong-doings.
Some other applications impersonate e-banking or stock manipulation services, but instead they are mere phishing tools that simply deprive you of your credentials first to either rob you or steal your identity later on. So should you decide to place a bet via your smartphone and you are not paying attention to the app you are using in this direction, then you might end up accessing a page that has been spoofed or had been created for such events only that is designed to take your credentials and end up with your money and/or your identity.
Spam and phishing carrying e-mails may also bombard you these days around the Champions league finals. Crooks may feed you either a nice story about you being the lucky winner of a premium ticket to the final at Wembley or links towards your favorite online betting website, where you can make a fortune. But whatever you do, firstly make sure that you land on the right page by checking the browser’s URL bar and also look for the presence of a security certificate. Manually entering the website’s address may prove to be a blessing in this case as compared to taking a chance and clicking a link received through instant messaging services or via mail.
Crooks come up with various scams created to meet the exact need and interest of a variety of computer & smartphone users. That is why you need to proceed with caution when you decide to buy a ticket from eBay, for instance. It is possible that, although advertised, the item doesn’t exist and chances are that you end up paying for something that will never be delivered to you. Moreover, never consider yourself as lucky as to win a ticket if you’ve never signed up for such a contest.
Last, but not least, if you’re a fan of “Artificial Intelligence”-based predictions, be careful as to what prediction software you’re using. Around sports events, malware creators usually come up with rogue “sports prediction software”, which are highly expensive applications that randomly display the “probable” scores. Other such applications which are distributed for free can carry malware, so make sure that you’ve scanned them with an updated antivirus before using them.


http://www.malwarecity.com/blog/rogue-apps-might-spoil-your-fun-around-champions-league-final-1078.html

In front of your computer you should always fasten your seatbelt

Three things that cars and computers have in common – when it comes to security, of course.
Ever since I started dealing with computers I couldn't help noticing that the majority of users actually falls into two large categories, according to their attitude towards computer security: the league of “I don't need an antivirus, what difference does it make anyway?” and the congregation of “I have an antivirus, what else should I care about?”.
Sure, I can see their points, as both societies have enough supportive arguments. However, my daily practice tells me that, actually none of them is completely right. As I enjoy driving a lot, I'll try to use an analogy with a car and its safety system to be more explicit.
You can always drive a car without airbags, seatbelts and other security measures that prevent you from getting hurt in case of an accident. But, as I (unfortunately) know from my own experience, whether you're involved in a frontal collision or a slight bump – God forbid! – it's always better to actually have these protective devices on.
Now try to imagine this scenario: you’re at home, in front of your computer, querying a search engine for breaking news about a recent event. Your TV is running loud, your kids have turned the living room upside-down and your wife is screaming for your help from the kitchen – pretty much the idea of a “quiet evening at home” most of us have. You turn your head because you couldn’t actually understand what she’s saying, your hand slips to the right and your finger accidentally clicks a link displayed on the search results page. Baaang! Your computer just got its frontal impact test by running against a minivan of malware served by poisoned URLs. No security installed onto your system means no seatbelt and no airbags.
Remember that old joke with the guy who had a new car with cruise control, ABS, EBD, ESP – plus other three-or-four-letter-abbreviations of security systems- and crashed it at the first turn right (or was it left?) as he believed his car was supposed to steer by itself with all that stuff on it? Sure thing, you can pack a computer with all state-of-the-art security thinking that you don't need anything else. But the truth is that the human factor is still key, whether we talk about driving or protecting data.
Picture this: you and your laptop are both comfortably nested on the couch and you’re surfing your favorite social networking platform. You've got word from a pal about an app that can spit out the number of people having visited your page and you want to install it too. And, just as, in your car, you hit the gas to get even faster to your favorite holiday resort while simply ignoring all those road signs that warn you about speed limitations, curbs and other dangers, when on your computer, you overlook any clue telling you that the magic app is actually a scam meant to take over your account and hijack your browser. Baaang! You've smashed yourself onto the slope of frauds because you didn't want to be reasonable enough, paid no attention to the road in front of you, and solely relied on your system.
So, what I'm trying to say is that truth is somewhere in between. Overall, there are three little things you should always remember, whether they refer to your car or your computer: Some security is always better than no security at all. No matter how much security you have, you'll never have enough. With your seatbelt fastened, always be alert and watch the road, someone's waiting for you at home (or to get back in front of your computer)!
Safe driving and surfing everybody!

http://www.malwarecity.com/blog/in-front-of-your-computer-you-should-always-fasten-your-seatbelt-1077.html

New malware revives Mac vs. Windows security debate

(Wired.com) -- A new piece of malware has caused an uptick in Apple customers reporting infected machines, renewing a timeless debate on the state of Macintosh security versus Windows.
The trojan horse is called Mac Defender. It's a web pop-up containing a spoof message that tells customers their machines are infected by a virus and they must install anti-virus software. If customers agree to install the software, the program sporadically loads porn websites on their computer.
ZDNet writer Ed Bott was first to spot a long thread of complaints in Apple's support forums related to Mac Defender, with at least 200 posts of customers reporting they've been infected by the malware.
"I've done similar searches in the past ... [and] I have never found more than one or two in-the-wild reports," Bott wrote. "This time, the volume is truly exceptional."
Furthering his case, Bott in a follow-up article quoted an AppleCare technician who claims that phone calls to AppleCare support have grown four to five times recently, and the majority of the calls are related to Mac Defender.
Customers and technology observers have debated for years whether the Mac is truly more secure than a Windows PC.
The general consensus among security researchers is that there's nothing about the Mac that makes it inherently more secure than Windows -- indeed, the Mac platform has been easily penetrated in the Pwn2Own hacking contest in years past. But Windows has always been a juicier target for malicious hackers because it has much larger market share than the Mac.
As a result, when customers switch from a Windows to a Mac, they're often under the impression that they're switching to a more secure, sterile environment where they won't need to install expensive, resource-hogging anti-virus software. While it's not true that the Mac is more secure, theplatform is generally "safer" because fewer people target it, security researchers have told Wired.com in the past.
Bott's discovery renews this debate: A new piece of malware seems to be fooling more Mac customers than past examples. So does this change the scenario? Should Mac customers install anti-virus software by default like most Windows customers do?
Charlie Miller, a security researcher who has repeatedly won the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest by hacking Macs and iPhones, told Wired.com he doesn't think so.
Miller noted that Microsoft recently pointed out that 1 in 14 downloads on Windows are malicious. And the fact that there is just one piece of Mac malware being widely discussed illustrates how rare malware still is on the Mac platform, he said.
And while 200 posts complaining about Mac Defender in Apple's support forums may seem like a lot, that's still a small fraction of the millions of Mac customers in the world.
While Mac Defender does show that the problem is getting worse and people should be more wary about malware, it doesn't necessarily mean that every Mac user today should rush to buy anti-virus software, Miller said.
Ultimately, it's up to the customer because there's a trade-off involved. Anti-virus software will help protect your system from being infected, but it's expensive, uses system memory and reduces battery life.
"Mac malware is still relatively rare, but is getting worse," Miller said. "At some point soon, the scales will tip to installing antivirus, but at this point, I don't think it's worth it yet for most people."
In looking into the effects of Mac Defender, Wired.com's sister publication Ars Technica did a thorough investigation on the state of Mac malware, speaking with 14 Mac support specialists.
"The truth is hard to tease out," ArsTechnica's Jacqui Cheng wrote. "Partly because Mac OS X still makes up a comparatively small percentage of the global OS market share, and partly because Apple itself is a secretive company, it's not easy to find out whether malware on the Mac is indeed becoming more common, or it's simply being reported on more often."
The results were all over the map, with most certified Mac support specialists logging a low number of malware reports. But some Apple Genius Bar technicians noticed an uptick in malware instances, thanks to Mac Defender.

Though the conclusion is unclear, the moral of this story is to be wary that Mac malware is in the wild, and be cautious about installing sketchy software from unfamiliar sources. Mac Defender may be the first wake-up call for people who believed that Macs don't get viruses.

Copyright 2010 Wired.com.

Mac Not Really Safe From 'Viruses' Afterall.

The first advanced DIY (Do-It-Yourself) crimeware kit aimed at the Mac OS X platform has just been announced on a few closed underground forums. Detailed information about this crimeware kit is not being leaked publicly and the authors of the kit are obviously trying to stay below the radar allowing only vetted users of the forums to see most of the content.

Crimeware kits have become a ubiquitous part of the malware scene in the last few years, but they have mainly been confined to the Windows platform. Now, reports are surfacing that the first such kit targeting Apple's Mac OS X operating system has appeared.
The kit is being compared to the Zeus kit, which has been one of the more popular and pervasive crimeware kits for several years now. A report by CSIS, a Danish security firm, said that the OS X kit uses a template that's quite similar to the Zeus construction and has the ability to steal forms from  Firefox.
"The Danish IT-security company CSIS Security Group has just yesterday observed a new advanced Form grabber designed for the Mac OS X operating system being advertised on several closed underground forums. In the same way as several other DIY crimeware kits designed for PCs, this tool consists of a builder, an admin panel and supports encryption," Peter Kruse of CSIS said in a blog post.
"The kit is being sold under the name Weyland-Yutani BOT and it is the first of its kind to hit the Mac OS platform. Apparently, a dedicated iPad and Linux release are under preparation as well. The Weyland-Yutani BOT supports web injects and form grabbing in Firefox; however both Chrome and Safari will soon follow. The webinjects templates are identical to the ones used in Zeus and Spyeye."

In an email exchange, Kruse said that the builder component of the kit runs on Windows machines and the user has the option of specifying that he wants the malware to run on OS X. The builder will then create a Mac binary.
Malware authors and professional attack crews have steered clear of the OS X platform for the most part, for a variety of reasons. One of the main things holding up the development of Mac-specific attack tools, experts say, is the small market share Apple has, particularly in the enterprise. However, that is gradually changing and the attackers are beginning to follow.
In addition to the new crimeware kit, a Mac-specific scareware attack also popped up on Monday, targeting users who searched for some popular terms on Google. The MACDefenderscareware is appearing in search results for images of Osama bin Laden as well as in other places.
"In it's current incarnation, MACDefender shows up in the installed applications list, so can be uninstalled. If you have accidentally installed this, go ahead and uninstall it.  I would not expect this 'uninstall' option to be a good long term protection strategy. I'd suggest that OSX users disable 'Open safe files after downloading', and also invest in a reasonable anti-malware suite. Installing a real anti-malware package is also a good idea," Rob VandenBrink of the SANS Internet Storm Center wrote in an analysis of the scareware.

Hacking the Car: Modern Vehicles now at the Mercy of Cyber Attacks.

IDG News Service - University researchers have taken a close look at the computer systems used to run today's cars and discovered new ways to hack into them, sometimes with frightening results.

In a paper set to be presented at a security conference in Oakland, California, next week, the security researchers say that by connecting to a standard diagnostic computer port included in late-model cars, they were able to do some nasty things, such as turning off the brakes, changing the speedometer reading, blasting hot air or music on the radio, and locking passengers in the car.
In a late 2009 demonstration at a decommissioned airfield in Blaine Washington, they hacked into a test car's electronic braking system and prevented a test driver from braking a moving car -- no matter how hard he pressed on the brakes. In other tests, they were able to kill the engine, falsify the speedometer reading, and automatically lock the car's brakes unevenly, a maneuver that could destabilize the car traveling high speeds. They ran their test by plugging a laptop into the car's diagnostic system and then controlling that computer wirelessly, from a laptop in a vehicle riding next to the car.
The point of the research isn't to scare a nation of drivers, already made nervous by stories of software glitches, faulty brakes and massive automotive recalls. It's to warn the car industry that it needs to keep security in mind as it develops more sophisticated automotive computer systems.
"We think this is an industry issue," said Stefan Savage, an associate professor with the University of California, San Diego.
He and co-researcher Tadayoshi Kohno of the University of Washington, describe the real-world risk of any of the attacks they've worked out as extremely low. An attacker would have to have sophisticated programming abilities and also be able to physically mount some sort of computer on the victim's car to gain access to the embedded systems. But as they look at all of the wireless and Internet-enabled systems the auto industry is dreaming up for tomorrow's cars, they see some serious areas for concern.
"If there's no action taken on the part of all the relevant stakeholders, then I think there might be a reason to be concerned," Kohno said. Neither he nor Savage would name the maker of the car they conducted their tests on. They don't want to single out any one auto-maker, they said.
That probably comes as a relief to whomever made the car the researchers probed, as they found it pretty easy to hack.
"In starting this project we expected to spend significant effort reverse-engineering, with non-trivial effort to identify and exploit each subtle vulnerability," they write in their paper. "However, we found existing automotive systems—at least those we tested—to be tremendously fragile."

To hack the cars, they needed to learn about the Controller Area Network (CAN) system, mandated as a diagnostic tool for all U.S. cars built, starting in 2008. They developed a program called CarShark that listens in on CAN traffic as it's sent about the onboard network, and then built ways to add their own network packets.
Step-by-step, they figured out how to take over computer-controlled car systems: the radio, instrument panel, engine, brakes, heating and air conditioning, and even the body controller system, used to pop the trunk, open windows, lock doors and toot the horn.
They developed a lot of attacks using a technique called "fuzzing" -- where they simply spit a large number of random packets at a component and see what happens.
"The computer control is essential to a lot of the safety features that we depend on," Savage said. "When you expose those same computers to an attack, you can have very surprising results, such as you put your foot down on a brake pedal and it doesn't stop."
Another discovery: although industry standards say that onboard systems are supposed to be protected against unauthorized firmware updates, the researchers found that they could change the firmware on some systems without any sort of authentication.
In one attack that the researchers call "Self-destruct" they launch a 60 second countdown on the driver's dashboard that's accompanied by a clicking noise, and then finally warning honks in the final seconds. As the time hits zero, the car's engine is killed and the doors are locked. This attack takes less than 200 lines of code -- most of it devoted to keeping time during the countdown.
Hacking a car isn't for the faint-hearted. At several points the team worried it might have come close to permanently damaging the two identical-make cars it experimented with, but that never happened, Kohno said. "You really don't want software to accidentally change critical parts of the transmission," he said.

Sources:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9176778/Car_hackers_can_kill_brakes_engine_and_more?taxonomyId=17&pageNumber=2

Graphics Card Drivers New Target For Cyber Attacks

It seems like nothing is safe from Internet attacks these days after a security consultancy warned that now graphics card drivers could be a new target for cyber hackers. British security consultancy Context disclosed in an advisory Thursday that security issues in WebGL, a browser Web standard designed to bring 3D graphics to Web pages on the Internet could leave users susceptible to denial of service and other cyber attacks.
WebGL is on by default in Firefox 4 and the recently hackable Google Chrome, and can be turned on in the latest versions of Safari.
The security issues enable hackers to execute malicious code on users' computers via a Web browser, which allows attacks on the GPU and graphics drivers that could render the entire machine unusable.
"These issues are inherent to the WebGL specification and would require significant architectural changes in order to remediate in the platform design," security researcher James Forshaw wrote oin the Context advisory.
The problem occurs in the way that the WebGL is implemented, and the way current PC and Graphics Processor architectures are designed, Forshaw said.
Unlike other browser content, WebGL provides direct access to the graphics hardware, employing shader code that's uploaded then executed directly on the system. However, current hardware and graphics pipeline implementations are not designed to maintain security boundaries, experts say.
"Once a display list has been placed on the GPU by the schedule, it can be difficult to stop it, at least without causing obvious, system-wide visual corruption and instabilities," Forshaw wrote.
Subsequently, hackers could obtain access to the hardware drivers by crafting malicious code, and tricking a victim into installing it by opening a malicious Web page or clicking on infected content embedded on a legitimate site.
In addition, the WebGL API's direct access to the hardware also flings the door wide open for denial of service attacks. Unlike typical DoS attacks, in which the user's Web experience is blocked, the WebGL DoS exploit would crash the operating system or prevent users from being able to access their computer.
Windows 7 and Vista are less susceptible to attacks than XP due to the fact that their OS will be forced to reset if the GPU locks up for around two seconds, stopping all applications from using 3D graphics.
In response to Context's advisory, the 3 to 5 Khronos Group, the open standards consortium that maintains WebGL specification, said it has developed a WebGL extension, called OpenGL, GL_ARB_robustness, "specifically designed to prevent denial of service and out-of-range memory access attacks from WebGL content."
Khronos Group says the extension has already been deployed by some GPU vendors, and predicts that it will rapidly gain adoption down the road. "Browsers can check for the presence of this extension before enabling WebGL content. This is likely to become the deployment mode for WebGL in the near future," Khronos Group said on its Web site.
However, Context said that the extension doesn't go far enough to address the issue, noting that resetting the graphics card and driver "should be seen as a crutch to OS stability" and not standard security mechanism.
Ultimately, Context said that WebGL wasn't ready for mass distribution, while recommending that users disable WebGL in their browsers.
"While there is certainly a demand for high-performance 3D content to be made available over the Web, the way in which WebGL has been specified insufficiently takes into account the infrastructure required to support it securely," according to the Context blog. 'Perhaps the best approach would be to design a specification for 3D graphics from the ground up with these issues in mind."

Source:

http://www.crn.com/news/security/229500616/graphics-card-drivers-new-target-for-cyber-atta

Infected Android apps can hijack your texts

Malware found in at least 11 apps can turn your phone into text spammer

At least 11 Android apps contain malware that is rigged to automatically send text messages from your Google Android smartphone to phone numbers in China.

The apps, which include iBook, iCartoon, iGuide, iCalendar, LoveBaby and Sea Ball, are embedded with malicious code that covertly sends text messages to three different premium-rate numbers without their knowledge or approval.
The texts then sign the victims up for paid subscription services, according to AegisLab, the Taiwanese security firm that discovered the corrupt apps.
Google has removed the offending apps, published by "zsone," from the official Android Market, but researchers at the security firm Kaspersky Lab said it's possible the malware, classified as a Trojan because it hides inside software, affects more than the 11 apps AegisLab found.
If so, this would be the latest example in a string of recent Android security slip-ups.
On Tuesday (May 10), the IT company Juniper Networks released a paper that found that malware specifically targeting Android devices has jumped 400 percent since last summer.
In late April, amid the publicity about Apple tracking users locations on their iPhones, it turns out Google does the same thing with its Android customers.
Another April blunder: Skype's Android app was found to contain a security flaw that could be exploited to give hackers access to users' names, email and home addresses and phone numbers.
One from late March: Android.Walkinwat, a pirated copy of Android's legitimate Walk and Text app, harvested users' sensitive data and sent it to an external server.
The real problems, however, really began in early March, when more than 50 free Android apps were found to harbor DroidDream, a particularly nasty Trojan that could steal sensitive data from phones and download malicious code to phones from remote servers.
Coupled with these dangerous Android apps — and the realization that Google may not have as much control over its Android App market as it would like — is the fact that even though smartphone technology and connectivity is increasing, users aren't keeping pace on the security side.
Juniper's paper showed that the "vast majority" of smartphone users — not just Android owners — don't have any antivirus software on their phones, and don't stop to check whether the apps they download come from legitimate sources.



We provide a mobile security app for Android. just call for more info.

Source:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43032487/ns/technology_and_science-security/

There’s a new Facebook scam spreading mechanism in town: fake page admin notifications

Mechanism:The scammers create a fake Facebook page and a customized tab. In the customized tab, which they set as a landing page (meaning that this is where the user will get to when clicking the link) they implement a redirect functionality. To advertise this page, the scammers will add various Facebook users to its admin list page. When users are made admins of a Facebook page, they will be notified about that in the Facebook notification area and through an e-mail.
Upon receiving the respective notification, users will be curious to click the provided link precisely because they do not know that page or remember ever taking any action with a view to becoming its admin. When landing on the fake Facebook page, they will be redirected to another malicious webpage. In the variant we identified, the malicious page is used to collect victims’ personal data (e-mail address and shipping address).

1. Message displayed on the malicious page used for the illicit collection of personal data
Why it’s interesting: the scam uses two Facebook specific spreading mechanisms which ensure high visibility: notifications and direct e-mail.

2. Notification used in the scam dissemination process
The main social engineering elements in this case are: 1. getting users curios about why they were made admins of a page (apparently it’s something to be proud of within the social community) and 2. the classic iPad bait (though in this case, it’s not supposed to be given away for free, but sent through mail, for testing purposes).
What to do if you come across this scam?First off, do not provide any details through the  form displayed on the malicious web page. Second, remove yourself from the admin list of that page. To remove yourself from the administrators’ list of the malicious page, please follow this link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/
Click the Edit info option next to the page you do not want to be the administrator of. Then click Manage admins and remove yourself from the list. This should solve the issue.

3.How to remove yourself from the admin list of a page
You can also follow the directions in this tutorial: https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=19375&ref_query=remove+admin
This article is based on the technical information provided courtesy of George Petre, BitDefender Threat Intelligence Team Leader
All product and company names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.

Beware of posts allegedly linking to videos of Osama bin Laden’s uncut/live execution Beware of posts allegedly linking to videos of Osama bin Laden’s uncut/live execution

Breaking news of all sorts (preferably spiced up with breaking and entering details) is there to keep us all glued to our computers/ tv sets. Whether it’s somebody getting married or somebody else getting killed (yes, that’s where this weird juxtaposition of a title comes from) it’s all about how much attention the event is likely to spur.
When reading reports about the recent royal wedding, among the various accoutrements that the nice ladies put on for the festive event, I couldn’t help noticing (who could, after all?) the fascinator trend. As you may well know, this is a headpiece, a surprisingly shaped garment that ladies wear on their heads with the not so well concealed intent of ….fascinating the onlookers.
Whether reminiscent of the cyclop or of the unicorn tradition, these eccentric hats could easily become the symbol of any respectable guild of social engineers. Beads? We’ve got a famous person’s name! Feathers? No problem, we’ll just spice it up with an “unedited version” warning” (“sin censura”, as in the first example below, is even more dramatic). Deftly place the delicate arrangement on top of video content and there’s your nice scam coiffed and ready to go.



              
If the macabre fascinator manages to mesmerize you, then you’re in for a classic “copy/paste code” treatment.

Two clicks later, you find yourselves face to face with the beast:

And that’s where the adventure ends. This scam, as many others before it, will flood your friends’ wall with automatic messages that advertise its existence and ensure its longevity.

To give you an idea about the proportions of this phenomenon, 11.21% of the scams detected by BitDefender safego in the past 24 hours are Osama-themed ones.
Don’t forget hat BitDefender safego is there to keep your accounts safe from harm. As always, beware of links allegedly leading to shocking content and check your profiles regularly for any automatic posts, likes that you don’t remember having expressed, tags that you did not place on your photos or events that you did not create, but appear as having been initiated by you. You might also want to keep in mind our advice on how to tell a good app from a bad one.
Safe sharing, everyone!
This article is based on the technical information provided courtesy of George Petre, BitDefender Threat Intelligence Team Leader
All product and company names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.