It’s a jungle out there. Every time you register on a website, buy something from an online retailer, do your banking, use Paypal, sell something on Ebay or Craigist, or do any of the online things most people take for granted, your personal info lands on the web. Scammers know this and are constantly coming more »

Fake anti-virus programs were a huge problem in 2009. Scammers poisoned search results, used banner and pop up ads, and compromised legit websites to spread them to unsuspecting users. They pretend to scan your system, pretend to find all sorts of infections, and then insist you must fork over the cash to buy the full more »

Fake anti-virus software has been the scourge of the net for awhile now, but hackers are now taking it a step further and making it even more sinister. Panda Labs says that Total Security 2009 starts out like most fake anti-viruses. It “scans” the victim’s computer and tells them they’ve got a serious infection, then more »

A new malware attack exploiting the upcoming and highly anticipated new Harry Potter movie “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is hitting the net. Using black hat SEO and malicious posts in blog comments, the scammers try to trick fans into clicking on the link, which claims they can watch the new movie online for more »

Most people think nothing of firing up Google or one of the other popular search engines when they want to find information, but perhaps they should. A recent report by McAfee revealed a list of dangerous search terms. These commonly searched keywords are considered dangerous because they’ve been exploited by scammers, meaning many of the search results may be malicious.

McAfee used results from Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, AOL and Microsoft Live to compile the list. They investigated over 2,000 keywords from a variety of popular sources and examined the first 5 pages of results from each search engine. They counted the amount of links marked as dangerous by their software and came up with the percentage of risk for each keyword.

Imagine being on your computer one day, minding your own business, surfing the web-and then suddenly finding yourself locked out of your own computer! A message pops up on your screen saying control will be returned to you-for a price. It might even tell you dire things will happen to your files if you don’t pay. Is it a joke? No. Unfortunately you’ve got ransomware.

Welcome to Shields Up! This weekly column will cover all things related to computer and internet security as well as staying safe as you surf the net. We’ll cover spams, scams, phishing, malware, and more.

These days the internet has grown far beyond its academic roots and become more than a source of entertainment. For most people, it is a valuable tool in their daily lives and as much of a necessity as a car or a phone. Unfortunately, as it’s grown so has cybercrime. There is a vast underground economy that thrives on stolen information.

Credit card and bank account numbers are bought and sold for big bucks. Giant botnets, made up of hundreds of thousands to millions of infected computers, are rented out to criminals who use them for everything from simple spamming to DDoS attacks and more. In countries like India and Pakistan, companies have sprung up offering to crack CAPTCHAs for a fee, and they are booming. Scammers and spammers pay them a penny for every CAPTCHA they complete, or a few dollars for every couple of hundred.

The FTC and SEC, along with several other federal agencies, are investigating the data breach at Heartland Payment Systems. The company processes about 100 million credit card transactions a month. Over 250,000 merchant locations were affected by the breach, which involved hackers stealing unencrypted data such as addresses, debit, and credit card numbers, and expiration dates. The company has also been hit with a class action lawsuit.

Company President and Chief Financial Officer Robert Baldwin Jr. disclosed the investigations during Heartland’s quarterly conference call with investigators Tuesday, saying that the SEC had launched an informal inquiry into the company and that there is also a related investigation by the Department of Justice. The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which regulates national banks and their service providers, has launched an inquiry, as has the FTC, he said.

Infamous ISP Intercage (also known as Atrivo) has been knocked off line. Their upstream provider, Pacific Internet Exchange terminated their service. Intercage’s president, Emil Kacperski, blames Spamhaus. Spamhaus, an anti-spam organization that puts together a widely used blacklist, has been very critical of Intercage for years. It placed Pacific Internet Exchange on its blacklist on September 12th, and although a PIE spokeperson refused comment, it’s highly likely they cut off Intercage as a result,