I assume it’s horrible to open up your personal documents file on your computer and finding a ransom note warning you that all of your private files will be deleted unless you pay a ransom to the cyber criminals. Well, that's exactly what happened over the past several days to more than a thousand victims, many of them employees at U.S.-based companies and government contractors.

A new survey by Webroot Software, a provider of security software, highlights the most common forms of malicious security threats in the UK. During the month of June, one of the most widespread spyware infections in the UK was CoolWebSearch. 

Having already gotten access to hundreds of MySpace accounts trough phishing, hackers have been using compromised MySpace.com accounts to attack innocent Web surfers, security experts said.

Yahoo Messenger was again the carrier of a phishing scam on Friday jun
29. This new wave of phishing directed the users to a hijacked website
asking them to enter their Yahoo username and password. Worse yet, the
infected YM message forwards itself to the victim's YM contacts.

 A new, stealthier version of a previously known Russian Trojan named Gozi has been released on the Internet since April 17 and has already stolen identity data from more than 2,000 home users worldwide.
The compromised data includes bank and credit card account numbers (including card verification value codes – CVV2 Data), Social Security numbers and online payment account numbers as well as usernames and passwords. As with its precursor, the new version of Gozi is designed to steal information from encrypted Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) streams and send the stolen information to a server in Russia.

Verisign plugin turns the address bar of  Firefox green for highly-trusted sites that use EV SSL encryption in a way that mimics IE 7 behavior. The Internet security services provider has released a Firefox extension that
will show the same type of green address bar that is shown by Internet
Explorer 7 when it lands on  highly trusted Web sites that use EV SSL
(Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer) certificates.

The U.S. Department of Defense has begun blocking access to MySpace and YouTube on its network, citing security concerns and the need to prevent the network from being slowed by video traffic.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) is the global pan-industrial and law enforcement association focused on eliminating the fraud and identity theft that result from phishing, pharming and email spoofing of all types.

Breaking into somebody else's MySpace account has gotten a lot of attention recently, with a wicked fight between hot celebrities  Shanna Moakler, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton.

Information stolen from the systems of big retailer TJX was being used illegally in Nov. 2006 in an $8 million gift card plot, one month before TJX officials said they found out of the breach, declares Florida law enforcement officials.