Monthly Archives: April 2010

Facebook Password Reset (Virus)

Posted by on 27 April, 2010 No comments

I received an email that claims to be from Facebook (it’s a forged email). The email is designed to trick people into opening the attachment. Here’s what the it says,

Hey [name removed],

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed. You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

There’s another version some people have received that is similar but has a different introduction and sign off,

Dear user of facebook,

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed. You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,
Your Facebook

Both of these emails come with a virus attached. And neither of these emails were actually sent from Facebook. In fact, Facebook had absolutely nothing to do with it, the scammers just mention the word to encourage people to open the attachment.

So as always, be suspicious of unsolicited emails, and be suspicious of attachments you didn’t ask for.

Free $1000 Ikea Gift Card Scam

Posted by on 25 April, 2010 No comments

Some ads have appeared on Facebook and Twitter. The ads are:

  • Contratulations. Get a free $1,000 Ikea Gift Card
  • Get A Free Apple Ipad Just For Testing It!: Would You Like To Test Apple Ipod? Get Your Free IPad Here Hurry
  • Get the Aple iPad Free

Note how many mistakes there are on the second one, a clear sign of a scam.

All of these ads are part of a scam. They take you to a site that asks for your name, address, date of birth, and email. These details are used to send you more spam.

Then you are taken to an online gambling site, hoping that you’ll be tempted to hand over money.

Nearly 40,000 Facebook users have been tricked by this scam, and it doesn’t end there. The same scam is also used for fake food gift certificates, and no doubt will continue to evolve.

If you see scams like these, please don’t forward the message along. You don’t want your friends and family to fall victims of a scam. Do proper research before passing any “bargain” messages along.

Phishing emails from Skype

Posted by on 25 April, 2010 No comments

Phishing emails are emails that appear to be from a legitimate company and ask you for your username and password. It’s a simple trick to get your account details.

Recently (22 April 2010) several phishing emails were sent “appearing” to be sent from Skype. The emails have a link to a web page asking you for your Skype username and password. These details are then collected by hackers and used for malicious purposes.

The general rule is, if you receive any emails from legitimate companies asking you to log onto your accout, don’t click on the links. Open a new browser and go to the company’s web site yourself. This way you can be sure you’re on the real web page, and not be tricked into going to a fake copy of the page.

Passwords Compromised on JIRA, Bugzilla & Confluence

Posted by on 25 April, 2010 No comments

If you are a user of the Apache hosted JIRA, Bugzilla, or Confluence, a hashed copy of your password has been compromised. There was a targeted attack on these systems on the 9th April 2010.

These are services used by developers, most “normal” people would not have accounts on these services. If you do use these services please read the full incident report here.

Admin update

Posted by on 25 April, 2010 No comments

I haven’t posted much on this site for a few weeks, I’ve been quite busy with work. Today I have some time so I’ll post a few items I’ve been sitting on.

I changed DNS registrars a couple of days ago, it didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped for so yesterday this site would not have been accessible. My apologies for that. It’s all running smoothly again.