STRANGNAS, Sweden, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- A Swedish priest has resigned after allegedly downloading a computer virus picked up from pornography Web sites, officials said.

The Church of Sweden clergyman from Strangnas admitted to surfing porn sites and has resigned from his post because of the virus, which disabled his church's computer network, the Swedish Web site The Local reported Monday.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 16:01

SUNNYVALE, CA -- 10/20/08 -- What do Halloween and a sent email have in common? Both can be equally frightening, according to Proofpoint (http://www.proofpoint.com), the leading provider of unified email security, archiving and data loss prevention solutions. With Halloween lurking around the corner, Proofpoint has identified some of the scariest email issues of 2008.

These blunders, attacks and mishaps have caused sleepless nights and financial peril for consumers, corporate executives, politicians and of course, email and IT administrators.

In no particular order, Proofpoint highlights some of this year's email mishaps below:

1.) Phishing Fiasco

In September, it was reported that cyber-criminals were launching fake sites for charities and asking unsuspecting consumers for donations to help in the hurricane disaster efforts. With any phishing site, people can be tricked and treated into revealing financial information and often discover the fraud after it is too late.(1)

The Proofpoint Attack Response Center reports that "themed" phishing attacks continue with the latest threats preying on consumer concerns around the global financial crisis.

2.) Preying on Palin's Email

A hacker breached the personal Yahoo! account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and revealed portions of its content on a site called Wikileaks. Security experts note that it can be fairly simple for a determined person to hack into a personal email account, but concerns have been raised about Palin using her personal email for business issues.(2) David C. Kernell, son of Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell, was indicted earlier this month in the case.

3.) Obama's Unsightly Spam

A malicious spam email spread in September claiming to have a link to a sex video of Obama, but instead included spyware to steal sensitive data from the victim's computer.(3) Current events and sensational news headlines -- both real and fictional -- remain popular subject lines for phish and spam attacks because of their potential to lure recipients into opening the email or its attachments.

4.) Emails: Dead and Buried

Oracle Corp. failed to unearth CEO Larry Ellison's emails that were sought as evidence in a class-action lawsuit. According to the US District Judge Susan Illston, Oracle should have figured out a way to comply with the order to produce the information, which was issued in late 2006.(4)

5.) Email Job Elimination

Carat's chief people officer accidentally alerted staffers that their jobs could be in peril by sending an office-wide email only meant for senior management. Additionally, the specifics on the talking points of their restructuring were shared.(5)

6.) Unhealthy News Anchor Obsession

A former news anchor, smitten by his female co-anchor was charged with hacking into her email account 537 times in 146 days, often checking on her 10 times a day or more. He logged in from both home and work and passed on some of the information to a Philadelphia newspaper gossip columnist.(6)

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 11:15

AV software meets firewall, has meltdown

A dodgy anti-virus update from AVG wrongly flagged up the popular ZoneAlarm firewall as a Trojan on Tuesday.

The mis-firing AVG definition file tagged components of ZoneAlarm as infected with the Agent_r.CX Trojan horse and quarantined important files. As a result users running the popular antivirus package alongside security suite software from Check Point were left with a malfunctioning firewall, mystery infection reports and an inability to re-install their ZoneAlarm software.

The problem cropped up on ZoneAlarm support forums and persisted into the early hours of Tuesday morning, before AVG issued an update that fixed the false alarm. Prior to that Zone Alarm users hit with the issue were able to get around the problem only if they knew how to add the directory path for Zone Alarm as an exception to anti-virus scans.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 11:59

SALT LAKE CITY — Six Utah schools have started using a Web site that allows students to anonymously report bullies.

A Brigham Young University student, Justin Bergener, created the site, which also lets students post information about thefts, drugs and harassment.

Bergener said he hopes students who might otherwise be too scared or shy to speak up will be willing to post on the site.

"There really is this culture and code of silence that's particularly prevalent in middle schools and high schools," Bergener said.

Many students may not want to be seen in the office talking to an authority figure, said Rosanna Ungerman, principal of Provo's Dixon Middle School.

"It allows students to have an outlet and avenue to report things they might otherwise not have reported," Ungerman said.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 10:16