Citadel program interface

A Trojan horse program specifically targeting banks has been taken out this year, with more than 1,000 botnets that it used being taken offline through efforts by Microsoft, the FBI and members of the financial services industry.

The program, known as Citadel, is a full “crime-ware” kit that has been around since 2011, and is often sold through underground Russian forums at about US$3,000, according to a report by Symantec this week. …

Spammers are now targeting popular social media site Tumblr, according to a Symantec media alert released last week.

The spam campaign utilises Tumblr’s Ask feature, which works similarly to sites like Formspring. Followers, and even anonymous users, are able to ask questions on the Tumblr blog depending on the settings of the blog and if the Ask feature is enabled.

The spam campaign posts comments in the Ask section, with the poster claiming that he or she has lost weight using the Official Tumblr Diet and suggesting that the owner of the blog check it out as well. …

Singapore may have cleared its pirated stores years ago, but folks going on the Internet instead for pirated software may now be the biggest reason for infected PCs in the country, according to a Microsoft study.

These users unknowingly open their PCs to attack when they download “keygen” software, which promise to generate serial numbers to unlock popular applications such as Microsoft Office, but often open a back door to hackers. …

More than one in five enterprises have experienced Internet-based espionage called advanced persistent threat (APT) attacks, according to a global cybersecurity survey conducted by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) this week.

APT attacks, as their name suggests, are advanced and persistent attacks against enterprises, usually with the goals of  intellectual property theft and the unauthorised access of sensitive information. …

A smartphone app has surfaced in Japan recently with the promise to let users see through others’ clothes when they turn on the camera on their Android handheld devices.

This Infrared X Ray app, obviously, is a scam and does not work. Yet, there have been enough people falling for it – and being blackmailed by it – for security firm Symantec to put out an alert last week. …

Companies in Asia-Pacific could spend US$39 billion this year to counter problems that are caused by malware found in counterfeit software, with the cost going up to a staggering US$129 billion if data loss is considered.

Globally, the number goes up to US$114 billion in direct costs and almost US$300 billion, if data loss is included, according to a recent study by research firm IDC.

Released last week, the study commissioned by Microsoft also predicted that one in three enterprise PCs using pirated software will be infected in 2013. This is due in part to the amount of such software exceeding two billion programs this year, three times that in 2006. …

Another special day, another spam campaign.

If you’ve received an e-mail in Russian advertising several online promotions related to International Women’s Day, you may have been the target of a spam campaign from Russia.

This particular campaign entices targets with attractive fake offers for great gifts for Valentine’s and International Women’s Day, according to a recent alert put out by security firm Symantec. …

For folks who are thinking whether it’s safe to put their precious data on the cloud, the latest news this week of Facebook being hacked must have raised alarm bells.

The security breach, it must be stressed, does not seem to have compromised any consumer data. The social networking site was quick to point that out, as it revealed that some employees had infected their laptops with malware when accessing a developer website last month.

Yet, the breach will challenge the recent conventional wisdom that it’s safer to keep your data online with big companies with high firewalls, such as Google and Facebook, than to store them on your own PC and network.  …

Singapore users are among the most vigilant about computer safety worldwide, staying alert about the dangers they may encounter online despite experiencing fewer problems, according to annual survey conducted by Microsoft.

The Microsoft Computing Safety Index polled more than 10,000 PC, smartphone and tablet users from 20 countries and regions, including the United States, Britain, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, China, Malaysia and Singapore. …

As we launch into 2013, SolarWinds’ has marked their IT and business predictions for the coming year as more evolutionary than revolutionary. For a large number of IT managers and business leaders, the new year will see acceleration in trends that are already influencing their organizations and performance.

The most important of these is the conversion from client-side servers to cloud-based resources and architecture. If IT professionals want to succeed in 2013, they need to develop their skills around the cloud, and use those skills to get the best, most cost-effective IT deployments into different business units. They’ll also play a vital role in monitoring and managing those IT deployments in real time. …