On March 19, 2008, Microsoft had to release a new patch for an Excel
flaw, after acknowledging that it had caused calculation faults in
programs applying Microsoft Office's Visual Basic for Applications
(VBA), according to the Microsoft officials.

Microsoft admitted that the flaw could permit a hacker to remotely run
a program on the victim computer. The vulnerability exists in the
method in which Excel files are executed and could permit a hacker to
remotely control a customer's computer along with the capacity to run
malware.

The faculty and student at Springfield's University of Illinois (UIS) have been recently receiving huge spam mails every day. More recently they received a series of messages advertising sexual medicines.

According to university officials, a batch of 30-40 e-mail users who reported to UIS about the increasing spam, said that they recently received additional 2-10 spam mails on a daily basis.

It has been observed that the spam messages increasingly managed to pass through the filters. This boost of messages does not relate to the overall increase in the number of normal e-mails but fluctuations or spikes have been found that is likely spam.

Domain registrar NetNames recently launched its Quarterly Fraud Report on March 20, 2008 that highlights increment in online frauds against banking customers through phishing e-mails in the beginning of 2008.

Envisional, the sister concern of NetNames, created the report for finding the number of phishing e-mails received by major financial institutions' customers from early December 2007 to end of February 2008. According to the report, financial service organizations' customers received more than 60,000 phishing e-mails, a significant number, in February 2008.

TorrentFreak, a torrent-watching Website, has reported a serious flaw in the well-known media player, VideoLan, also called the VCL Player for Mac and Windows, as reported by Download on March 18, 2008.

According to TorrentFreak, the security hole can be exploited to execute arbitrary code by potentially controlling the host system from a distance.

Anne Milgram, Attorney General of Florida, and Gregory A. Paw, Criminal Justice Director, declared that two men from the state were legally accused on March 18, 2008 for allegedly disrupting an online medical business in New Jersey that led to losses, amounting $900,000, as reported by Gloucestercitynews on March 18, 2008.

A supermarket chain in Maine reported on March 17, 2008 that a security breach into its system network put at risk debit and credit card accounts of about 4.2 Million customers, as reported by Cnet on March 17, 2008.

According to the company, the theft of data happened from the computer systems of Hannaford when the process of card authorization was being transmitted. According to reports, Hannaford was informed about the unnatural transactions being done on cards at the stores on February 27, 2008. This led to law enforcement and IT investigations to take necessary measures.

Bank customers in Ireland are being targeted with as many as 300 phishing attacks per day in which fraudsters try to lure people into divulging their security codes to commit theft from those people's online bank accounts. Ireland's AIB (Allied Irish Bank) has warned its customers that a sharp increase in phishing scams was noticed and therefore, they needed to be more vigilant.

BitDefender, vendor for data security and anti-virus software, announced on March 17, 2008 that its anti-spam specialists have found spammers of Nigerian scam e-mails to use Google Calendar, a new passage to attack the corporate.

According to the study by a security firm, Symantec, in a small time period of four months (October 2007-January 2008), Indian banking system has witnessed six fold increase in the phishing attacks, as reported by THE ECONOMIC TIMES on March 16, 2008.

According to MX Logic, a security company, spammers have expanded their activities during 2008 by resetting their strategy with increasing success rates at spamming even more e-mails to people's accounts.

Based on previous years' statistics, the volume of spam has been observed to remain stable from the time of the vacations indicating that e-mail users could find a new wave of spam attacks in the current year (2008).

As per the officials at Consumer Ministry of New Zealand, as the 2008 Fraud Awareness week (March 3-10, 2008) came to an end, a new mail scam was reported to the website of SCAMwatch that provides information on different types of scams, suggests the customers to be more careful and not reply any unknown mail.

The mail, called as "hitman scam", has reached New Zealand. The e-mail threatens the users to fulfill their demands and pay thousands of dollars to a cyber extortionist.

Consumer Affairs Minister, Judith Tizard, said that this kind of scam variety shows the requirement of programs like Fraud Awareness Week. Although many users can easily recognize the scam but a method like this can be dangerous and create havoc, as reported by Scoop on March 10, 2008.

According to a research by Ultrascan, a Netherlands-based IT fraud agency, white-collar professionals, including doctors, engineers and architects, are being cheated by e-mail fraudsters who collect their personal information through conference Websites and asked them to chip in fake ventures, as reported by Timesonline on March 17, 2008.

Besides, the report also disclosed that contrary to a common belief that poorly educated and financially weak people are easy to con, rich and influential professionals are the most susceptible.

Information Technologies Department of University of Delaware (UD), on March 11, 2008, warned all computer users at the campus to watch out for a new phishing e-mail that uses the subject title as "Confirm Your UD E-mail Account."

Phishing is a practice that involves hackers who mimic legitimate organizations and companies in e-mails to lure users to give away their passwords, bank account, credit card, or Social Security numbers.

Police Department in Arlington Heights, on March 3, 2008, issued an alert to residents about an online scam that is distributing spam mails threatening to take the lives of recipients if they fail to pay up the amount of money demanded.

According to the Police Department in Arlington Heights, the criminals have skipped from giving word of lucky winnings to warnings of murder in attempts to get people to part from their money. The Arlington police received reports from three residents that they had received an anonymous e-mail threatening to kill.

Cyber criminals seem to be frequently using the topic of Tibet to make entry into others' computers. The nation regularly gets some coverage from the press about efforts to liberate Tibet from Chinese rule, according to software security vendors, McAfee and Sophos, as reported by Securitypronews on March 12, 2008.