published

So what does this mean for the Twitter ecosystem? Twitter VP of Product Jason Goldman says that the feature serves three purposes. First, it’s going to help Twitter crack down on spam, as the service will be able to accurately monitor the distribution of each link, and it can warn users when it thinks a link may be malicious. Second, it will allow users to better understand where links are going (more on that below). And third, it will help Twitter with analytics, which is related to its Promoted Tweets. Goldman says that Twitter is pre-announcing the feature, which is currently only active with three accounts, to give the developer community a heads up for what’s coming.

The confusing part about t.co is that many users won’t really be aware of it. That’s because Twitter is including metadata with each tweet that allows clients to display the link’s original URL, even when the link is being routed through t.co first. For example, if I shared a link to AndrewSaysHello.com, the link in my tweet would still show up as http://www.andrewsayshello.com, despite the fact that users were being silently routed through t.co before they arrived at their favorite tech blog.  One other thing to note: while users will now be seeing expanded links show up in their tweets (which could be quite lengthy), each link will only count as twenty characters against the 140 character maximum. That’s because all t.co links will be exactly twenty characters long.

Goldman says that the “goal is not to build a brand around t.co”. Instead, it’s to increase the transparency of links that are being shared on Twitter.

This isn’t good news for link shorteners like bit.ly, but it isn’t necessarily their death knell either. Goldman says that bit.ly’s value-added services, like analytics and custom shortened domains, will still work properly with t.co, and users can obviously still use bit.ly for more general link shortening purposes. Thing is, most people sharing links through services like bit.ly are doing it because it’s what their Twitter clients do by default — they don’t need analytics or custom domains. For these users there’s now no obvious reason to use these services, because Twitter will be handling the shortened links itself.

Today’s news doesn’t come as a surprise — back in March, Twitter began routing direct messages through a new link shortening service as an anti-phishing mechanism. It didn’t take long for users and developers to question whether Twitter would soon be broadly launching a link shortening service, and Twitter confirmed that it would in April.

The new phishing email, which masquerades as a message from Facebook, promises to give users a new and easier login process. The “new login system” is thoughtfully sent with the user’s username already filled in, researchers say. All the user has to do is “give your password to update your account.”

According to a blog by researchers at security company AppRiver, the phishing attack has been spotted on smartphones using Facebook applications, where it carries the actual Facebook logo.

AppRiver says the attack emanates from the Zeus botnet, and researchers are seeing “Facebook phishing emails at a rate of about 1,000 messages per minute per domain used, with about 30 domains being utilized. That’s 30,000 messages per minute from this botnet, or 500 per second. On top of that, we’ve already seen about 1.65 million messages from this campaign.”

In some cases, the exploit has been seen as an official Facebook message that asks the reader to click on a link to receive an updated Facebook password. Clicking on that link causes the user to download the Bredolab Trojan, according to researchers at MX Lab.

This is just another example to show that everyone needs to be very careful when emails arrive in your inbox claiming to need a login or change of password. This type of thing is very rare to just send to your email without you requesting it so I would advise anyone who thinks that you may have seen an email like this to delete it and mark it as spam right away!

Last week the Federal Trade Commission approved its final consent order against Sears Holding Management Company, the parent company of both Sears and Kmart. According to Ars Technica, the company must destroy all data gained from its “My SHC Community” program, and halt all incoming transmissions from the hidden spyware provided by the company currently  installed “in the wild.” The program threw up a red flag as far back as early 2008, with security researchers declaring that Sears was after more than what was originally disclosed in the user agreement.

The voluntary “My SHC Community” survey collected the participant’s online web browsing in exchange for $10. However, the program that participants installed collected more than just casual browsing, but rather transmitted the complete contents of a browsing session, including secure sessions. That meant Sears and Kmart collected personal data including bank accounts, credit cards, addresses, home telephone numbers and more. The installed software also collected non-Internet information about the participant’s computer.

After an investigation, the FTC said that Sears disclosed its tracking intent, but did so in a confusing manner that appeared after a lengthy, multi-step tracking software’s data collection,” the FTC said. Sears has agreed to provide clearer disclosures, separate from any user license agreement, in future marketing programs.

This just goes to show that even the big companies resort to these low blows when it comes to getting information on us… and if even they do it, is any of our data really safe at all?

An analysis of Internet threats by Network Box in August 2009 shows that which peaked in July (when volumes increased by 300 per cent), are down again at levels seen in June (around four viruses per customer, per hour). Spam is also down slightly, averaging around 90 spam e-mails per customer, per hour (from a peak of around 120 in May).

The U.S. continues to dominate as the main source of the world’s viruses, producing 15.9 per cent of all viruses. It is followed closely by Brazil, which produces 14.5 per cent (similar levels to last month’s 14.1 per cent). Brazil continues to be the biggest source of spam, producing 11.6 per cent of all spam, followed by the US at 8.6 per cent and South Korea at 7.2 per cent.

South Korea remains the biggest source of intrusion attacks, at 17.3 per cent. Phishing attacks also remain high, at 33 per cent of all viruses. This is down slightly from last month’s 36.2 per cent, but still significantly higher than in June, when phishing attacks made up just five per cent of all viruses.

What a majority of web users today do not realize is that applying patches to their system are the number one way to prevent infections.

Network Box lowered its global alert condition to Level 2, saying it has been the lowest in nine months. This means there are limited virus/worm activities, with no major unexploited vulnerabilities or threats.

Mark Webb-Johnson, CTO of Network Box, said: “The large number of recent vulnerabilities announced by both Microsoft and Apple led to a frenzy of malware activity spearheaded by an unprecedented large number of website defacements. What we’re now seeing is that those who have already patched are protected and those that haven’t are already infected — so the number of new infections appears to have levelled off.”

Simon Heron, Internet security analyst for Network Box, added: “Businesses and individuals still need to be alert to threats through the remainder of the summer, particularly phishing attacks. We’ve seen a huge increase in SQL injection attacks so it’s important that anyone using Web-based applications or servers keeps their security up-to-date.”

While threat landscape currently remains stable, Network Box said it will continue to closely monitor and re-evaluate the situation as necessary, especially with Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday coming next week. Let this be another reminder that keeping your system up-to-date is one of the best things you can do along with using antivirus software to keep you and your system safe.

What’s supposed to be a news article is actually an writeup that explains how Google can supposedly provide online users the opportunity to earn easy money. To make it more convincing, the page also claims to have several positive responses from anonymous online users. Clicking any of the links from the spam website shown above leads to a phishing page.

The page contains a spoofed countdown timer that hopes to make the user panic and quickly fill up the form. Clicking the See If I Qualify button then directs the user to another page containing an affirmation of the user’s qualifications, which will then require him/her to fill up another form with his/her credit card information.

Related phishing schemes have also been found using the same technique but with different keywords other than Google Cash Club. Below are some of the keywords used:

• Make Money with Google
• Google Money Monster
• Google Home Income
• Easy Google Profit
• Google’s Business Kit

Inquiries on the legitimacy of the service have been posted on Google’s support forum, and I agree with what most of the users have posted: Google Cash Club is a scam along with other similar forms of this floating around the internet in different forms of ads.