A 23 year-old hacker responsible for a botnet that has infected millions of computers worldwide has been arrested in Slovenia. While his real name was not revealed, the man in question is known as ‘Iserdo’ and he is believed to have written the programme behind the mariposa virus, also known as ‘butterfly’.

The butterfly botnet (hey, you try and get a picture of a botnet) has infected nearly 13 million computers.

The botnet, one of the world’s largest, was dismantled earlier this year after infecting 12.7 million computers. It was designed to steal personal financial details and was also found in the PCs of banks and major companies.

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Internet security firm Webroot has announced it is to establish its international headquarters in Dublin, creating 50 jobs over the next two years.

An IDA announcement on the move was released today which reveals that the new operation will act as the headquarters for all of Webroot’s global business outside of the US. Its initial activities will include sales, marketing, localisation, engineering, inventory and fulfilment, customer support, and certain shared services functions.

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Second Aussie news story of the day, with IBM today apologising having supplied a malware-infected USB stick to delegates attending this week’s IBM AusCERT security conference in Queensland.

An unknown number of delegates picked up the sticks after visiting IBM’s booth at the conference and while the company wouldn’t identify the strain of malware involved in the attack, they did say that it’s “a type of virus widely detected for at least two years which takes advantage of Windows autorun to spread”. Continue Reading

With privacy being just about the biggest topic on the web this week, it’s interesting to note that Google is playing around with the idea of launching facial recognition technology. They’re toying with the notion very, very carefully though.

Smile:o)

Eric Schmidt, chief executive with the company has apparently said that “a series of public disputes over privacy issues had caused the management team to review its procedures and the launch of new technologies”. According to Google executives that the Financial Times has spoken too, facial recognition is one of the key topics of internal debate.

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Across the Atlantic, a CBS news investigation has put the frighteners up anyone who’s used a digital photocopier to copy a passport, bank statement or any other sort of important document in the recent past.

The investigation revealed that many digital machines retain an electronic image of what is being scanned within their internal hard drives, enabling identity thieves to gather sensitive information scanned from personal documents (or just laugh at images of various body parts from Christmas parties). Continue Reading

While I love laughing at the ills of others as much as the next man, chuckling at the 13 reported cases of identity theft suffered by LifeLock CEO, Todd Davis really doesn’t sit well. This is, after all, the guy who posted his social security number on billboards and TV commercials as part of a campaign to promote his company’s credit monitoring services, so he was asking for it for one thing.

Despite numerous identity theft cases, it appears the huge amount of publicity gained from all this makes the whole debacle worth it for Davis.

Secondly, Davis seems more than happy to talk about the identity thefts as while 13 cases have arisen “hundreds” of attempts have been made to use his personal information since the company’s ad campaign started, with him arguing that this proves LifeLock’s services are quite safe indeed. Continue Reading

Proxiez-Net, a Russian internet host which reportedly helped gangs steal online bank logins, has been taken offline. Career criminals and Russian mafia types will no doubt be disgusted with a now non-existent level of service from the site which had previously advertised itself as immune to attempts to shut it down.

The BBC reports that the site has been shut down and that, according to security expert Miko Hypponen, who is chief research officer at F-Secure, Proxiez-Net has “been known to be involved in various nasty businesses”.

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The Conservative/Liberal Democrats coalition face living up to one of their many election promises this week as pressure grows to follow through on previously held concerns regarding the extradition of hacker, Gary McKinnon.

Gary McKinnon claimed he was on a "moral crusade" to find classified documents about UFOs.

McKinnon, who has Asperger’s syndrome, has been accused of causing widespread damage by hacking into Pentagon and Nasa computers in 2001 and 2002. American officials have insisted the “cyber terrorist” should be extradited to the US where he could face up to 60 years in prison. However, the 43-year-old’s family expects confirmation from the new Government within days that the decision to send him to the USA has been overturned, reports the Express.

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Google has had to make the pretty embarrassing admission that, for the past three years, the company has wrongly collected information people have sent over unencrypted wi-fi networks.

The official company line is that it had been “mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open networks”, with the revelations coming to light after German authorities asked to audit the data the company’s Street View cars gathered as they took photos viewed on Google maps.

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Software piracy is continuing to rise across the world, according to a report from the Business Software Alliance (BSA). The industry body says that losses from software piracy amounted to $51.4 billion (€40.4 billion) in 2009.

The BBC says the report (which you can see in full here) singled out computer users in the Asia Pacific region as the source of the biggest losses in the world. But, it says, there are also positive signs, as the rate of piracy declined in more than 50 countries, and rose in only 19.

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The end is nigh folks. Apparently, you’re only hope is a plane, around €3,500 and getting an unexpected email from Professor Hubert J Farnsworth. Well, that’s what oul’ Hubert would have you believe anyway, as he’s the centerpiece of a scam email so good it’s worthy of a news story.

Check that spam mail, Hubert may have chosen you to ‘continue the survival of the human race’.

Caught by Scam Detectives, it’s best to read the Farnsworth mail in full to appreciate how wonderfully dumb the whole thing is, and yes that is the name of the professor in Futurama. Anyway, here it is…

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In what could count as a minor public relations disaster, Facebook has fixed a security flaw that allowed users to eavesdrop on the live chats of their friends and see their pending friend requests.

"For a limited period of time, a bug permitted some users' chat messages and pending friend requests," confirmed Facebook.

Coming in the wake of the recent privacy issues surrounding the ‘open graph’ concept, it isn’t exactly the kind of issue that Facebook’s tech team would have wanted to deal with. The BBC reports that exploit in question used the site’s privacy features – intended to protect a user – to expose the personal information. Continue Reading