Security Fix - Brian Krebs on computer and Internet security - November 2, 2008

Extortionists Target Major Pharmacy Processor

One of the nation's largest processors of pharmacy prescriptions said Thursday that extortionists are threatening to disclose personal and medical information on millions of Americans if the company fails to meet payment demands. St. Louis-based Express Scripts said that in...

Researchers Hijack Storm Worm to Track Profits

A single response from 12 million e-mails is all it takes for spammers to turn annual profits of millions of dollars promoting knockoff pharmaceuticals, according to an unprecedented new study on the economics of spam. Over a period of about...

Malware Piggybacks on Obama Win

Cyber criminals are blasting out massive amounts of spam touting a video of President-elect Barack Obama's victory speech. Recipients who click the included link are taken to a site that prompts visitors to install an Adobe Flash Player update. The...

Adobe Issues Critical Acrobat, Reader Updates

Adobe has issued a software update to fix at least eight security flaws in its Acrobat and Adobe Reader applications, that if left unpatched could be used by attackers to take control of vulnerable systems, the company said. The vulnerabilities...

Election Hoax Sent Via D.C. Based E-Campaign Group

An e-mail hoax telling 35,000 George Mason University students, faculty and staff, that the election had been moved to Nov. 5, was sent through servers run by a D.C. based company that seeks to help political campaigns promote their messages...

GMU E-Mail Hoax: Election Day Moved to Nov. 5

Unknown hackers broke into George Mason University's e-mail system and sent students a forged message from the school's provost early this morning stating that Election Day had been moved to Nov. 5. The messaged, dated 1:16 a.m., Nov. 4, with...

Taming Vista's User Account Control Pop-Ups

Microsoft Vista users fed up with the incessant security prompts from the operating system's "user access control" feature can now spend less time clicking on the pop-ups. Symantec Corp. has released a free tool that adds a simple "don't ask...

Microsoft Security Report: A Mixed Bag

Microsoft's successes in producing more secure software are being offset in part by organized cyber criminals, who continue to make inroads into customer PCs largely through faulty third-party software and old-fashioned trickery, the software giant said in a report released...

Security Fix: November 2, 2008 - November 8, 2008