Security Experts Alert Users On Royal Scam

By Author: eccuni
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While the world turns its eye on the Royal wedding, scammers are trying to attract attention of Internet users. The Royal wedding of Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton has provided another opportunity for cybercriminals to defraud Internet users. Attackers are using various social engineering and optimization techniques to extract sensitive personal and financial information. Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have identified SEO optimized Google image searchers that lead users to malicious websites. Internet users are likely to search for pictures, images and videos related to the Royal wedding. Attackers are trying to take advantage of this tendency of users by enticing them to visit malicious web pages. One of the malicious sites uses exploit for Help Center URL validation vulnerability in Windows XP and Windows 2003 to insert malware in vulnerable computer systems. Kaspersky has detected the malware as Heur.Trojan.Win32 and is designed to steal passwords. The exploit may also breach security of Firefox and Opera to install a malicious PDF file. Attackers are also trying to benefit from the event by installing ...
... a Rogue anti-virus solution, which blocks Internet access and seeks payment for activation. In this case, users are redirected to a .cc domain malicious site.

Security researches at Sophos have cautioned against revealing information such as mother's maiden name, name of first pet, grandparent name and street name on social networking sites. They have detected a harmless message, currently in circulation among Facebook users. The message asks users to post a Royal wedding guest name on their Facebook profile. The name should begin with Lord or Lady, grandparent name as the first name, name of the first pet as last name, double-barreled with a street name. Security researchers warn that such information may be misused by cybercriminals to conduct identity theft as similar names are asked by websites for 'secret answer', to confirm user's identity, when they forget their passwords.

Internet users must be wary of disclosing real names associated with the security of their accounts, for themes such as Royal wedding guest names to prevent identity theft. Users may update themselves on latest threats by following security blogs, advisories, security alerts, e-tutorials and online degree courses on cyber security. Internet users must use latest patched browsers, avoid clicking on suspicious links and update anti-virus solutions regularly.

Employees must adhere to all cyber security tips, while accessing Internet in their organizations to prevent inadvertent installation of malware, which could extract privileged business information. Organizations may encourage employees to undertake online university degree courses on information security.

Hiring professionals qualified in masters of security science may help in identifying and implementing necessary security mechanisms, applying requisite patches and creating security conscious culture in the organization.