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Scammers use phishing emails to get consumers to click on links to websites they've created solely for the purpose of information theft. They trick users into typing their names, addresses, login IDs, passwords or credit card information into fields on sites that look like they belong to real companies. In some cases, just clicking the link provided in an email will automatically drop malware onto the user's device. Once the malware is installed, hackers can easily steal the victim's information without their knowledge. Phishers are getting better and better at making their traps look real, copying logos and creating sham urls and email addresses that look like actual corporate credentials. The Intel quiz displayed 10 real emails delivered to inboxes and collected by analysts at McAfee Labs, which is part of Intel Security. Some were legitimate correspondences from major companies, while others were phishing emails that look extremely believable. Of the 19,458 people who took the quiz, the vast majority -- 80 percent -- fell for at least one of the fake phishing emails they saw. Only 3 percent got a perfect score. Interestingly, the one email that was most often misidentified in the quiz was actually a legitimate letter. It raised false alarm bells by encouraging readers to claim free ads, a clicky turn of phrase that made people wary. Compared to the other 143 countries represented in the survey, the U.S. ranked 27th overall in ability to detect phishing. Americans' average 68 percent accuracy was just a few points above the global average. France, Sweden, Hungary, the Netherlands and Spain turned in the best performances. The results serve as yet another reminder to click with caution -- or not click at all. Intel Security's Gary Davis urged people to keep security software and browsers up to date to help weed out malicious sites and downloads, and to hover over links before clicking on them to make sure they point where they say they do. He also warned of obvious red flags, such as misspellings or bad grammar, that can help tip you off to a fraudulent correspondence. Want to see how you'd do on the quiz? You can try your hand at it above. If you don't score well, don't take it too hard. When Intel circulated an earlier version of it to Internet security professionals last year, 94 percent were fooled at least once. Source

Google spam abuse researcher Kurt Thomas says some 84,000 injectors and apps are targeting its Chrome web browser with dodgy advertising. Thomas says the apps include 50,000 browser extensions and 34,000 applications which target Chrome to display revenue-generating ads within the sites that victims browse. About a third of these identified in the study Ad Injection at Scale: Assessing Deceptive Advertisement Modifications [PDF] by boffins at universities California, Berkeley, and Santa Barbara were "outright malicious", he says. "Upwards of 30 percent of these packages were outright malicious and simultaneously stole account credentials, hijacked search queries, and reported a user’s activity to third parties for tracking," Thomas says. "In total, we found 5.1 percent of page views on Windows and 3.4 percent of page views on Mac that showed tell-tale signs of ad injection software. "The ad injection ecosystem profits from more than 3000 victimised advertisers — including major retailers like Sears, Walmart, Target, Ebay — who unwittingly pay for traffic to their sites." Thomas says advertisers are blind to the injector process and see only the final ad click. University researchers found about 1000 profiteering affiliates who score commissions for injected ad clicks including Crossrider, Shopper Pro, and Netcrawl. Of the 25 businesses that provide the ads, Superfish and Jollywallet are "by far" the most popular accounting for 3.9 percent and 2.4 percent of Google views, respectively. The former ad injector became an internet pariah after users revealed it had been quietly foisted on Lenovo laptops. It has since been removed. But Choc Factory efforts are helping; Thomas says the number of warnings generated when users click on injected ads has fallen 95 percent since the company created warning flags last month and killed off 192 "deceptive" ad fiddling Chrome extensions. "This suggests it's become much more difficult for users to download unwanted software, and for bad advertisers to promote it," Thomas says. Google has also updated its ad policies to cut out the slimeballs and urges legitimate advertisers to do the same. Source

Cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure companies have long since moved out of the realm of science fiction and into reality, and a new report from Trend Micro and the Organization of the American States (OAS) shows just how much. In a new survey, the challenges those organizations are facing today are laid bare. Forty percent of 575 security leaders polled said they had dealt with attempts to shut down their computer networks. Forty-four percent said they had faced attempts by attackers to delete files, while 60 percent have had attackers try to steal their information. Perhaps even more ominous is the fact that 54 percent had dealt with attempts to manipulate their organization's equipment through a control network or system. "This research should serve as a wake-up-call that critical infrastructures have become a prime target for cybercriminals," said Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer at Trend Micro, in a statement. "These groups have escalated their attacks by leveraging destructive campaigns against the infrastructures of the Western Hemisphere." The respondents came from organizations throughout the Americas. In the U.S., the “ICS-CERT Monitor” newsletter for the period between September 2014 and February 2015 stated that a total of 245 cyber-security incidents were reported to ICS-CERT during fiscal year 2014. According to the report, the energy and critical manufacturing sectors were impacted the most. In the OAS/Trend Micro survey, 53 percent of those surveyed said they have noticed an increase in incidents affecting their networks in the past year. The primary attack was phishing, which was noted by 71 percent. DDoS (42 percent) and SQL injection (32 percent) were commonly reported as well. Just 18 percent reported being targeted by advanced persistent threats (APTs). "A major challenge today is the sophistication of attacks (76% say they are getting more sophisticated) which are difficult to detect," according to the report. "With almost a third of the respondents falling into this category, it is apparent that continuous monitoring controls are a needed requirement within most organizations to improve their visibility across their networks of attacker presence." The good news is that more than half of those surveyed said they have disaster recovery (54 percent) and incident response (52 percent) plans in place. The bad news - 52 percent said their budget for cyber-security did not increase during the past year. Most organizations said they trust the government to advance a cyber-security agenda to protect critical infrastructure companies, and they are willing work with them. "Since critical infrastructure affects everyone within a region, Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are key in properly managing the threat associated with threat actors looking to compromise these systems," the report noted. "With only 1 in 5 (21%) respondents stating an active dialogue there is a high level of improvement to be done to effectively deal with the threat." "Governments in the Americas and around the world must recognize the serious vulnerabilities inherent to critical infrastructure and the potential for grave consequences if not properly secured," said Neil Klopfenstein, executive secretary of the OAS Inter-American Committee against Terrorism (CICTE), in a statement. "From electrical grids and water treatment plants, to oil exploration fossil fuel supplies and transportation, these systems are vital to virtually every element of society. This report reinforces a need to continue strengthening protection of critical infrastructures in our member states, while collaborating and sharing information so as to collectively address these issues and foster a secure and resilient cyber space for government, businesses and citizens in the region." Sursa: securityweek.com

Some 30 percent of American adults say they have altered their digital behavior in the wake of Edward Snowden’s NSA spying revelations in order to hide information from the government. In Spring 2013, Snowden, a then NSA contractor working for Booz Allen Hamilton, remotely accessed the NSA’s Ft. Meade networks from a satellite office on Hawaii and stole a massive trove of secret documents detailing the U.S. signals intelligence agency’s extensive surveillance capabilities and spying operations. Nearly two years after the initial release, Snowden, now exiled in Russia, is still publishing new revelatory documents about the NSA and its partner’s activities. The Pew Research Center conducted a survey, seeking to determine the extent to which these revelations have changed the way people communicate and behave online as well as people’s approval of and opinions about surveillance. In all, 87 percent of respondents were aware of the NSA’s spying operations to some extent. Among those, 34 percent had actively changed their online behavior. That group accounted for 30 percent of the entire research sample, which consisted of 475 randomly selected adults. In nearly every scenario tested, younger adults were more likely to have disapproved of spying and made changes in light of the revelations. Men were more likely to have heard more about surveillance than woman and college graduates more likely than people with only a high school diploma or less. In general, the more informed the respondent was about government surveillance, the more likely that person was to either disapprove of spying or change online behavior because of it. Specifically, 17 percent of respondents changed the privacy settings on their social media accounts, 15 percent reported to use social media less often, 15 percent said they’ve avoided certain mobile applications and 13 percent have uninstalled apps. In addition, 14 percent claimed they speak more in person instead of communicating online or via phone and 13 percent have avoided using certain terms in online communications. Anecdotally, many respondents reported self-censoring themselves online to avoid communicating about or searching for information that could be deemed threatening, even when such searches were merely out of curiosity and such conversations were in jest. Numerically speaking, 18 percent claim to have changed the way they send emails, 17 percent reported changes in search behavior, 15 percent said they changed social networking tendencies and 15 percent say they are using their cell phones differently. A quarter of those who were aware of NSA surveillance reported having deployed more complicated passwords as a result. More than half of those surveyed, 57 percent to be exact, say it is “unacceptable” for the government to monitor the communications of U.S. citizens. Not surprisingly if you’ve been following the revelations, Americans are comfortable with their government targeting foreigners for surveillance, but not themselves. However, most respondents said they are losing confidence that the public interest is being served by surveillance programs. The public is evenly split about the capacity of the judicial system to balance privacy rights with intelligence needs. Specifically, 82 percent believe it is acceptable to monitor communications of suspected terrorists, 60 percent believe it is acceptable to monitor the communications of American leaders, another 60 percent think it is okay to monitor the communications of foreign leaders, 54 percent say it is acceptable to monitor communications from foreign citizens and only 40 percent fell it is okay for the government to monitor ordinary U.S. citizens. Respondents were more accepting of surveillance when they were asked about its use in specific scenarios such as monitoring people who have visited sites containing child pornography or anti-American sentiments, those who had communicated with”an imam who preached against infidels,” those who used search engines to research weapons and explosives, made unusual banking withdrawals, used encryption to hide files and people who follow others on social media who say hateful things about American leaders. Just 10 percent of respondents say they have used an alternative search engine that does not track search history. Only five percent have added privacy-enhancing browser plug-ins. Four percent have adopted mobile encryption for calls and text messages, three percent have used proxy servers can help them avoid surveillance, two percent have adopted email encryption programs such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), two percent have used anonymity software such as Tor and only one percent have used locally-networked communications such as FireChat. These low adoption rates may well relate to another finding stating that more than half of respondents believe it would be too difficult to increase their security and privacy online. 53 percent have not adopted or considered using a search engine that doesn’t keep track of a user’s search history and another 13 percent said they don’t even know about these tools. 46 percent have not adopted or considered using email encryption programs and another 31 percent said they didn’t know such things existed. 43 percent have not adopted or considered adding privacy-enhancing browser plug-ins while 31 percent did not know about these plug-ins. 41 percent haven’t adopted or considered using proxies with an additional 33 percent having no awareness of them. And 40 percent have not adopted or considered using anonymity software such as Tor while another 39 percent don’t even know about Tor. Source

The breaches at Community Health Systems and Anthem, Inc. serve as prime examples of how valuable health care data can be to cybercriminals, but a recent study suggested that these intrusions should not be the only cause for concern for consumers. A study conducted by Timothy Libert, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication found that nine out of ten health-related websites expose information regarding visitors' health interests with third parties. The websites included in the study, titled “Privacy Implications of Health Information Seeking on the Web,” are non-profit, educational, commercial, and government-run. Sites such as WebMD, send data to up to 34 separate domains, according to a video by Libert on the study. Using a tool he created that tracks HTTP requests initiated with third-party advertisers and data brokers, Libert was able to analyze 80,000 health-related web pages. According to his findings, 91 percent of the sites initiated requests to third-parties and 70 percent included data on specific “symptoms, treatment, or diseases.” Those on the receiving end of the information included advertisers such as Google – which collected data from 78 percent of the pages, comScore (38 percent) and Facebook (31 percent), in addition to data brokers Experian and Acxiom. The findings suggest that the privacy of users may be at risk seeing as this data can be sold by data brokers legally, which further increases spreads the personal information, thus increasing the risk of compromise. Additionally, thanks to current marketing technology, consumers While the Federal Trade Commission has advocated legislation to regulate the use of tools that many marketers and data brokers use to collect and sell consumer data, there is currently little oversight. “Personal health information – historically protected by Hippocratic Oath – has suddenly become the property of privacy corporations who may sell it to the highest bidder or accidentally misuse it to discriminate against the ill,” Libert said in a release by the university. “As health information seeking has moved online, the privacy of a doctor's office has been traded in for the silent intrusion of behavioral tracking.” Source