New year, old tricks

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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It may be a brand new year, but many cybercriminals will continue to use old tricks – just as long as they carry on working.

Take this attack for instance, which we saw in our spam traps this morning.

An email is spammed out, claiming to come from Microsoft and urging the recipient to download a critical update to patch their systems.

The download and installation links, however, point to an executable program hosted on a website in Italy. Installing the code on your computer is obviously not a good idea.

We will, no doubt, see plenty of new tricks and variations on old themes from cybercriminals during 2009. But that shouldn’t make us close our minds to “golden oldie” threats that have been deployed by hackers time and time again over the years.

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.