Tag: SYMANTEC

As security firms have been warning for some time, malware attacks are now more frequently focused on social networks and mobile devices. In Symantec's latest Internet Security Threat Report, the company noted that the number of malware attacks delivered through the Web practically doubled from 2009, with 65-percent of malicious links on Facebook arriving in the form of shortened URLs. The ...

Hey, here's some good news: it looks like spam is on the decline. According to Symantec's latest State of Spam and Phishing report, the volume of spam and junk mail in circulation around the world has been decreasing steadily since August, and dropped noticeably around Christmas. No one has a concrete explanation for the drop-off, but Symantec's Eric Park suggests that the demise of major botnets ...

Symantec says that 2010 will wind up being a record-setting year for malware -- that some 95 billion phishing e-mails will have been sent before the New Year. Combined with other spam messages, those e-mails will account for 89-percent of all e-mail traffic during 2010. Of those spam messages, 95-percent are now being sent by botnets, vast groups of hijacked computers. The number of new malicious ...

Describing a piece of code as the "best malware ever" seems a bit oxymoronic, but Stuxnet might actually fit the bill. The malware has been operating undetected since early this year. In June, it was finally identified by a small security company in Belarus called VirusBlokAda. By early August, Microsoft had confirmed and patched an exploit that Stuxnet was using to target PCs running Windows, but ...

Victims of cybercrimes are often quite angry about being hacked and snookered. That's not surprising. What might come as a bit of a shock is that most aggrieved blame themselves. According to a survey from Symantec, 54-percent of those who had fallen prey to Internet scams and attacks said they should have been "more careful," while 12-percent said the security breach was entirely their own fault. ...

The amount of spam sent across the world may be growing, but global phishing attacks, at least, seem to be diminishing in number. According to a new report from Symantec, 92-percent of all e-mails sent across the Web today consist of spam, up from 89-percent one year ago. Also, as times have changed, so too has the content of most junk mail. A year ago, most spam subject lines were related to ...

Facebook users now have a way to protect themselves from the never-ending spread of malware, such as the "Sexiest Video Ever" scam. Symantec has released a free app that scans your News Feed for harmful links. The app, Norton Safe Web, scans all URLs that have appeared in your feed during the past 24 hours. On completion, the scan lists the links and describes them as "safe," "warning" or ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/04/29/new-security-concerns-floating-around-in-cloud-computing/'; While cloud computing might be one of the hottest trends in tech these days, it's not without risks. Both consumers and businesses face hazards that most proponents have been reluctant to discuss. Think of the cloud as a central supercomputer that stores both data and applications. ...

According to a recent report by Symantec Corp., the city of Shaoxing, China produces more malware attacks than any other place on this planet. While that might not be a huge surprise, it's shocking just how many of those attacks come from Shaoxing, a city of 4.3 million, and once known for its calligraphy and bridges. While China leads the world with 30-percent of the world's malware, about ...

Share Symantec, maker of the Norton line of security products, conducted a study in which it analyzed the number of cyber-attacks, malware infections, Wi-Fi hotspots, and other factors in order to determine the 50 riskiest online cities. Not surprisingly, Forbes magazine's 2009 most wired city is Symantec's 2010 riskiest city. Seattle, Washington was the most vulnerable city by a large margin, ...

Is your inbox a little fuller than usual, despite not having received any more genuine e-mails from friends? We know why, but you're not going to like it; according to a recent study, over 90-percent of all e-mail is now spam, a huge spike from the 20- to 30-percent mark just a few months ago. That relative spam lull was caused by the shutdown of McColo Corporation in San Jose, California late ...

A few months ago, the Federal Trade Commission worked to shut down the spammy behavior of one California-based ISP called McColo. The company was found to be hosting a number of so-called botnets (groups of computers that send e-mails and spread malicious software) that were responsible for a huge portion of the world's spam. When McColo was shut down, inboxes around the world breathed a sigh ...

Today's generation of hackers is implementing stealthier methods of online theft, according to USA Today. While, in past days, hackers would infiltrate a company's security system only to wreak havoc, leaving viruses and spam agents in their wake, they are now taking a fly-by-night approach. Increasingly, hackers slip through these systems, only to obtain pertinent information and, as best ...

2007 was a record-breaking year for the development of malicious software, such as viruses and Trojan horses (a virus disguised as a regular computer program), according to internet security firm Symantec. According to a report by the BBC News, Symantec reported that the number of malicious programs has passed the 1 million mark for the first time, although nearly half of these programs were ...

Chances are you know reasonably well what you do online (whether or not you're willing to admit it to yourself). You shop, maintain virtual friendships, look for love, and maybe even gawk at some shady material. However, do you know what everyone else is doing online, particularly your kids? Symantec does, thanks to a survey of Internet users from eight countries around the world. While the ...