I received an invitiation from this girl(?) today. I declined.

Malware City just published a very interesting experiment. Creating a 20-year old girl persona they contacted and befriended 2,000 people.

The study focuses on how easily social network users make new virtual acquaintances by accepting friend requests sent out by perfect strangers, and on what kind of information they disclose to these recent friends.

Malware City doesn’t reveal which social network they have used for the study but they reveal “First, a social network was chosen. The choice was based on the fact that the network was large enough to make it possible for the “friends” sample to meet the representativeness criterion.” Taking into consideration the size and the possibilities of communication, my guess is Facebook was used for the study.

Second, a test-profile was created in order to analyze a so-called “friendship rate” as a function of sex, age and interests. This test-profile was that of a fair-haired woman, aged 21, acting as a very, very naïve interlocutor.

In my opinion it’s a very interesting study. I am quoting one of the most striking results here:

“…after a 2 hour conversation, 73% revealed what appears to be confidential information from their work place, such as future strategies, plans, and unreleased technologies/software.”

Read about the study at Malware City

AdAware Total Security

It’s really easy to research information about people nowadays.  With a click of a button, one can where the person works, plays, his/her hobbies, likes, and of course, friends.  And  the turnaround time for getting the information counts less than a second.

In the belief that information at hand is information that can be lost, I learned to separate bits and pieces of and about me that can be shared.  Knowing that identity theft has absolute repercussions that may paralyze a person’s life, I immediately rummaged around for a software that can protect my information.

The Ad-Aware Total Security is a wholistic approach to online security.  It protects the system against intruders that thrive and comb information from your root system to your online activities.  It lets the user go online without thinking twice about security, as it blocks information threats and removes them at once.

What you can get from Ad-Aware:

Safe, Sound, and Secure. It has a state-of-the-art malware and spyware protection that effectively blocks hackers, viruses, rootkits, hacker, malware, and spyware.  It also lets you monitor your child’s online activity and prevent access to dangerous sites.

Economical . The Ad-Aware Total Security saves money as it combines the essential functions in online protection offered in separate programs.  It lets you maximize your space, time and money, that acquiring and installing individual programs produce.

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For a family man, protection for my family has always been my number one priority.  And by these benefits, being online-secure gives me a step towards a healthy family life.

For further information on the product, please visit Ad-Aware Security and Total Real-time Solution Software.

Beware Your Login DetailsResearchers at security firm BitDefender have detected a new do-it-yourself kit created to produce customized Trojans that pilfer Facebook login details, passwords stored inside browsers and even VPN credentials.

The kit is termed as “Facebook Hacker” and it is very easy to configure, just like any do-it-yourself tool crafted with the ’skiddie’ [script kiddie] in mind.

BitDefender’s Loredana Botezatu explains:

“Once run, the malicious tool will snatch the victim’s Facebook account’s credentials, along with all the usernames and passwords that we carelessly ask the browser to remember for us … because Facebook Hacker also targets the Internet browser and instant messaging clients to pick up the entire list of “remembered” identification data.”

Source: ESecurityPlanet

Although the Foursquare check-in service was only supposed to divulge users’ locations to their friends, it was possible to trace users movements by using scripts to permanently monitor locations.

Source: The H Security

Spammers are currently sending out large numbers of phishing emails entitled “Wikipedia e-mail address confirmation” that are designed to trick people into visiting compromised web pages.

Source: The H Security

One morning when checking my emails, one subject line really drew my attention: “Air France Flight 447 (crash pictures)”. The email claimed that images on the camera memory stick of a passenger on the crashed plane had been successfully reconstructed and could now be viewed in the attached PowerPoint presentation. When someone is trying that hard, my alarms go off.

Source: The H Security

Google has released version 5.0.375.99 of Chrome, a security update that addresses four “high” risk vulnerabilities in its WebKit-based browser, and a new Dev channel release that on Windows systems enables the new consolidated menu by default.

Source: The H Security

Despite the recent update, the protection against Adobe PDF /launch attacks is incomplete. By enclosing the commands they embed in PDF documents in double quotation marks, attackers can bypass the protection

Source: The H Security

Last year Microsoft caused annoyance with a furtively installed Firefox add-on. With the update for its Search Enhancement Pack the vendor has now slipped unaware Firefox users another add-on

Source: The H Security

Attackers have embedded an exploit for the recent vulnerability in Flash Player in tens of thousands of web sites. The hacked web servers are Microsoft Internet Information Server and ASP.NET-based

Source: The H Security