The bear economy is creating a bull market for cyber-crooks.

Experts and law-enforcement officials who track Internet crime say scams have intensified in the past six months, as fraudsters take advantage of economic confusion and anxiety to target both consumers and businesses.

Thieves are sending out phony e-mails and putting up fake Web sites pretending to be banks, mortgage-service providers or even government agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Cellphones and Internet-based phone services have also been used to seek out victims. The object: to drain customer accounts of money or to gain information for identity theft.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 12:40

Efforts to steal personal data and remove money from pockets of innocent people via computer scams is on the rise.


"USA Today" reports a huge assortment of schemes, many involving online promotions that promise easy riches, were already on the increase last year when financial markets nosedived.


Now those efforts have soared.


Panda Security, an Internet security company says the number of malicious programs circulating on the Internet tripled to more than 31-thousand a day in mid-September.


Roger Thornton, chief technology officer at Fortify Software says cybercrime groups "are breaching the highest levels of the global finance infrastructure and a majority of our home computers." Lately those groups have moved to targeting data storehouses.


Heartland Payment Systems announced last week that a system it uses to process millions of payment card transactions each month had been broken into.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 10:55

A fired Fannie Mae contract employee allegedly placed a virus in the mortgage giant’s software that could have shut the company down for at least a week and caused millions of dollars in damage, prosecutors say.

Rajendrasinh Makwana, an Indian citizen, was indicted Tuesday on computer intrusion charges. The former Gaithersburg resident is out on $100,000 bail, court documents said.

Makwana was fired from his contract position at Fannie Mae on Oct. 24 for changing computer settings without permission from his supervisor, FBI agent Jessica Nye wrote in a sworn statement. He had worked at Fannie Mae for three years as a computer engineer at the Urbana offices, where he had full access to all of the federally created mortgage company’s 4,000 servers. Before leaving work Oct. 24, Makwana allegedly tried to hide a code in server software that was set to activate the morning of Jan. 31, the agent wrote.

“Had this malicious script executed, [Fannie Mae] engineers expect it would have caused millions of dollars of damage and reduced if not shutdown operations at [Fannie Mae] for at least one week,” Nye wrote. “The total damage would include cleaning out and restoring all 4,000 of [Fannie Mae’s] servers, restoring and securing the automation of mortgages, and restoring all data that was erased.”

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 15:59

Transportation officials in Texas are scrambling to prevent hackers from changing messages on digital road signs after one sign in Austin was altered to read, "Zombies Ahead."

Chris Lippincott, director of media relations for the Texas Department of Transportation, confirmed that a portable traffic sign at Lamar Boulevard and West 15th Street, near the University of Texas at Austin, was hacked into during the early hours of Jan. 19.

"It was clever, kind of cute, but not what it was intended for," said Lippincott, who saw the sign during his morning commute. "Those signs are deployed for a reason — to improve traffic conditions, let folks know there's a road closure."

"It's sort of amusing, but not at all helpful," he told FOXNews.com.

Tampering with portable road signs is illegal and potentially dangerous to drivers. It is a misdemeanor in Texas, with penalties ranging from fines to potential jail time.

Lippincott said the hacked sign — manufactured by IMAGO — is owned and operated by the city of Austin. Texas Department of Transportation signs have not been affected, he said.

"It is always possible that it could occur, but we attempt to prevent hacking incidents," Lippincott wrote in an e-mail. He declined to comment on security measures to protect the state's signs from hackers.

Austin Public Works spokeswoman Sara Hartley said the incident was not initially reported to police, but will be shortly. The sign was reverted back to its original message within hours, according to Hartley, who insisted the signs are tamper-resistant and equipped with external locks.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 10:48