This October, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) will be issuing a major update to the PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), which are required for accepting all electronic payments. The new additions will be discussed and presented at community meetings throughout the year, but in the meantime, it is crucial for Read more…
Once you own a smartphone or tablet, you are not likely to give it up. But it is essential that you can understand where the risks are and steer around them as you enjoy your mobile digital life. With the growth in mobile exploding, it is only natural for cybercriminals to move towards that device Read more…
Isn’t Christmas and the school holidays a whirlwind? Between holiday ‘catch-ups’, the very intense family schedule and New Year’s celebrations, it can be a wonderful yet often exhausting time. Sometime it is hard to find a moment to think! But now school has begun and the dust has settled. Phew! So, I have to ask Read more…
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin Personal privacy: It’s a tenant of American citizenship, but also the source of a long-held debate over the balance between an individual liberty and national security. Where should governments draw the line, and what Read more…
Recently we experimented with our generic unpacking heuristics. Our goal was to unpack a potentially malicious binary and dump the executable from memory to a file. During our experiments we saw a few unknown packers from which we successfully unpacked the binary; with these, however, we dumped the memory but we missed some code in Read more…
“I bought a Mac, because it’s safer than a PC.” “I always surf the web with my iPhone, because I know it can’t get infected.” “I got a virus on my first PC, so now I only use Apple products.” Sound familiar? Too often, the rhetoric around the Mac vs. PC debate focuses on Apple’s Read more…
Recently we have seen a spike in a Visual Basic 6-compiled AutoRun worm family. The family is both client- and server-side polymorphic. (For more on this family, refer to our VIL and Advisory entries.) The W32/Autorun.worm.aaeh family usually gets on a victim’s machine through email spam, Blacole drive-by downloads, or downloads by BackDoor-FJW. From a behavioral Read more…
Yes, yes I know: Valentine’s Day comes only once a year and the teens are eagerly looking forward to it. Given the rising popularity of celebrating this day over the years, the bar for this International Day of Love has been raised rather high. Youngsters are looking forward to a day of cards, chocolates, gifts Read more…
This Valentine’s Day, Don’t Just Think About “Lip lock” But Give “Data Lock” A Thought Too Love is in the air, for Valentine’s Day is near… And why just Valentine’s Day? There are a series of “Days” devoted to lovers, viz. Rose day, Propose Day and Chocolate Day!! So how have Indians responded to this Read more…
Love is in the air, and while Cupid is sharpening his arrows for Valentine’s Day, scammers are sharpening their skills and using holiday-themed keywords to target unsuspecting users. Whether you’re looking for your soul mate or just trying to buy something special for your sweetheart, hackers see this as an opportunity for profit as you Read more…