Agape Blog

In the past week i had presented the top 10 security threats for the year 2008. Below i am mentioning a detailed report on those threats and the issues related to them. This report has been made by our Fraud Management expert: Mr. Prabhat Tiwari.

There have been lot of cases recently, where either an individual or an organization had to suffer huge losses due to some security lapses. Internet security has become extremely important, which requires identification of the possible threats and combating them. We have presented the top 10 security threats below in our endeavor to create awareness about the threats, so that everyone can avoid them to prevent occurrence of loss.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham is warning computer users of a new spam scam! E-mail is vastly used to stay connected with other people by sharing information and this has been the target of spammers since a long time. Of course, forensic experts  helped in nabbing many cyber space criminals. But as forensic science is advancing, so are the spammers.

They create emails that look normal, but instead of taking you to the body of the email, it takes you to the malware. These are not phishing emails, which ask for your bank account or credit card details, etc. These are of a different type referred as “drive-by infectors”. Usually, the links provided in the email open a pop up which will tell you that your computer is infected. To help you out, it will take you to an anti-virus website, which is deceiving and instead takes you to a malware.

The latest exploitable target for the spammers is - Media. And the latest example is CNN being targeted by spammers. Basically spammers have cloned the news alert the same way that we get breaking news from CNN.

Forensic experts suggest that if you do not trust any email, the easiest way to double check is to log on to the source website mentioned in the email. Also, you should be on the lookout for suspicious emails cluttering your inbox.

UK-based internet security technology company First Cyber Security has teamed up with software provider Phatware to develop a technology that will fight against internet fraud. Their joint venture named Heracles Research, would deliver their first product by using First Cyber Security’s core technology which will verify all URl’s in each email message received and filter the ones containing links to fraudlent websites.

The working of the software is described below:
1. Heracles software will filter spam mails from the e-mails that reach the company.
2. It will then scan the remaining e-mails by visiting every link contained in the e-mail and check if the URLs lead the user to a genuine or dangerous site.
3. It will report back to the e-mail, adding a validation report, or alternatively rejecting it if it contains a fraudulent link.

President of Phatware: Stanislav Miasnikov, said: “We are excited to form this new joint venture and deliver email security software based on the technology developed by First Cyber Security while utilising PhatWare’s expertise in software development for desktop and mobile platforms.”

The first beta version of the software will be available in two versions: Client-side for MS Outlook 2007 or later and Server-side for MS Outlook 2007.