According to the antivirus maker Symnatec, 87% of e-mail traffic in the past year was spam. This constitutes over 40 trillion spam messages and of these 40 trillion, 2% were found to have malicious malware.
While at first this does not sound like a large number it should be known that this is a 900 percent increase from last year.
Malware can search computers for bank information and personal details, or hijack computers to become a spamming army of zombie “botnets.” The worst thing of all is that, often, all of this happens without the user even noticing.
Within the past year there has been a specific increase in the amount of people who have had their Facebook or Twitters accounts hacked into.
One of the most alarming incidents in 2009 for governments and policy makers was the July 4th attacks on U.S. governments sites, such as the White House, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq — followed a few days later by similar attacks on websites in South Korea.
According to a research paper by antivirus maker McAfee, both attacks were made by the same “botnet army” of 50,000 computers, which spammed targets with so many e-mails their IT systems were overwhelmed and subsequently crashed.
Looking ahead to 2010, antivirus maker Trend Micro predicts that there will be more attacks on Mac operating systems. Previously ignored by malware makers because of its relatively low market share, the booming popularity of Apple iPhones that run on the Mac operating system, it’s drawing the attention of cyber criminals.
The introduction this year of domain names in languages other than English — such as Russian, Chinese and Arabic — will also expand the hunting grounds for cyber crime, Trend Micro reports.
(Via CNN)
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, there have been a series of intense fires raging throughout towns. The fires are in direct correlation with a cold front that swept through Tulsa, leaving residents scrambling for ways to keep warm such as improper use of fireplaces and or space heaters.
At the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, a 19-year-old freshman named Adam Bauer made the simple mistake of adding someone he did not know as a friend on Facebook. The mistake ended up costing Bauer $227 in fines for underage drinking.
In 2008, Sprint turned over customer GPS locations to the government over 8 million times. Christopher Soghoian, blogger and doctoral candidate, discovered this during a closed-door conference called ISS World. At that meeting, Sprint Nextel’s electronic surveillance manager Paul Taylor explained an automated system that law enforcement agencies could use to determine where a subscriber was located.
Of all the websites in the world, it turns out that Cameroonian-based websites have the highest volume of malware infected sites.
Recently three masked men broke into a medical marijuana store stealing most of the merchandise and even ripping a 25 lb. safe out of the wall.
Ohio lawman Barry Carpenter was recently found guilty of breaking into the home of Sarah Jessica Parker’s surrogate mother of her twin girls.
Police were able to make an arrest in a cold case after a local news station aired enhanced surveillance video captured at the scene of the crime.
Cyber terrorism is becoming a growing concern in India. Recently, celebrity cyber security expert Ankit Fadia stated “The next big war that the country may have to wage against terror will be on the Internet. The network infrastructure of the country may be attacked any time. Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Orkut and Myspace may also pose a threat,” Fadia told IANS in an e-mail interview.
A police officer in Manchester, England was recently relieved of duty after he failed to complete his duties. Turns out he was visiting the city’s red light district while on duty.
Police are hoping that they will find a criminal responsible for robbing two nuns by releasing video footage of the crime.
John Ford was so eager to avoid arrest that he may have eaten the evidence that would help convict him.
