Websites compromised to generate money

generate money by cryptomining

“Wait, what?!?!?? Websites can generate money? I’ve got a website. What do I have to do to get my hands on some of that lovely cash?” Calm yourself, it’s not the website doing the money generation and you are not the beneficiary. The bad guys are! ?

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Sneaky Tax Refund e-mails

Tax refund scam

Tax refund scam e-mails are nothing new. They’ve been doing the rounds for many many years at this stage. Like the “Nigerian Prince” scams, that are enjoying a resurgence presently, the tax refund scams might catch out those who are new to the internet and may not have heard of such scams before.

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Dodgy e-mail that looks legit.

Dodgy e-mail

I received a dodgy e-mail on my personal account yesterday. I’m surprised the GMail spam filters didn’t catch it and flag it for me. Like last weeks story, this message looked kinda plausible.

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Double check your security.

Double Check Security

There is an easy double check that you can implement which will offer you excellent protection. It is called two factor authentication (or two step verification).

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Malicious e-mail from Yahoo! breach.

malicious e-mail

I’ve received the first malicious e-mail as a result of a compromised Yahoo! e-mail account. I’ve warned the individual and hopefully he still has control of the account and can secure it again.

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Disaster Relief Charity Scam – watch out!

Disaster Relief Charity Scam

Disasters happen many times a year and huge disasters impacting the US that get massive coverage in the international media happen less frequently (Katrina 2005, Sandy 2012 and now Harvey 2017). What has also happened at all of these disasters is a vile crime. The Disaster Relief Charity Scam.

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How a typo can cause you problems.

Typo squatting

Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes. One of the most common mistakes, in particular with mobile phones and their small keyboards, is the simple typo. Did you know that the evil doers have got sneaky ways that they try to capitalise on your fumbling fingers? It’s a technique called “Typosquatting“.

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Fireball – 1,000 times bigger than Wannacry.

Fireball malware

Have you seen the news reports and headlines about Fireball? No? That’s odd. 250 million PCs are infested with it. That’s a thousand times more machines around the world than WannaCry (you do remember WannaCry don’t you, or was it sooo two weeks ago ?). So you would think the news organisations would be all…

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Sick subtitles can infect your media player

Evil subtitles

Do you use a media player like VLC, Kodi, Popcorn Time or Strem.io? Perhaps you are using one of those “dodgy” Android boxes? If so you will want to update them to their latest version ASAP because it is possible that they might pick up subtitles that can compromise the machine that you are playing…

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GMail had a bad case of the phishers.

GMail base case of the spammers

About 1 million GMail users were subject to a very clever phishing campaign last week. “What’s phishing?” I hear you ask. It’s basically an e-mail that persuades you to take an action, which ends up compromising you in some way. In this case, you receive an e-mail with an apparent Google Docs attachment. If you follow…

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Really – Don’t open that Word attachment! It is malware.

Word malware

It was reported over last weekend that there was a Microsoft Word vulnerability that allowed a type of Word malware (malicious software) to infect a persons PC/Laptop simply by opening the document. Even having macros disabled would not protect the victim. So what happens?

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Evil e-mail has your name and address!

Evil e-mail

Reports today are somewhat concerning. Below are two examples of evil e-mail that has been doing the rounds in the last day or so. The greeting addresses you by your first/given name and the file that is attached to the e-mail is called after your surname. The postal address shown IS also your address. I’ll…

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Scary new way to have your GMail password and account stolen.

This is an incredibly easy way for the evil doers to steal your GMail ID and GMail password. This one could even catch out security people like me! ? So what happens is you receive an e-mail from somebody you know, who also had a GMail (note the emphasis on had). 

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Facebook Messenger scam … it’s nothing new, but it’s still effective.

I’ve seen evidence of this scam occurring amongst my Facebook friends this Christmas. It’s a straightforward phishing scam, where one of your friends sends you a Facebook Message with an apparent link to a video of you. Sometimes they might ask “Is this you?” or tell you to go a specific point in the video…

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Could the attempted theft of €4.3m from Meath County Council happen to your business?

As was widely reported at the weekend, Meath County Council were the victim of an attempted theft of some €4.3 million. A lot of the reportage was pointing to hackers and this being a cyber attack, but based on what is known, in my opinion, it’s not really. This attempted theft was facilitated by the…

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