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Australian media giant Fairfax leads today with dramatic claims that customer data from mobile phone company Vodafone Australia is routinely falling into the wrong hands, thanks to lax database security. According to Fairfax, Vodafone's customer database is accessible to all its dealers over the internet, with the result that any dealer can look up extensive amounts of personally identifiable information (PII), together with call and SMS history, for any customer. The Sydney Morning Herald says that unscrupulous password-holders have been offering what amounts to "pay-per-view" access to customer data to third parties. Individuals, claims the Herald, are buying information to keep track of their spouses, whilst "criminal groups [are] paying for the private information of some Vodafone customers to stand over them". (Standover is the chillingly descriptive Australian vernacular for intimidation and extortion.) If these allegations are true - and the repor...

A new social networking worm in the vein of Koobface is currently doing the rounds. A Naked Security reader, George, who had been exposed to it on Facebook reported it to us - unlike the majority of Facebook scams we report, this one actively infects your computer with malware instead of simply tricking you into taking surveys and passing on messages to other users. The link in his Facebook chat from a friend pointed to an app.facebook.com/CENSORED link. Typically when you go to a Facebook app page it prompts you to add the application and grant it permission to post on your behalf or read your profile data. The scary part about this one is that it immediately prompts you to download a " FacebookPhotos#####.exe " file with no prompting or clicking required. The screen reads "Photo has been moved. This photo has been moved to other location. To view this photo click View Photo." If your computer has not already downloaded the malware, the "View Photo"...

Rumors of an impending Facebook shutdown had the site's millions of users in a panic Saturday as they wondered who would take their number one procrastination tool away. The Internet rumor was sparked by a report from the "Weekly World News," a website which also includes a story insisting "Alien spaceships to attack Earth in 2011" and another titled "Mike Tyson Pigeon Fetish." According to their Facebook "story," the super popular social media website would be shut down in March because Mark Zuckerberg was getting too stressed out. "Facebook has gotten out of control and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life," the newspaper quoted Zuckerberg as saying at an alleged press conference in California on Saturday. The questionable story apparently sent Facebook users into a panic. The phrase "is facebook shutting down" was the 14th most searched for on Google Saturday and the 10th most as of Sunday morn...

U.S. investigators have gone to court to demand details about WikiLeaks' Twitter account, according to documents obtained Saturday -- the first revelation about the criminal case Washington is trying to build against those who leaked classified U.S. documents. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a subpoena ordering Twitter Inc. to hand over private messages, billing information, telephone numbers, connection records and other information about accounts run by Assange and others. The subpoena also targeted Pfc. Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of supplying the site with classified information; Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic parliamentarian and one-time WikiLeaks collaborator; and Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp and U.S. programmer Jacob Appelbaum, both of whom have worked with WikiLeaks in the past. The subpoena, dated Dec. 14, asked for information dating back to November 1, 2009. Assange blasted the U.S. move, saying...

In 2010, cyber-criminals have created and distributed a third of all existing viruses. That is, in just 12 months, they have created 34 percent of all malware that has ever existed and has been classified by the company. Furthermore, the Collective Intelligence system, which automatically detects, analyzes and classifies 99.4 percent of all malware received, currently stores 134 million unique files, out of which 60 million are malware (viruses, worms, Trojans and other computer threats). Topics covered: Threats in 2010 Stuxnet, Iran and nuclear plants Cyber war Aurora Cyber-crime Cyber-protests Mariposa Social networks Rogueware 2010 in figures More BlackHat SEO Windows 7 vs Mac OS X Snow Leopard Cell phone security Spam in 2010 Vulnerabilities in 2010 Trends in 2011 Conclusion Trojans still dominate the ranking of new malware that has appeared in 2010 (56 percent of all samples), followed by viruses and worms. It is interesting to note that 11.6 percent of all the m...