Microsoft Lends Support To Anti-Phishing Organization

Microsoft Lends Support To Anti-Phishing Organization: "July 22, 2004
Microsoft Lends Support To Anti-Phishing Organization
Microsoft is lending support to the anti-phishing coalition National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance comprised of the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center, Carnegie Mellon University and West Virginia University. Microsoft is supplying $46,000 worth of software for free and lending the organization one of their experts as a full-time analyst to assist the group. For more information about this organization and Microsoft's efforts to support them you can see this News.com article: Antiphishing group gets help from Microsoft "

Virus Purporting Bin Laden Suicide Hits Web

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A virus purporting to show images of Osama Bin Laden's suicide popped up on the Internet on Friday, designed to entice recipients to open a file that unleashes malicious software code, security experts said.



Related Links
• Trojan disguises as Bin Laden suicide evidence (Sophos)


The virus was attached to a message that was posted on over 30,000 usenet newsgroups and is not being spread via e-mail, said Web security vendor Sophos.

The U.S. government has been hunting for Bin Laden since 2001, holding him responsible for masterminding the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, but he has not yet been found.

Chris Kraft, senior security analyst at Sophos, said the message and virus was designed to lure unsuspecting readers into opening a file, similar to the Anna Kournikova virus that enticed readers to open a file that unleashed malicious software code.

If you don't know the person or the origin of a message, you shouldn't be opening it. [more]

Windows Security Upgrade Set for Launch

 As Microsoft Corp. prepares to launch its biggest security upgrade ever to Windows, dubbed Service Pack 2, the company is trying to strike a difficult balance between making things safe and making things work. It's a tough job that is eliciting grumbling from companies whose applications could require major changes and glee from security experts who say any software product that doesn't work wasn't secure enough in the first place and needs to be fixed. 'I hope it breaks more things than it's already broken,' said Russ Cooper, senior scientist at TruSecure Corp. That's because Cooper believes the free SP2 update, which will be released next month, is badly needed in the ever-rowdier world of Internet-connected computing and a good wake-up call for other companies that also need to improve security functions. [more]...

New Trojan Horse Travels By Spam

Antivirus and e-mail security companies are sending out warnings about a new Trojan horse program that they claim is being mass-distributed on the Internet through spam.

The program, called Backdoor-CGT, is a new form of a Trojan horse installed after e-mail recipients using Microsoft Outlook follow a Web link embedded in an e-mail message. The Trojan horse is believed to have infected thousands of systems on the Internet since appearing early Tuesday, even though antivirus software and up-to-date versions of Outlook are immune to attack.

[more]

SpywareInfo > Online Spyware Detection

SpywareInfo > Online Spyware Detection
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