23/10/2008 by john.

Helping you to make your Christmas budget go that extra bit further, Audio-Technica has announced a fantastic giveaway to all purchasers of headphones from the www.atheadphones.com website.

Whether it’s a pair of high performance noise cancelling headphones to help Dad escape the Christmas chaos, or a stunning pair of in-ear headphones to get the most from your MP3 player, Audio-Techinca has some of the best solutions available. And to help you make every pound stretch a bit further this year, Audio-Technica has announced an irresistible offer - for every purchase over £60 from the www.atheadphones.com website, you can have a FREE pair of eye-catching ES3 portable headphones in your choice of either blue, pink or green.

Retailing for £39.95 inc VAT (manufacturer’s recommended price), the ES3 combines value, style and sound quality. Its sealed earpiece design (closed back) enables use in crowded commuter environments without annoying fellow travellers and the 28mm diameter transducers, with neodymium magnets provide a true hi-fi listening experience, with a wide and even 10 – 25,000 Hz frequency response. Designed as the perfect headphone upgrade for MP3s, this ultra-light weight headphone delivers high performance listening in three vibrant fashion colours, perfect for today’s fashion-conscious music-lover.

To add your free pair of ES3 headphones to your Christmas Shopping List, simply visit the www.atheadphones.com website between November 1st and December 12th December, make your headphone purchase over £60 and enter the discount code: ES3BL (for blue) ES3GN (for green) or ES3PK (for pink) at the checkout and your free headphones will be delivered with your order in time for Christmas.

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23/10/2008 by john.

Panda Security, the world’s leading security software vendor, reports there is a potential direct correlation between the volatility of the world’s major stock markets and the growth of new malware threats.

The two phenomena are tied together much more closely than previously thought and recent stock market instability has accelerated the volume of targeted cyber attacks and their relative impact on the economy over the last month and a half.

The trend, scrutinized by PandaLabs, suggests that the number of cyber attacks has rocketed in direct contrast to the world’s stock markets plummeting down. Cyber attacks were highest on the days when the stock markets dropped the most.

Panda analysts believe the recent spike in malware could be related to cyber criminals now having fewer possible targets as a result of consolidation within the banking industry.

The world’s global recession might have ironically translated into bad conditions for commiting cyber crime. In effect, hackers became increasingly worried that traditional Trojan attacks and phishing scams would not net the same rewards they once did. This is why they are now rushing to find another source of income; less innovative, and more traditional forms of crimeware.

Rather than stealing credit card details, account numbers and sensitive password information, the current wave of scams tricks users into buying fake antivirus. The activity, commonly known as rogue antivirus installations, has an average success rate of 3.4 per cent and has resulted in cyber crooks pocketing around £7.7 million-a-month of revenue, according to Panda’s latest estimates.

“Criminal organisations are closely watching market performance and adapting as needed to ensure maximum profit. What makes these attacks successful at this specific moment is because they prey on individuals’ fears of identity theft and computer infections”, said Dominic Hoskins, Country Manager, Panda Security UK.

In a nutshell, the attacks are quite simple. Potential victims are infected by visiting corrupt web sites and loading the malware onto their computers. The malware then causes alerts to pop up on the victims’ computer screens, saying that they’ve been infected by a virus and that they need to buy anti-malware software to remove it. The provided link takes victims to a fraudulent web site that appears to sell the software. In reality, the site is operated by a cyber criminal, who charges around £30 for non-existent software.

The new strategy is accelerated by the banking industry consolidation brought on by the multi-million-pound bank bailout packages introduced by several governments around the world. As a result of this consolidation, fewer banking entities will exist in the long term and the perception of instability in the financial community makes for a less attractive target. Hence, cyber crooks turned their sights towards greyware i.e. adware and spyware.

Dominic Hoskins added: “Our research suggests that there is a strong correlation between stock market declines, banking industry consolidation and surge in economic cybercrime. The results show that cyber crooks’ attacks hit an all time high when stock markets declined. It also seems that current economic conditions forced cyber crooks to diversify their methods of crimeware. They clearly moved away from common Trojan and phishing malicious towards rouge antivirus installation”.

Panda Security has monitored the world’s key stock indices and correlated this with the behavior of malicious activity. Below is just an example of how the world’s major stock markets including FTSE 100 index performed alongside malware attacks.

Figure # 1 – Stock market evolutions (Sept. 5th to Sept. 15th) – source: moneycentral.msn.com

Figure # 2 – Threat evolution with key highlights (Sept. 5th to Sept. 16th) – source: PandaLabs

The graphs indicate that when the markets are doing poorly, cyber criminals are capitalizing on weakened economic states to reap huge financial rewards. For example, Figure #1 demonstrates the general decline of the DJIA, NASDAQ, S&P 500, FTSE 100, IBEX 35 and the Composite Index for a period of one and a half months and indicates several points of notable loss. When comparing this graph to the malware evolution graph (Figure #2) from Sept. 5th to Oct. 16th, it clearly shows that when the markets are unstable, cyber crime is significantly higher.

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