And the Academy Award for the most dangerous search term goes to…

By abigail_lovell | March 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

abigail_lovell

The team at Norton have been busy digging through the gossip since Sunday’s glamorous Oscar ceremony. They weren’t just looking for juicy rumours though; they’ve been looking for malware around the Academy Awards.

Cybercriminals often take advantage of public interest in both individual celebrities and world entertainment events, so it is no surprise that when the two combine, crooks get busy infecting websites. Norton found that around 50% of Oscar related internet search results lead to “poisoned” sites.

 Some of the most dangerous search terms (and the percentage of infected results) include:

  • “Oscar 2010 Winners” – 60% infected
  • “Music By Prudence” – 58% infected
  • “Kathryn Bigelow height” – 48% infected
  • “Sandra bullock Meryl Streep kiss” – 43% infected

Criminals predict public curiosity and infect pages that contain key words with malware. When a victim clicks through on links from search engines they inadvertently end up with their computer infected with a virus or inundated with pop-ups for fake, and in some cases dangerous, “anti-virus software.”
 
When searching for anything online, Oscar-related or not, it is important to be on guard. Make sure you have legitimate antivirus software that includes all the latest updates, and if you don’t, make sure you buy software from a reputable source.
 
Abigail Lovell

Photo by Flickr user Zadi Diaz, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Recognising A Secure Website

By Guy Bunker | October 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Guy Bunker

We recently released a report on how much people trust companies with their data. The answer is that four out of five don’t trust companies and even more 89% think that reckless or repeated data loss should be punishable by prison.

Overwhelmingly the issue is with visiting websites, 18% of respondents said they didn’t check the security of the websites they use when shopping online. So here are some ways to identify a secure site:

  • Look for the security padlock. If it’s not there, don’t enter your details. If it is there (and you are uncertain then click on it to see the security certificate for the site.)
  • Stick to trusted brands – if a deal looks too good to be true, then it probably is!
  • If going to a new site, do any of your friends use it or recommend it?
  • Watch out for cyber-squatting on names. This is where you mistype the name of the website you want and a cyber-criminal has taken it and made it look like the real one… but it swipes your data!
  • Watch out for numbers in the web address. Often a link on ‘bad’ or compromised sites can look ok on the screen, but click on it and it turns into a number (called an IP address) – which is not where you want to go… the cyber-criminal strikes again!

Finally, make sure that you have an anti-phishing filter switched on in your browser. When it comes to defeating the cyber-criminal the more layers of security and the more aware you are of the risks the better change you have to remain secure while on the web.

You can get a complete copy of the findings and recomendations in our new online security guide (3MB).

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam – Not So Lov-er-ly Spam

By Guy Bunker | August 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Guy Bunker

Symantec released its latest report on spam. July’s results were a 12% increase, year-on-year, to 78% of all messages. As expected the ‘big’ public interest events are still a big trend, so the Olympics and the US presidential race are up there along with ones targeting people’s fears for the economy and the old favourites of losing weight and superfoods.

One of the other trends that was ‘emerging’ before and is now becoming an increased trend is to hijack legitimate websites which then host the malware. Businesses should start looking, not just if their website is up-and-running but also that it hasn’t been silently hacked and is now being used as a tool for cyber-criminals. Cross site scripting has been in the news a lot over the past few months – companies cannot afford to think it won’t happen to them, they need to change their policies today to ensure that they do not become part of the problem.