New Mutating Toolkit Trojan Infects Thousands - Security - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness

New Mutating Toolkit Trojan Infects Thousands - Security - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness

By Stefanie Hoffman, CMP Channel
5:20 PM EST Mon. Jan. 14, 2008
The latest wave of cyber attacks will likely be out of the box -- literally. Security researchers recently detected yet another crimeware toolkit that has the ability to turn established and legitimate Web sites into malware traps while constantly mutating to evade detection.

The new crimeware Trojan, which was first detected by San Jose-based security company Finjan, infected more than 10,000 Web sites in December alone and has likely affected hundreds of thousands of sites throughout 2007, experts say. Finjan researchers also assert that the number of affected sites will rise exponentially in the next 12 months, due to the fact that the toolkit enables attackers with very little experience to rapidly infect an enormous amount of machines in a short amount of time.

Webmasters Ponder PageRank Discrepancy

An update to the Google Directory has webmasters puzzling over an apparent discrepancy in PageRank scores.

Webmasters Ponder PageRank Discrepancy

For months, the speculation surrounded an apparent decrease in PageRank scores on Google's Toolbar. It seemed the decrease in rank was connected to penalties associated with buying and selling links that passed on PageRank, a practice Google not-so-quietly condemned last autumn.