A Week in Security (April 13 – 19)

A Week in Security (April 6 – 12)

In case you missed any or most of our blog posts from last week, below is a handy list of links you can check out and a brief overview of each:

  • Video Scam “girl KILLED herself after her DAD saw her doing THIS!” (Fraud/Scam Alert) An old Facebook scam resurrected and sported a new face, a slightly different modus operandi, but the objective remains the same: scam anyone who is willing to fill in surveys for profit.
  • Open Source Laptop (All Things Dev) A pair of pretty smart people who presented at the Chaos Computer Club decided to built a computer from scratch, a feat that, according to one of our security threat researchers, is virtually unheard of.
  • Windows XP, You Have Served Us Well (Security Threat) We bid Windows XP farewell in this post, and as we do so, we addressed the users who wish to keep their beloved OS and remain protected from threats at the same time.
  • Scam Virus Shield app top paid app in Play Store (Mobile Security) Virus Shield, an app that became very popular in Google Play, was found to be a scam. Thousands were duped by buying it.
  • Users affected the most as Heartbleed takes center stage (Security Threat) Heartbleed, that infamous bug that affects OpenSSL, definitely caught the world’s attention. It has been talked about online and in the media so much that it has become a household name. In its wake, we have put together a handy list of tools our blog readers and product users may find useful in the hopes of curbing any threat from the bug as early as possible.
  • Beware of Fake UPS Exception E-mails (Online Security) A spam campaign purports to originate from UPS is actually delivering something more sinister in user inboxes: ZeuS, a widely known information stealer.
  • Be Still My Bleeding Heart! Q&A on the HeartBleed Bug (Online Security) Senior Security Researcher Jean Taggart tackles Heartbleed, one significant question at a time.
  • This Origin Phish Isn’t Very Sporting (Online Security) A rogue account pretending to be connected with @EASPORTSFIFA, the official Twitter handle of EA SPORTS for FIFA, was caught red-handed, intercepting tweets in the pretext of helping netizens with support issues only to lead them to a phishing page.
  • XP Themed Downloads and Offers Doing the Rounds (Online Security) Just days after Microsoft gave Windows XP Support the axe, scores of fake ads on YouTube began to sprung up like mushrooms. Suffice to say, we expected something like this to happen.
  • There’s Evidence of Mermaids Inside Sharks. No, really. (Fraud/Scam Alert) One doesn’t have to believe in mermaids to fall for this scam. As long as one is curious enough, they’re a potential target. This is the second scam we found on Facebook for the week.

Stay secure, everyone!

The Malwarebytes Labs Team

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