The business-oriented social networking site, LinkedIn, has had a recent bout with malware, as you may have seen by all of the buzz this week in the news headlines. As most of you who use them know, social networking sites, while having many advantages to users, have long been targeted by socially engineered scams - meaning you need to take care when roaming around on these types of sites.

In terms of the issues seen lately on LinkedIn - profiles on the site were created to act as a staging point for the distribution of 'FakeAlert' software. This malware serves typical scareware messages claiming that your machine is infected and that you should install the rogue anti-malware application that the warning message is peddling. Despite the FTCs recent efforts in tackling the scourge of rogueware, the fact that these applications continue to proliferate proves they still provide a significant return of investment for malware authors.

The LinkedIn profiles themselves consisted of links that claimed to lead to pornographic images/video content of various celebrities. Upon landing at these sites, victims were invited to install a codec to allow them to view the (non-existent) video; the file was not a video codec, but malware. This method of attack continues to prove to be extremely effective. The social engineering technique being applied is, sociologically, extremely interesting; despite users increasing awareness of Internet safety (i.e. maintaining download discipline, avoiding untrustworthy sites, and generally being aware of the pitfalls when navigating the seedier side of the 'net), using a combination of celebrity and sex to entice continues to be effective.

On the plus side, LinkedIn.com has worked very quickly to deal with this threat - it's encouraging to observe the site's administrators' rapid response time. When the scam first became apparent, many profiles were removed immediately. Currently, all of the malicious profiles that we located have now been cleaned up.

Recently, we came across this rogue: Antivirus Plus. What makes this one different from others was that it was distributed directly as a fake video codec. They have now removed the fake alert step in between.

...they snatch their "presents" from gullible computer users!

As the holidays are quickly approaching, many people around the world plan to do some serious shopping for Christmas presents. Unfortunately, this time of year also means a peak in cyber crime activity. In shopping malls - and other crowded places - thieves are lurking around, waiting to get their hands on people's well deserved earnings. One mistake, one lost moment, and your wallet may be gone forever.

As the volume of malware increases, the more signatures we add into Ad-Aware's Detection Database. Naturally, with the huge increase in bad stuff out there, the size of definition files will increase in line with the amount of malware detections we add.

There is an ongoing debate about whether FRA, the Swedish National Defense Radio Establishment, should be allowed to extend their surveillance activities to include the surveillance of wire-based Internet traffic and phone conversations that pass the Swedish borders.

The proposed law was first discussed in 2007, and a decision was tabled during this past year. The proposal has resurfaced with the same vague wording as in the original proposal presented a year ago, and there are few clear rules for when such extended surveillance activities should or should not be allowed. There is also a big question mark regarding the authorization of the wire-based surveillance activities as well as the storage and the destruction of sensitive surveillance data.