A total of 45 billion yen — equivalent to about $380 million — were the total financial losses incurred from January to October this year due to spam and scam phone calls in Japan. The prevalance of smartphones in the country may have made communication more accessible than ever, but with it comes the increased risk in security.

McAfee Japan, planning to turn over the situation, has decided to actively improve mobile security with the development of a new Android app, the McAfee Safe Call.  Co-developed by local IT firm Tobila Systems, the new app provides a security check to phone calls, much in the same way as how anti-virus software checks files and data for malicious content. The app automatically identifies any caller, and by matching it to a constantly updating cloud database, determines if that caller’s number is safe or not.

As explained by McAfee during an introduction seminar held last week, the McAfee Safe Call uses four basic notification modes, all of which help the user determine the level of risk a phone call may have. The safest green level determines that the number calling is properly listed in Tobila Systems’ safe database, as well as being listed on the user’s phonebook. A yellow alert notification checks that the number calling is listed in the database as a spam call number, and appropriately warns the user with it. Red notifications show blacklisted scam/fraudulent numbers, while a gray notification indicates an unknown/undetermined number which is either not yet in the database, on a public line, or is an international call.

McAfee touts that the complex yet convenient integration of the system is the key to make the app work as advertised. Tobila Systems explains that data won’t just be collected, but it will also be rechecked and cross-referenced to make sure that the numbers are actually spam and scam numbers. More importantly, McAfee promises that the app would not only provide security from spam and scam numbers, but also provide security in the form of privacy. Any additional personal data on the mobile device that the app would use will require the user’s permission before it is sent to the cloud database.

Though McAfee and Tobila Systems are confident in the implementation of the new security app, both companies admit that there are still a few gaping hurdles that prevent it from becoming a universal solution. Developing the same system for Apple devices might prove quite difficult for instance, because no API for developing apps for (carrier) phone calls is currently available for iOS at the moment. Also, the app is only optimized for carrier calls, and is not designed for VoIP systems, the apps of which are gaining steady popularity in smartphones today.

Nevertheless, McAfee is keen on using its McAfee Safe Call app to further bolster Japan’s mobile security, as its successful implementation could really help significantly mitigate financial losses.

The post What McAfee Has to Say About Japan’s Mobile Security Problem appeared first on VR World.

1. Regin. /ˈreɪɡɪn/ 1. (Norse myth) a dwarf smith, tutor of Sigurd, whom he encouraged to kill Fafnir for the gold he guarded.

Regin is essentially a murderous dwarf who is caught/killed by his own greed. This Norse mythology is at the core a description of the Regin virus that has injected itself across the globe and today has finally been brought to light by Symantec and Kaspersky researchers. The Regin cybvervirus is a virus that has been tracked over the course of the past few years by security firms like Symantec, Kaspersky and McAfee, but they simply did not have enough data to build the whole picture of the computer virus’ scope nor its target. As a result, this research has been going on for quite some time and today multiple security companies have published their findings on the Regin malware and what it seeks to accomplish once it has infected a system.

According to Symantec’s research, Regin is being used as a covert espionage tool to go after very specific targets and infect them at a very deep level to either gain access to information or to gain access to a user of that network’s information. They say that Regin is a very complicated and highly encrypted piece of malware that hides its final form from anyone looking to find it unless they have access to all five stages of the malware’s unpacking. They detail the process in their technical whitepaper but it is essentially a multi-stage virus that hides its ultimate target and execution unless users can obtain every form/stage of the virus’ unpacking until it becomes the final payload.

This multi-stage approach is similar to what was seen from Duqu and Stuxnet and is once again very likely to be a sovereign-built piece of malware from some government. And as you can see, the targets that it goes after are very broad and appear to be focused mostly developing countries with Russia, Belgium and Germany being the exceptions. Those countries according to Kaspersky are:

Algeria
Afghanistan
Belgium
Brazil
Fiji
Germany
Iran
India
Indonesia
Kiribati
Malaysia
Pakistan
Russia
Syria

However, if you use Symantec’s data, the list of countries actually expands to include Saudi Arabia, Austria, Ireland and Mexico.

Regin Countries

Additionally, Kaspersky discovered a strong attack on GSM networks, especially in the case of Belgium where an entire operator was infiltrated by this malware and had publicly announced that they had been attacked, but were not aware of the perpetrator nor the target. What’s interesting, however, is that both Kaspersky and Symantec had discovered that this malware’s structure and payload delivery system (the mutli-stage approach) were specifically designed to obscure the malware’s existence and once it had infected a system it was designed to be inconspicuous as it continued to linger on the infected system, making detection incredibly difficult.

The post Regin: Stuxnet's Best Spying Malware Cousin appeared first on VR World.

1. Regin. /ˈreɪɡɪn/ 1. (Norse myth) a dwarf smith, tutor of Sigurd, whom he encouraged to kill Fafnir for the gold he guarded.

Regin is essentially a murderous dwarf who is caught/killed by his own greed. This Norse mythology is at the core a description of the Regin virus that has injected itself across the globe and today has finally been brought to light by Symantec and Kaspersky researchers. The Regin cybvervirus is a virus that has been tracked over the course of the past few years by security firms like Symantec, Kaspersky and McAfee, but they simply did not have enough data to build the whole picture of the computer virus’ scope nor its target. As a result, this research has been going on for quite some time and today multiple security companies have published their findings on the Regin malware and what it seeks to accomplish once it has infected a system.

According to Symantec’s research, Regin is being used as a covert espionage tool to go after very specific targets and infect them at a very deep level to either gain access to information or to gain access to a user of that network’s information. They say that Regin is a very complicated and highly encrypted piece of malware that hides its final form from anyone looking to find it unless they have access to all five stages of the malware’s unpacking. They detail the process in their technical whitepaper but it is essentially a multi-stage virus that hides its ultimate target and execution unless users can obtain every form/stage of the virus’ unpacking until it becomes the final payload.

This multi-stage approach is similar to what was seen from Duqu and Stuxnet and is once again very likely to be a sovereign-built piece of malware from some government. And as you can see, the targets that it goes after are very broad and appear to be focused mostly developing countries with Russia, Belgium and Germany being the exceptions. Those countries according to Kaspersky are:

Algeria
Afghanistan
Belgium
Brazil
Fiji
Germany
Iran
India
Indonesia
Kiribati
Malaysia
Pakistan
Russia
Syria

However, if you use Symantec’s data, the list of countries actually expands to include Saudi Arabia, Austria, Ireland and Mexico.

Regin Countries

Additionally, Kaspersky discovered a strong attack on GSM networks, especially in the case of Belgium where an entire operator was infiltrated by this malware and had publicly announced that they had been attacked, but were not aware of the perpetrator nor the target. What’s interesting, however, is that both Kaspersky and Symantec had discovered that this malware’s structure and payload delivery system (the mutli-stage approach) were specifically designed to obscure the malware’s existence and once it had infected a system it was designed to be inconspicuous as it continued to linger on the infected system, making detection incredibly difficult.

The post Regin: Stuxnet's Best Spying Malware Cousin appeared first on VR World.