Round-up of Security news updates from the last week

IMs reach third-party contacts thanks to Skype bug
A mysterious Skype bug sent messages (IMs) exchanged between two users, to random third-parties on either users’ list. Skype claims this occurred due to old versions of their app crashing on several platforms. This resulted in a lot of bad publicity for the service that was once the most preferred video chat platform.

Dropbox users get spammed while 18% of world spam is taken down
Dropbox users have not been spared as several people received spam via their Dropbox accounts. Most of this spam is affiliated with casinos and online gambling services, but whether this is caused by a malware or due to an address leak is still unknown. In another news, almost one-fifth of the world’s spam has been taken down thanks to the shutting down of one of the largest spam botnets, Grum. The botnet had servers in Russia, Panama and the Netherlands and controlled 100,000 PCs that generated around 18% of the world’s spam.

Attackers using new tricks to spread malware
A new Facebook scam has been spotted wherein a user is notified that he/she has been tagged in a newly added picture. If the user clicks on the notification, the Blackhole exploit kit installs malware in the machine and redirects the unsuspecting user to a Facebook profile page. In another innovative technique, corporate espionage specialists tried to pass malware into an MNC by scattering infected USB drives in their parking lot.

Staggering online identity theft statistics
12 million pieces of personal data were exchanged in Q1 2012 alone, which amounted to a 200% rise from Q1 2010. This article provides further insights into a study by credit firm Experian and comes at a time when a new web service is hacked into almost every week. Amazingly, an average web user has 26 different online accounts but only uses 5 different passwords.

Rahul Thadani