The Bitdefender labs are currently working on an analysis of a Mac OS X backdoor that has been discovered by independent security researcher Jacob Applebaum on an Angolan activist. The victim, who had fallen victim to a phishing scam, ended up installing a malicious piece of code that acts as a backdoor, taking screenshots, and then uploading them to the command and control center. While relatively basic, t...

Cyber criminals stole more than $500 million last year, according to the latest IC3 study based on reported incidents. In 2012, the organization received almost 300,000 complaints, an average of more than 24,000 a month. Compared to the previous year, losses by users tricked over the Internet increased by 8.3 percent. Almost half of the complaints reported financial losses, and most of the users bilked last...

A new wave of malicious FedEx spam delivers Trojans instead of packages, infecting users with malware when opening the attachments. In the last couple months, the Gamarue Trojan has spread intensely in the US, Australia, Croatia, Romania, Iran, the UK, Germany and Spain. “This tracking update has been requested and attached to this email,” the malicious message reads. “Reference information includes: Invoic...

A new variant of the Dorkbot malware infects Facebook users worldwide, spreading from one friend to another through the social network’s internal chat. The Bitdefender Labs have caught and blocked the worm, which is capable of spying on users’ browsing activities and stealing their personal details. The malware family mainly circulates in the US, India, Portugal, the UK, Germany, Turkey and Romania. The inf...

If you tried to access Yahoo mail today, chances are that you saw at least once the Safe Browsing dialog instead of your inbox, as one of the advertisers showing banners on Yahoo has started serving malicious content. The malicious ads started showing up earlier this morning, when ad pusher eqads.com got blocked by Google Safe Browsing. A closer look into the incident revealed that the eqads.com site is red...

A wave of Russian dating spam drags users to a dangerous website loaded with Javascript malware. The Bitdefender Labs discovered an increasing number of e-mails designed to play on users’ virility to spread to inboxes worldwide. The Russian girls’ messages are straightforward and efficient, prompting users to respond fast to the bait. “Let’s act on our feelings and get to know one another,” one of the infec...

A Facebook group that offered fraud ‘services’ was recently shut down after the social network found its members published credit card details, networks of hacked computers and other illegal information, according to The Guardian. The group identified by RSA security researchers included a list of stolen identities apparently obtained by a member. The fake profile, launched on 28 February, gathered 163 “lik...

Google Play apps harboring the BadNews Android malware that has recently made the news have been spotted in the wild since June 2012 as Android.Trojan.InfoStealer.AK, according to Bitdefender specialists. The June 2012 version of BadNews was not designed to install fake updates, but could have been a first attempt at testing a new malware delivery system able to bypass Google’s app screening process. Althou...

The FBI issued a warning on Boston Marathon fraud after complaints of trickery via social media and e-mail scams. Since the April 15 explosions, cyber-criminals took advantage of human generosity and started to spread donation scams and spam loaded with malware. Soon after the explosions, a Twitter account that resembled a legitimate Boston Marathon account lured users into donating a dollar each to victims...

Computers with no antivirus are five times more likely to get infected with malware than those with protection, according to Microsoft. In the first quarter of 2012, the company found malicious e-mail attachments on almost 3 million computers and detected 7 million Keygens. The activation key generators that users install with “free” software, movies or games often come loaded with malware. Most users don’t...