Provided by CommunityDNS, the information in this post consists of news items in the security-based Internet community.

Botnet Unleashes Variety Of New Phishing Attacks

The 3.6 million strong Zbot botnet has been used to initiate a series of new phishing campaigns. While traditionally used for spreading the Zeus banking Trojan, the botnet has shifted gears possibly in the hopes of experimenting to see what other things work.

Last week the botnet began sending e-mails to corporate users advising them of a system upgrade. The message appears to be from the recipient’s respective IT department with an e-mail address using the domain from the recipient’s respective company. The e-mail contains poisoned attachments and links, all with the purpose of infecting the user’s computer with the Zeus Trojan.

The latest version targets users with the message warning of a large-scale Confiker infection and contains a link to a “cleanup tool” from Microsoft. Again, the goal is to infect the user’s computer with the Zeus Trojan.

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Hackers change tactics, Gumblar attacks surge again

Gumblar, once one of the fastest growing methods for spreading malicious code, has seen a resurgence through a new adopting a new tactic.

This particular method of infecting computers involved adding I-frames onto legitimate websites. The content of the I-frame would link back to the Gumblar.cn domain name from which software vulnerabilities would be exploited on an innocent user’s PC.

Now Gumblar is no longer having I-frames tie back to the Gumblar.cn domain name. Instead the code is being placed directly on the legitimate website using the legitimate website’s existing file structure to avoid detection.

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Most Americans Worried About ID Theft

In a recent poll shows that among Americans, two-thirds are more worried about credit and debit-card theft than they are about terrorism, auto theft, home burglary, being mugged, their children being harmed at school and murder.

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Net neutrality pitting Web giants against state AGs, mayors

As the US’ FCC works to come to vote on establishing 6 rules from which to guide Net neutrality the pressure increases. Monday a letter signed by founders and CEOs of the Internet’s largest companies embraced Net neutrality and urged tougher Net neutrality rules. Their argument is “this allows businesses of all sizes, from the smallest to startup to larger corporations, to compete, yielding maximum economic growth and opportunity.”

At the local level the FCC is hearing a different story. The Attorney Generals from the states of Washington, Oklahoma, Arkansas and South Carolina, as well as some governors, state representatives, mayors and presidents of local Chambers of Commerce all fear enforcement of Net neutrality will affect innovation as much as it will affect investment and jobs.

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