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Malware and Hardware Security

ISF shares its security risk predictions Rather than consulting a crystal ball, the Information Security Forum (ISF) looked to experts in the field – including those from its member organizations – to develop a set of security risk predictions for 2012 and beyond.
29 July 2010 Suspected Mariposa botnet author arrested A 23-year-old Slovenian man – thought to be the author and creator of the infamous Mariposa (butterfly) botnet – has been arrested by Slovenian police, working in concert with their colleagues from Spain and a team from the FBI.
28 July 2010 Secret Service shows business how to fight cyberthreats Business needs to be more proactive in its approach to security in the face of increased insider threats and customized malware, says Verizon Business.
28 July 2010 Trusteer adds malware removal utility to Rapport browser add-in If you use e-banking with HSBC, NatWest, RBS, Santander and a growing number of other European and US banks, chances are you'll have been asked to download and install a free copy of Trusteer's Rapport security add-in to your browser.
28 July 2010 Cyber crimes cost organizations $3.8 million per year A recent study conducted by the Ponemon Institute reveals that, on average, cyber crime costs organizations in the US about $3.8 million per year.
27 July 2010 Cybercriminals tap online automated services to check fraud effectiveness The increasing automation of online frauds has been extended into the field of fraud effectiveness checks, as virus authors and botmasters are said to be using automated tools to verify the effectiveness of their fraudulent activities.
27 July 2010 Rustock spambot continues to ride high Research just published claims to show that, after six months generating vast quantities of spam, the Rustock spambot shows no signs of fading away.
26 July 2010 Google, Microsoft seek new approaches to security disclosure The back and forth between Google and Microsoft over security vulnerability disclosure has Google calling for a 60-day time frame to patch bugs, while Microsoft has shifted its focus by unveiling what it calls a ‘coordinated vulnerability disclosure’ process.
23 July 2010 PC demand pushes Microsoft to record sales Microsoft produced record fourth quarter sales of $16.04bn, 22% up on the same quarter 2009, as demand for PCs running its new operating system, Windows 7, improved worldwide.
23 July 2010 IBM discusses its security strategy It has been a busy acquisition season in the security sector thus far, with few companies being more active in this sphere than IBM. Members of the IBM security team spoke with Infosecurity about their views on the future of security and the firm’s strategy going forward.
22 July 2010 McAfee announces security tools for Apple Macs Security firm McAfee has released two security products for Apple Macs.
22 July 2010 Dell PowerEdge servers shipping with onboard malware? It seems that Dell is giving some users of its PowerEdge 410 servers an unwanted value-add in the shape of malware that comes pre-installed on the system motherboard.
22 July 2010 Windows zero-day flaw places SCADA systems in peril Research carried out by Sophos claims to show that the zero-day flaw identified by a number of security vendors late last week is being exploited by a new variant of the Stuxnet malware.
22 July 2010 Adobe to introduce PDF reader with sandboxing security feature Today Adobe announced a new security feature to the next major release of its popular Reader software the takes advantage of sandboxing technology, whereby the company hopes to implement another security hurdle for malicious-minded attackers.
20 July 2010 Google Postini team highlights increase in email JavaScript attacks Research complied through the Google Postini email security and archiving service shows that obfuscated JavaScript attacks have surged as of late, prompting the team to take steps that identify and filter out this type of spam.
20 July 2010 US tops the spam origination charts Spam origination research just released claims that the US hit the top slot in the second quarter of 2010, and the UK rose to number four – from number nine in the last quarter.
20 July 2010 Free web browser and plug-in security service launched Cloud security specialist Qualys has launched an interactive and online web browser checking service. Known as BrowserCheck, the service has been in development for almost 18 months and under active beta test internally for some three months, Wolfgang Kandek, Qualys' chief technology officer told Infosecurity.
19 July 2010 Cybercriminals combine Java and Flash to thwart security The latest report from M86 Security, a company specializing in real-time web and e-mail threat protection, has found hackers are using multiple attacks to get around IT security.
15 July 2010 New zero-day flaw hitting Windows users Hard on the heels of a raft of WinXP patches and updates on Tuesday of this week, it seems that a nasty USB-based zero-day flaw is hitting users of the popular operating system.
15 July 2010 Scam targets Visa, MasterCard online verification services Trusteer recently warned that the Zeus (Zbot) financial malware is targeting online banking customers of 15 leading US financial institutions by exploiting two trusted credit card security programs – Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode.
14 July 2010 Amazon and Apple iTunes credibility tapped by hackers spreading new back door trojan Researchers from Symantec claim to have seen a back door trojan, Trojan.Sasfis, which is being actively promoted under headings such as Amazon_Tracking_Number and iTunes_certificate.
14 July 2010 GFI Software scoops up Sunbelt Cary, N.C.-based firm GFI Software has acquired Sunbelt Software and, primarily, its VIPRE endpoint malware protection product.
13 July 2010 Fake Adobe Flash updates lure the unwary Barracuda Networks has warned internet surfers to be wary of fake Adobe flash updates, after it uncovered a number of compromised sites in the wild which present unwary visitors with an official-looking Adobe Flash update page.
09 July 2010 Conficker hits security charts in June The June malware charts from Sunbelt Software show that Conficker has surfaced once again as a security threat, largely as a result of internet users visiting untrusted sites looking for World Cup video streams, says the IT security specialist.
07 July 2010 Botnet malware targets Symbian smartphones New botnet malware is attacking Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson smartphones running Symbian operating systems, mobile security firm NetQin has warned.
07 July 2010 Unpatched Windows flaw causing problems says Microsoft Microsoft has announced that an unpatched flaw in Windows XP and Server 2003 – which it routinely alerted users about in the middle of last month – is being actively exploited by hackers in the wild.
06 July 2010 Hackers disrupt YouTube, iTunes and Wikipedia on US Independence Day Hacker groups hit several top websites on US Independence Day, but it remains unclear if the malicious efforts were co-ordinated or not, according to US reports.
05 July 2010 Apple iTunes security allegedly compromised Reports have been coming in overnight that a growing number of iTunes' accounts have been hacked, with unauthorised charges appearing on user accounts, as well as a 'take-over' of a number of apps on the iTunes store apparently by a Vietnamese software developer.
05 July 2010 Software vendors failing to use Microsoft Windows security systems Danish security tracking company Secunia has reported that around half of third-party software applications are failing to use two key Windows security features developed by Microsoft.
02 July 2010 Kaspersky Lab technology predicts malware epidemics Kaspersky Lab has patented technology in the US which it claims allows the potential scale of malware epidemics to be predicted accurately to stop them from spreading.
02 July 2010 IBM acquires BigFix in latest corporate acquisition As reported yesterday by Infosecurity, IBM has announced it has agreed to buy BigFix, the Emeryville, California-based corporate software policy control software vendor for an undisclosed sum.
02 July 2010 Obfuscated Javascript malware making a comeback The latest monthly threat landscape report from IT security vendor Fortinet asserts that obfuscated Javascript attacks are starting to hit internet users again.
01 July 2010 IBM acquires BigFix IBM today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire BigFix, Inc., a privately-held company based in Emeryville, California.
01 July 2010 Teenagers may be sharing too much information online Results of a recent online behavior survey commissioned by McAfee give rise to concern if you are the parent of a teenager.
30 June 2010 Kaspersky releases iPhone Threatpost app Kaspersky Lab has developed an iPhone app that keeps tech-savvy users up to date with all the latest developments in the technology risk stakes.
30 June 2010 US holds pole position as spam generator The end-of-May state of spam report from Kaspersky Lab claims that the US maintained its position as the prime distributor of spam – despite a decrease of 2.4% compared to March's figure.
28 June 2010 Symantec security ops manager warns of new phone support cyberscam Cybercriminals are branching out into new areas and, says Orla Cox, security operations manager with Symantec, one of the latest diverse scams involves a 'company' called Online PC Doctors, who initiate the cybercrime by telephoning the victim directly to advise the computer users they have a 'virus' and offer to fix it for a fee.
25 June 2010 Panda demonstrates iPad malware infection Researchers from PandaLabs have unveiled a successful malware infection on a jailbroken iPad that is identical to one previously revealed for the iPhone.
23 June 2010 Mobile malware is a reality says Kaspersky Mobile malware has been bubbling along in the background of the security world for the last few years but, according to Denis Maslennikov, Kaspersky Lab's mobile research group manager, the rise in smartphone sales is triggering a surge in mobile malware amongst cybercriminals.
21 June 2010 Apple goes covert with malware protection update A couple of anti-virus vendors have identified a malware protection update in the recently released Mac OS X 10.6.4 update. But, as one security consultant notes, Apple failed to mention this in the release notes and security advisory.
18 June 2010 You can't trust the internet, says Panda technical director After observing the IT security arena for around 20 years, Luis Corrons, Panda Security's technical director, has come to a simple conclusion – you can't trust the internet and, as a result, users should always be distrustful of everything they see on the web.
18 June 2010 Security expert cautions on hidden Javascript tweets Rik Ferguson, senior security advisor with Trend Micro, has uncovered a potentially serious Javascript security attack on users of the Twitter microblogging service.
17 June 2010 Microsoft will need to produce a patch for Windows XP SP2 Businesses running Windows XP SP2 have been hit by a double-whammy this week.
16 June 2010 Infosecurity welcomes new blogger to its roster We are pleased to announce the addition of Geoff Webb to our list of contributors currently blogging for Infosecurity.
15 June 2010 AVG introduces free web security tool for Mac The company, known primarily for its free anti-virus software, has now ventured into a new area of personal computing protection by offering its AVG LinkScanner to Mac users.
15 June 2010 Security threat monitor app for iPhone released Sophos has released a free app for the iPhone that is said to allow users to stay on top of latest threats, news and malware information in the IT security-sphere.
15 June 2010 Conficker still a threat, says Working Group The Conficker worm continues to be a threat and businesses need to be aware of two vulnerabilities it may have introduced to their IT systems, says an industry group set up to combat the malware.
14 June 2010 Spammers getting lazier says Symantec Some rather amusing news comes our way today courtesy of Symantec, and it does not bode well for the creative prowess of spammers. It appears that one of May’s hottest spam trends was blank email subject lines according to the company’s latest “State of Spam & Phishing” report.
11 June 2010 Adobe fixes Flash flaw in five days Adobe has quietly fixed the 'critical' security flaw affecting its Flash and Reader software that it revealed earlier this week. The issue has been fixed in an urgent patch folded in with a raft of updates that are claimed to solve 32 documented problems with Adobe's software.
11 June 2010 New vulnerability in Windows revealed An independent security researcher has published exploit code for a zero-day vulnerability in Windows XP and Windows 2003.
10 June 2010 YouTube impostor pages serving up malware Taking advantage of recent hot topics like the NBA Playoffs and the BP gulf oil spill, cybercriminals are capitalizing on the YouTube brand to infect user machines with malware.
09 June 2010 1700 Japanese cameras infected with virus Reports from Japan are coming in that Olympus has been shipping one of its digital cameras – the Stylus Tough 6010 – with a virus infection on the unit's internal memory card.
09 June 2010 Kaspersky details Q1 information security threats Nearly half of all information security threats came from Adobe application exploits over the first quarter of 2010 according to the most recent quarterly analysis from security vendor Kaspersky.
07 June 2010 Hike in trojan activity in May The latest monthly statistics on security threats from Sunbelt Software claim there has been a significant increase in Trojan activity, as well as malware designed to channel fake anti-virus products onto a user's machine.
04 June 2010 Penn State data may have been exposed This week the Pennsylvania State University sent data breach notification letters to 15 806 individuals who at one time had their personal information, including Social Security numbers, stored in a university database.
03 June 2010 50% of IT professionals hack own enterprises Research just published shows that 83% of IT professionals consider commercial software to be riddled with security flaws and, as a result, they are making heavy investments in penetration and code testing of their IT resources.
03 June 2010 Google switch from Microsoft could cause security issues Earlier this week, Google announced that its staff will require special permission to install Microsoft operating systems and software on their computers. According to one security expert, however, Google could be raising, rather than reducing its security risk profile.
03 June 2010 Half of Windows XP users left without tech support Wolfgang Kandek, the chief technology officer of Qualys, has warned Windows XP users that Microsoft's technical support for service pack 2 (SP2) of the popular operating system will cease on July 13. As a result of this, he advises users to install XP SP3 or upgrade to Windows 7.
02 June 2010 World Cup spam volumes soar Spam relating to the FIFA 2010 World Cup has soared by about 27% according to security firm, Symantec.
02 June 2010 Facebook users warned about new viral clickjacking worm It may have been Memorial Day weekend in the US, but it seems that Facebook hackers have been out in force, harvesting user credentials using a clickjacking worm that encourages users to click on what appears to be an attractive link.
01 June 2010 Ohio man indicted for involvement with fake anti-virus ring A Cincinnati area resident will face charges for aiding an international fake anti-virus scheme. Also indicted were two foreign-based co-conspirators.
01 June 2010 Security concerns hasten Google’s move off Windows Google is moving away from the Microsoft Windows operating system in favor of the Apple Mac OS and open source Linux because of security concerns after its Chinese operations were hacked in late 2009.
01 June 2010 Apple bigger than Microsoft or Google in market cap Yesterday Apple became the world's biggest IT company by market value, eclipsing Microsoft for the first time since 1989, and even Google.
27 May 2010 Mozilla warns of new phishing scam Aza Raskin, a well-known US interface design expert and creative lead on Mozilla's Firefox browser software, has revealed a new type of phishing attack known as `tab napping.'
27 May 2010 McAfee acquires Trust Digital for mobile security Veteran IT security vendor McAfee has announced plans to acquire privately-held Trust Digital, a mobile management and security software specialist. Terms of the deal have not been revealed.
26 May 2010 IBM gives away malware infected USB drives In what can best be described as an embarrassing situation, IBM apparently distributed USB sticks infected with malware at last week’s Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT) conference.
25 May 2010 Final episode of 'Lost' tapped by hackers to spread fake anti-virus software There's nothing like the final episode in a TV series to bring out people on the Net looking for early copies of the cliffhanger, and 'Lost' looks to be no exception. Unfortunately, PandaLabs reports users' searches are being hijacked to get them to install fake anti-virus software.
20 May 2010 Symantec to pay $1.28bn for VeriSign’s security business Security software group Symantec is to acquire VeriSign's identity and authentication business in a $1.28bn cash deal.
20 May 2010 Security hole found in Windows 7 display driver Microsoft has issued a security advisory for a canonical display driver (cdd.dll) vulnerability affecting Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
19 May 2010 McAfee quarterly threat analysis shows increased hacker intelligence The latest quarterly threat analysis from McAfee shows that, although fewer new threats were reported in the first quarter of 2010, cybercriminals are becoming a lot more inventive as they try and extract revenue from an increasingly security-savvy internet user-base.
18 May 2010 Single group responsible for two-thirds of phishing attacks in second half of 2009 Research just released claims to show that the Avalanche electronic crime syndicate, employing advanced malware, was responsible for two-thirds of all the phishing attacks detected in the second half of 2009.
13 May 2010 Cybercriminals exploit Google Groups Cybercriminals are using Google Groups to distribute rogue anti-virus software and other malware, according to researchers at security firm eSoft.
13 May 2010 Security firms warn of bogus job search emails Security vendors – including Websense and Sophos – have sent up a red flag about suspect emails targeting human resources staff. The messages apparently contain zip files that, when opened, infect users’ PCs with rouge anti-virus.
12 May 2010 Researcher to unveil ATM rootkit A researcher originally blocked from giving a talk about security in ATMs will go ahead and make his presentation at the Black Hat USA conference this year.
07 May 2010 How secure are Apple products? It’s a matter of perception David Harley of anti-virus vendor ESET recently examined black hat exploits of Apple products and Mac platforms. Despite a commonly held perception that the company’s products are inherently safer from a security perspective, according to Harley, they are hardly the “safe haven” that many believe them to be.
06 May 2010 US Treasury website hacked A website operated by the US Treasury was suspended on Tuesday after the site was hacked.
06 May 2010 IM worm runs wild online A network worm is spreading through Yahoo Instant Messenger, and has aggressively infected systems globally, according to security vendors.
05 May 2010 Infosecurity Europe 2010: Symantec acquires PGP and GuardianEdge Symantec, now the largest vendor in the security software marketplace, has agreed to buy PGP and GuardianEdge Technologies for $370 million in cash, and in the process gaining access to technology for protecting e-mails and data.
30 April 2010 Infosecurity Europe 2010: Organizations fall short on securing website applications IT security professionals in the US believe that their organizations lack proper investment in website application security, even though many of their websites contain ‘mission critical’ applications. This is according to a study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by data security firm Imperva and WhiteHat Security, which tests websites for vulnerabilities.
29 April 2010 Storm worm returns to internet Security researchers have identified a new version of the Storm worm that plagued the internet three years ago. The new version uses HTTP for command-and-control purposes instead of the original peer-to-peer approach, say reports.
28 April 2010 Microsoft withdraws security patch for Windows Media Services Microsoft has withdrawn a Windows 2000 Server security patch released on 13 April to fix a flaw in Windows Media Services.
26 April 2010 McAfee security software flags Windows kernel code as malware Reports are coming in that McAfee's popular IT security software is tagging Microsoft Windows system files as malicious, causing serious stability problems, screen freezes and bootup loops for a large number of Windows XP users.
22 April 2010 US malicious internet traffic doubled, says Akamai Malicious internet traffic emanating from the US almost doubled between the third and fourth quarters of last year, according to figures released by Akamai this week.
22 April 2010 Trusteer detects rapid spread of new polymorphic Zeus trojan Trusteer says it has detected a completely new version of the Zeus password stealing trojan that has been designed to steal online banking credentials.
21 April 2010 Extortion trojan targets torrent site users Anti-malware company Avira has reported an extortion scam designed to scare torrent site users into giving their credit card information to a phishing site.
21 April 2010 PDF attacks skyrocket, says Symantec Web-based attackers are increasingly targeting PDF files to compromise machines online, according to new figures released by Symantec. In the April version of its Internet Security Threat Report, the company revealed that half of all Web-based attacks in 2009 targeted PDF files, compared to just one in 10 attacks reported the previous year.
21 April 2010 Malicious activity in emerging regions a threat to all business, says Symantec Businesses need to take note of the increase in malicious cyber activity in emerging countries, particularly those offshore and outsourced operations, says Symantec.
20 April 2010 Weekly brief, April 20, 2010 Infosecurity charts the week's news.
20 April 2010 Google Chrome used as trojan bait A trojan has appeared posing as an extension to the Google Chrome browser. Delivered via email, the invitation to install the software tempts users with promises of a function to access documents from emails.
20 April 2010 New Mac malware warning Mac security software provider Intego has issued an alert for a new malware strain affecting Mac OS X.
19 April 2010 Porn sites top drive-by download list Porn sites are still the most likely online destinations to be compromised with malware, in spite of increasing attacks on legitimate non-porn websites, according to a report released by security company Commtouch this week.
19 April 2010 Apple issues patch for Mac hack Apple has issued a second security patch for its OS X for the second time in less than a month. This time the company looked to plug alleged security holes in the Safari browser that were uncovered by a researcher at this year’s CanSecWest conference.
16 April 2010 New Zeus attack uses Adobe design flaw The Zeus botnet continues to spread graciously, according to new data collected by Websense – and other researchers say that it is exploring a recently discovered design flaw in the Adobe PDF file format.
15 April 2010 Attackers use PAC feature to redirect browsers Brazilian malware writers are making use of a long-available feature within most modern browsers to launch attacks that redirect victims to malicious websites without their knowledge. The feature, known as proxy auto config, is turning up in banking trojans, according to researchers from Kaspersky.
14 April 2010 Game consoles at work threaten corporate security Games console in the workplace pose an increasingly serious threat to enterprise security, according to new research from Sunbelt Software. The anti-malware vendor said that almost 4 in 10 respondents to the survey had no idea about any of the documented threats relating to online console gaming.
14 April 2010 Weekly Brief, April 13, 2010 Infosecurity reviews the week's security news
13 April 2010 BitDefender discovers PC malware using iPhone as bait BitDefender has discovered a new PC malware spreading mechanism targeting iPhone users who want to jailbreak their devices.
12 April 2010 Alternate data stream tool launched RootKitAnalytics has made a tool available for discovering hidden alternate data streams. Called StreamArmor, it is designed to analyze a feature of the Windows file system that allows hidden data to be embedded in files.
12 April 2010 Korea reigns as king of malware threats The US has lost its place atop the leader board as the chief source of malware in March, as research from Network Box indicates Korea – mainly South Korea – can now claim the top spot when phishing attempts are included in the statistics.
06 April 2010 Fortinet: Scammers shifting to ransomware Ransomware and scareware continue to be huge threats, according to the March 2010 edition of the Fortinet Threatscape report.
01 April 2010 eBay comes under attack, says Red Condor eBay is the victim of a phishing attack that uses its own compromised server, according to email filtering company Red Condor.
01 April 2010 Botnet targets Vietnamese speakers Vietnamese speakers have been targeted in an attack that researchers are describing as politically motivated.
01 April 2010 Trojans continue to top malware list New research conducted by Panda Security shows that 61% of new threats created in the first quarter of 2010 were trojans.
30 March 2010 Malware lifespan continues to shorten, says Blue Coat Malware adaptation rates are getting faster, according to a report from Blue Coat Systems. The average lifespan of malware dropped to two hours last year, from up to seven hours in 2007, it said, adding that this has had a significant effect on the effectiveness of software patches.
30 March 2010 Apple releases massive round of OS X patches Apple issued an update to its Leopard and Snow Leopard systems yesterday, comprising numerous security, functionality and compatability fixes.
30 March 2010 Record season for tax, IRS phishing scams Data from McAfee show that the number of fake IRS domains is already at a record level when compared with last year’s numbers, as the security vendor warns last-minute filers not to fall prey to the various methods of identity and data theft that capitalize on tax season.
30 March 2010 Weekly brief, March 29, 2010 Infosecurity covers the last week's news highlights
29 March 2010 Symantec reveals China and RAR files are a rising threat Research just released by Symantec claims to show that targeted attacks are on the rise, with email originating from China and RAR attachments being a major source of security problems.
26 March 2010 Symantec intros web security monitoring service California's Symantec has taken the wraps off Web Security Monitoring (WSM), a new service for companies to check on their websites and ensure they are not being hacked, or perhaps worse, infecting their internet users.
25 March 2010 Sunbelt Software updates Sandbox to tackle zero-day attacks Sunbelt Software has updated its Sandbox automated dynamic malware analysis utility to deal with the increasing problem of zero-day targeted internet attacks.
25 March 2010 Symantec reports on 10 riskiest US cities for electronic crime Realtors love to wave lists of the top cities in the US for crime, and tell you that your potential new home is not on the list, but what about the top 10 cities for electronic crime? Symantec has stepped up to the plate and come up with just such a list.
24 March 2010 McAfee unveils Cloud Secure program McAfee has taken the wraps off its Cloud Secure program, which seeks to allow the growing number of software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers with additional layers of security for their cloud deployments.
23 March 2010 Sophos identifies fake antivirus software targeting Windows 7 A security expert at Sophos has unveiled fake antivirus software targeting the new Windows 7 operating system.
23 March 2010 Northern Iowa upset of Kansas leads to infected online search results When the number one seed in this year’s NCAA basketball tournament fell to the University of Northern Iowa over the weekend, black hats wasted little time playing the SEO game and thereby poising search engine results with malware-infected pages.
22 March 2010 Facebook phishing attack sweeps social network users An attack that scammed Facebook users into divulging their passwords was the sixth most popular piece of malware on the internet this week, according to McAfee.
18 March 2010 Disgruntled employee accused of remotely disabling over 100 cars You've heard about Apple potentially bricking iPhones, but that's small potatoes, compared to remotely disabling whole fleets of cars using centrally controlled computer systems. That's just what a 20-year-old employee for a Texas auto dealership is being accused of doing after he was laid off last month.
18 March 2010 Sunbelt upgrades Vipre, CounterSpy Sunbelt Software has updated its products on all fronts, refreshing its anti-malware and anti-spyware software lines, in addition to its central control tools.
17 March 2010 Weekly brief, March 16, 2009 Infosecurity rounds up the week's security news.
16 March 2010 Researchers crack RSA encryption via power supply Researchers claim to have broken 1024-bit RSA encryption in the OpenSSL cryptography library, although the hardware-focused attack is difficult to carry out and involves disrupting power supplies.
16 March 2010 US is malicious server leader, says AVG The US plays host to the largest number of malicious web servers, according to a study released by anti-malware company AVG.
13 March 2010 Facebook users subject to yet another malware attack Researchers from web security firm Websense warned Facebook users earlier today to refrain from clicking on URLs posted on the pages of some famous celebrities – or even people on their friend list – as links to alleged videos were actually portals to malware infection.
12 March 2010 Russian brides attempt to thaw the ice for winter spammers The latest monthly spam report shows that, regardless of the world economy, there is one item that is particularly hot this winter: Russian mail-order brides. This is according to newly released figures from McAfee.
11 March 2010 Provider takedown guts Zeus infrastructure Yet another botnet suffered severe losses to its functionality this week, in what appears to be a growing campaign among the white hat community to take down these virulent networks. Troyak-AS, which was the upstream provider for the six worst Zeus hosting ISPs, has been taken offline.
11 March 2010 Weekly Brief, March 8, 2010 Infosecurity US rounds up the significant events from the last week.
08 March 2010 RSA: Qualys teams with Imperva on website security Hard on the heels of announcing a free website infection scanning service, Qualys has teamed up with fellow IT security vendor Imperva to integrate some of their respective software offerings.
03 March 2010 Time for cloud computing says Webroot CTO Gerhard Eschelbeck, CTO of Webroot, tells Infosecurity’s Eleanor Dallaway that “2010 is the right time to engage in cloud computing”, as they catch up in Silicon Valley.
01 March 2010 Microsoft topples Waledec botnet, for now The Waledec network is down – at least temporarily – thanks to an injunction sought by Microsoft and awarded by a federal judge, forcing registrars to shut down command-and-control domains.
26 February 2010 Weekly brief February 22, 2009 Infosecurity rounds up some of the week's security news
23 February 2010 Spybot worm spreads via direct P2P file sharing Researchers have identified Spybot.AKB, a worm that spreads across P2P networks and email systems.
22 February 2010 Zeus gang hits 75 000 computers The same criminal gang that targeted government and military computers with its malware has also infected 75 000 computers in almost 200 countries with a virulent strain of the banking trojan, according to research from network monitoring company NetWitness.
18 February 2010 Spam, shortened URLs, and software vulnerabilities highlight latest security threat report Rebounding spam traffic, increased use of shortened URLs to deliver malicious payloads, and continued vulnerabilities among some of the most popular software applications were among the most serious security threats over the last six months 2009 according to data from M86 Security.
18 February 2010 Hotmail outage leads to contaminated search results Yesterday’s outage of Windows Live caused a disruption in the web-based Hotmail email service. This presented a golden opportunity for online crooks to poison search results related to the incident.
17 February 2010 Symantec to unveil data indexing technology At the RSA security show next month, Symantec will unveil a data indexing technology designed to identify the owners of files by querying enterprise storage systems. Called Data Insight, the product will have multiple applications, including cost reduction, data leakage prevention, and even IT forensics.
16 February 2010 Weekly brief February 16, 2009 Infosecurity covers the news that didn't make it into our top stories last week.
16 February 2010 Military and intelligence personnel targeted again by Zeus trojan Some rather industrious spammers have targeted military and intelligence employees for the second time in a week. But this time they used the pretense of the previous attack in an attempt to deliver the Zeus trojan.
15 February 2010 Warnings issued for Valentine’s spam and malware As is often the case around major holidays, especially those where giving gifts seems compulsory, most major security vendors are warning about scam emails focused on Valentine’s Day.
11 February 2010 Nigerian government uses music in cybercrime fight The Nigerian Government is working with Microsoft on a public awareness program that uses music to fight cybercrime in the country.
11 February 2010 Three botnets responsible for half of all computer infections Fewer botnets are becoming responsible for more infected machines, according to a report from McAfee.
11 February 2010 SpyEye continues battle of the botnets Researchers have identified another example of a botnet that attempts to neutralize other botnet software. Peter Coogan, a researcher at Symantec, noticed a crimeware toolkit from Russia called SpyEye, which appears to neutralize the competing Zeus crimeware kit.
11 February 2010 Government employees targeted by Zeus trojan Defense and intelligence agencies in the US and UK were among the intended targets of a Zeus trojan campaign, according to findings by Websense.
10 February 2010 Identity fraud soars in US as criminals get more sophisticated Identity fraud in the United States has risen to an all time high, according to a report from Javelin Strategy and Research. The 2010 Identity Fraud Survey Report reveals that the number of identity fraud victims in the country has risen by the highest amount in a single year since the survey started seven years ago.
10 February 2010 Penn State researchers hinder worm propagation Researchers at Penn State University have devised an algorithm designed to slow down the kind of rapidly-spreading network worm that can infect large portions of the internet quickly.
08 February 2010 IRS phishing scam targets corporate email Security firm eSoft is warning clients about an IRS phishing con that is specifically targeting businesses and corporate email accounts.
08 February 2010 Research shows China was the internet’s largest malware source in January A report from security vendor Kaspersky Lab shows that malware originating from China topped its monthly report of digital pollution providers, broken down by country of origin, for January 2010.
08 February 2010 Firefox pulls two infected add-ons from site Mozilla has had to pull two experimental add-ons for the Firefox browser from its website. The add-ons, which somehow made it through the quality control process, target Windows users with trojan malware.
05 February 2010 Infosecurity virtual conference on end point security offers a range of expert viewpoints Infosecurity is pleased to report that a prestigious array of presenters have been lined up for the latest virtual conference, due to take place on February 25.
05 February 2010 US named country with most malware Information security and data protection vendor Sophos has released a list of the top 10 countries hosting malware. The report reveals that websites in the US are accountable for hosting 37.4% of malware worldwide.
04 February 2010 Trustwave report reveals companies making same old mistakes Compliance and security service provider Trustwave has released its 2010 Global Security Report. The company has found that companies are still suffering from attacks using familiar exploit types that have been around for years. Organizations are implementing new technologies without securing existing ones, the report found.
02 February 2010 Attack fools iPhone into trusting fake certificates An anonymous researcher has posted a proof-of-concept attack that fakes a trusted root certificate on the iPhone. Researchers have confirmed that the attack works, making it possible for anyone to create a web page that is deemed to be trusted by Apple.
02 February 2010 iPhone cracker repeats exploit on Playstation 3 George Hotz, the first iPhone cracker – and who reportedly spent more than 500 hours developing the first jailbreak application for the Apple's iPhone back in 2007 – has apparently cracked the Sony Playstation 3.
29 January 2010 All is not OK in Oklahoma: State tax website victim of hack The website of the Oklahoma Tax Commission was the apparent victim of a hack yesterday, one in which visitors to the website were prompted to accept an Adobe license agreement and download software. The hack could not come a worse time for the Commission, whose site is undoubtedly experiencing an uptick in visitors as tax season approaches.
28 January 2010 Security and malware threats to Mac and Apple products are on the rise An annual report from security software provider Intego acknowledges it was a busy year for security threats to Apple devices, including the Mac OS X and iPhones. And while the Mac OS may be a less frequent target of malware authors, security threats to Apple products are proliferating as these devices land in the hands of more and more users.
27 January 2010 US oil companies hacked; report links attack to sources within China Reports in the Christian Science Monitor suggest that at least three large US oil companies have been the victims of targeted attacks. The custom-made spyware used in the attack appears to have sent the information to China, at least in one case.
26 January 2010 Mixed predictions on anticipated IT spending for 2010 Recent reports indicate that IT spending is set to increase in 2010. This comes on the heels of 2009, which saw negative IT spending growth worldwide and may have been the worst year on record for IT spending.
26 January 2010 2010 Virtual Conference on Endpoint Security - Beyond the Perimeter - Full conference programme revealed Infosecurity US magazine is excited to announce the 2010 virtual conference on endpoint security, to be held on February 25, 2010. This one-day event brings a series of topical keynote sessions direct to your computer, giving you the flexibility to learn about the latest information security trends and challenges from wherever you are in the world.
26 January 2010 Weekly brief, January 25, 2010 Infosecurity rounds up the week's news
25 January 2010 Economy forces down prices for dodgy Viagra Prices for male impotency drugs sold by spammers aren't as stiff as they once were, according to a new report from Messagelabs. The asking price for 'little blue pills' have softened up, as the economy has lost its staying power.
25 January 2010 Prank malware spreads across internet Anti-virus company ESET has discovered what it thinks is a prank gone wrong. The company suspects that Win32/Zimuse, which has swept the US, was originally intended as a localized malware attack against a group of Slovakian bikers.
22 January 2010 More details emerge on Hydraq trojan Hydraq, the trojan delivered by the Operation Aurora attackers, uses VNC techniques to stream live video from victims' machines, said Symantec in an analysis of the malware.
22 January 2010 Websense protects Facebook users against malware Websense has relaunched a spam protection service with a new feature set that protects Facebook users against malware.
21 January 2010 Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability spreads to Microsoft Office as fixes surface Microsoft has scheduled an out-of-band patch for the zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer, just as other fixes for the problem began to surface. The company has also admitted for the first time that the attack could be used to compromise a computer using Microsoft Office.
20 January 2010 FireEye claims protection against Internet Explorer zero-day attack Security appliance company FireEye has said that its products can detect the latest zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer without any software patches.
18 January 2010 PDF attacks target defense community Evidence of further targeted attacks are surfacing, just days after Google and other technology companies announced that they had been the victims of a concerted campaign. This time, the attacks targeted PDFs of those in the US defense community, and occurred more recently.
18 January 2010 Internet Explorer zero-day code goes public The Internet Explorer exploit code used in the Operation Aurora attack against Google and other technology companies has made it into the public domain, and has been incorporated into the Metasploit penetration testing tool, it was revealed this weekend.
18 January 2010 Internal security risks webinar this Wednesday The internal security risk issue is fast becoming a boardroom topic in most organizations, especially now that relatively rare road warriors have given way to a truly mobile workforce, able to work from almost anywhere, in most businesses.
18 January 2010 Weekly brief, January 18 2010 Infosecurity rounds up the security news from the past week.
17 January 2010 Online criminals looking to profit from Haiti earthquake Proving that there is no situation too tragic to exploit, cyber scofflaws have been quick to capitalize on the world’s interest in the recent earthquake in Haiti. With so many people looking to reach out and donate to victims of the tragedy, one group of black hats are attempting to rake in some of that cash by exploiting search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
15 January 2010 Facebook and McAfee team up on security Facebook has signed McAfee as a supplier to help protect its user base. The two companies have worked on a custom scanning and repair tool, along with education materials that will target the social networking giant's 350 million users.
13 January 2010 Weekly brief January 11 2009 Infosecurity rounds up the week's security news
11 January 2010 Malware threat reports fail to add up The December malware threat reports are trickling in from vendors — and they all appear to be different. Fortinet, Sunbelt Software, and Kaspersky all published their lists of the most prevalent malware strains for the last month of 2009, but they didn't match up, leading to an admission that users will inevitably be confused by the results.
08 January 2010 2009 was a record year for malware A PandaLabs report claims that 2009 will go down as perhaps the most prolific in malware history. In 2009, malware creators tapped into search tools used by the majority of web surfers, and exploited current events and popular culture.
07 January 2010 Cracked USB drives show NIST certification is not so secure Vendors of encrypted USB drives are recalling their NIST-certified products and issuing security updates after a fundamental flaw was found in the way that information is accessed. The flaw enables attackers to access encrypted data without trying to tackle the AES256 encryption algorithm used by the drives.
06 January 2010 Sophisticated zero-day hits Adobe Reader More details are emerging of a zero-day attack on Adobe's PDF reader and Acrobat applications, and security experts are calling it highly sophisticated. Moreover, anti-malware tools have been woefully poor at spotting it.
05 January 2010 McAfee: Hybrid apps will be hacker target Applications that blur the boundaries between online and offline software will be a primary hacker target this year, according to McAfee.
04 January 2010 Weekly brief Janary 4 2010 Infosecurity rounds up the information security news from the holiday season.
03 January 2010 Weekly brief, December 21, 2009 Infosecurity rounds up the week's information security news.
21 December 2009 VoIP vulnerabilities on the rise The number of known vulnerabilities in VoIP products have almost tripled since 2006, according to a report from McAfee.
21 December 2009 Conficker still rampant in some countries' networks The Conficker worm is still thriving on networks in India, Chile, Russia and the Ukraine, where infection rates are up to 16%.
21 December 2009 Rogue anti-virus tired, Google Wave wired, says Kaspersky Rogue anti-virus programs will become far less prevalent next year as other technologies such as Google Wave attract malware vendors' attention, said a forecast from Kaspersky this week.
17 December 2009 Botnet numbers growing fourfold each year The number of computers infected by botnet malware has almost quadrupled each year since 2004, according to a report to be released by Project Honey Pot next week.
16 December 2009 Fortinet ships secure email appliances Unified threat management company Fortinet is shipping two new secure email appliances. The appliances, called FortiMail-5001A and -2000B, are aimed at high-volume carrier and managed service provider companies.
15 December 2009 Researcher documents Koobface Google Reader trick A Webroot researcher has documented the process that the Koobface malware uses to create malicious Google Reader pages.
15 December 2009 Spam volumes exceeded pre-McColo levels this year One year after the McColo shutdown, spam volumes have not only recovered, but have grown beyond what they were before the rogue ISP was taken offline.
15 December 2009 Weekly brief, December 14, 2009 Infosecurity sums up the week's information security news.
14 December 2009 Weekly brief - December 7 Infosecurity magazine reviews the past week`s information security news.
07 December 2009 Malware rebounds as cause of data loss Malware has rebounded to become the biggest cause of data loss in organizations, according to a report from the Computer Security Institute (CSI). Malware infections far exceed the next most common cause - laptop and mobile hardware theft - said the 2009 CSI Computer Crime and Security Survey.
04 December 2009 Email Zeus trojan scams on the rise Online criminals are stepping up their campaign to infectInternet users with the Zeus trojan, according to new research published by Atlanta-based managed security firm SecureWorks. Email campaigns in particular are on the rise, the company has said.
04 December 2009 Bit.ly tools up to stop spam URL shortening service Bit.ly has announced that it will be using three new services to help secure its service from spam and malware.
02 December 2009 Flu spoof delivers trojan The inevitable H1N1 flu trojan attacks have started. Yesterday, McAfee detected a new H1N1-related spam campaign, spoofing emails from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and asking victims to fill out a 'vaccination profile' as part of a state-wide flu vaccination program.
02 December 2009 Prevx apologizes over Microsoft black screen claim Anti-malware firm Prevx has apologized to Microsoft after admitting that the 'black screen of death' - a condition that renders Windows unusable after bootup - was not caused by faulty system patches after all.
02 December 2009 Weekly brief December 1, 2009 Infosecurity reports on the past week's news
01 December 2009 iPhone banking trojan creates botnet from Apple devices A third piece of iPhone malware has appeared, pushing the envelope further than ever before by creating a botnet of infected devices and acting as a banking trojan.
24 November 2009 Rogue blogs pollute Google results Another round of SEO attacks has been discovered targeting Google. Criminals are crafting custom rogue blogs designed to target the 'long tail' of obscure Google searches to avoid having to compete with more popular searches in Google results, according to cyber intelligence company Cyveillance.
20 November 2009 Gumblar goes into overdrive The Gumblar botnet has moved into overdrive, changing its operating model to dramatically increase its infection rates, according to the latest monthly threat report from ScanSafe.
19 November 2009 Defense contractor gets serious about information security Lockheed Martin has formed an information security alliance with a collection of technology providers that will focus on self-healing systems to help solve information security problems.
18 November 2009 McAfee: Nations engaged in cold war-style cyberwarfare Nations are secretly stockpiling tools and techniques in preparation for sophisticated cyberwarfare against each other, McAfee said in its annual Virtual Criminology report yesterday.
18 November 2009 Misconfigured modems leave web open to DDoS attacks Poorly configured cable and DSL modems are leaving the internet open to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks based on rogue DNS queries, according to research to be released this week by Infoblox.
17 November 2009 Weekly brief - November 16, 2009 Infosecurity rounds up this week's information security news.
16 November 2009 Mega-D spam count zeroes out after FireEye botnet takedown Spam sent by the Mega-D botnet has almost entirely disappeared, after US-based anti-malware appliance firm FireEye took it down.
13 November 2009 iPhone hacker tool unveiled Just days after an iPhone worm was discovered in the wild, Mac security firm Intego has discovered a hacker tool targeting the iPhone that exploits the same vulnerability.
12 November 2009 Report: Federal agencies overstretched on cybersecurity Only half of the federal government's agencies feel that they have an adequate security budget, according to a report released this week. And yet, cybersecurity incidents are on the rise.
12 November 2009 Phishers prepare Christmas campaign Phishers are gearing up for the Christmas holiday season, according to the latest report from Symantec. Phishing attacks were up 17% in October compared to the previous month, and phishers continue to automate their attacks by increasingly resourcing to phishing toolkits.
11 November 2009 Google cloud platform used for botnet control Botnet controllers have been using cloud based systems such as the Google cloud platform as command and control nodes for infected PCs, said a researcher at Arbor Networks.
10 November 2009 Weekly brief November 9, 2009 Breaches, Certifications, Charges, Vulnerabilities, and Acquisitions. Infosecurity sums up the past week's news.
09 November 2009 Pirate Bay clampdown saw illegal file sharing sites rocket The closure of the popular Pirate Bay torrent tracking service earlier this year created a flood of alternative illegal file sharing sites and malware distribution hubs, according to a report released by McAfee.
08 November 2009 Spearphishing emails target customers of ill-equipped banks. The FBI has slammed poor security in financial institutions, after identifying a drastic rise in money being stolen from small to medium-sized businesses via spearphishing emails, it said in an intelligence note early this week.
06 November 2009 Anti-virus vendors stony-faced at Lose/Lose Anti-virus companies are failing to get the joke after the release of a free arcade game for the Mac that deletes the users' files during play. Lose/Lose warns 'victims' that it is about to delete files on their hard drives before they begin playing, and it keeps its word.
06 November 2009 Microsoft releases SIRv7 - network worms on the rise Network worms are on the rise again thanks to poor IT management in the enterprise, according to the latest Security Intelligence Report (SIR) from Microsoft. Dramatic successes among worms in enterprises have caused this category of malware to move from fifth place to second place worldwide.
06 November 2009 Twitter not adequately checking URLs, says Kaspersky Twitter is failing to block malicious websites that are being posted to it via URL shortening services, according to researchers from Kaspersky, who have applied their own back-end service to help solve the problem.
30 October 2009 FBI director almost fell for phishing attack The director of the FBI and the man charged with protecting the US from cyberthreats, Rober Mueller, has given up online banking after a phishing scare.
28 October 2009 Weekly brief October 26, 2009 Information security: Breaches, walls, charges, tools, and deals.
26 October 2009 RSA Europe: FBI and Soca need help The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) have called for greater collaboration with the IT security industry in fighting cybercrime.
26 October 2009 Rapid7 acquires Metasploit open source project Rapid7, the vulnerability management security specialist, has acquired Metasploit, the ongoing open source security project that developed the Metasploit Framework. The move is billed as allowing Rapid7 to enhance its penetration testing technologies.
21 October 2009 Symantec says internet users plagued by fake anti-virus software Research just published by Symantec claims to show that users are increasingly being fooled into installing fake anti-virus software - aka scamware - onto their machines.
20 October 2009 Microsoft Security Essentials gets 1.5 million downloads in first week More than 1.5 million Windows users downloaded Microsoft's free anti-virus and anti-malware tool, Security Essentials in the week after it was released, the software firm has claimed.
19 October 2009 Weekly brief - October 19, 2009 US$4000 lost in Facebook scam; Michigan's airport website closed due to malware; the first Windows 7 security patches appear; and more. We report on the IT security news...
19 October 2009 US phishing attacks decline in third quarter The third quarter security trends report from Commtouch and its security alliance partners suggests that phishing is now on the decline, after peaking in the summer.
14 October 2009 Weekly brief - October 13, 2009 Trends, Tussles, Tools, and Attacks: We round up the last week's information security news.
13 October 2009 Comcast gets proactive with malware infected customers Comcast is piloting a service that will notify customers that have been infected with malware, the company said this week.
09 October 2009 Weekly brief - October 5 2009 Deviousness, Defenses, and Disappointments - read all about the week's security news in our weekly brief.
05 October 2009 Rogue malware explodes in 2009 Business in rogue anti-virus software is booming, according to a new report from the Anti Phishing Working Group (APWG). In the first half of this year, the number of such programs plaguing internet users increased by 585%.
05 October 2009 Microsoft ships free anti-virus tool Microsoft officially shipped Microsoft Security Essentials, its free anti-virus product, yesterday. The product, which had been beta tested under the codename Morro, is designed as a free software offering specifically for home users.
30 September 2009 Weekly brief - September 28, 2009 Takedowns, Tools, Threats, and Tsk, Tsk! We review the week's information security news.
28 September 2009 Malicious advertising malware hit popular websites Popular websites have been made to serve up malware via malicious advertising delivered by advertising banner services.
25 September 2009 Hackers pose as internet telephony firm in New York Times ad scam The New York Times has admitted it has been the victim of a complex scam, in which a group of hackers purchased ad space on the famous publisher's website, then posed as internet telephony company Vonage, to infect users with malware.
24 September 2009 Chat-in-the-middle phishing attack targets online banking RSA, the security division of EMC has discovered a phishing attack it calls ‘chat-in-the-middle’, which targets online banking customers tricking them into divulging username and passwords.
23 September 2009 Weekly brief - September 21. 2009 Talk, Tools, Techniques, Trials, and Traps - get the lowdown on the week's security news in our weekly brief.
21 September 2009 IT security priorities all wrong, according to SANS IT managers are focusing on the wrong security threats, according to a report from the SANS Institute.
16 September 2009 Infosecurity weekly brief - September 15, 2009 Breaches, threats, protections and security directions - we summarise what's been happening in the world of information security over the past week.
15 September 2009 Commuter matching website highly vulnerable to SQL injections RideMatch.info, a website used by several California-based companies and transportation boards to match commuters on similar routes, has been found to be potentially vulnerable to massive SQL injections that could result in the disclosure of users' personal data.
14 September 2009 Deploying effective IT security on a tight budget - webinar This week promises to be an exciting one for Infosecurity and its readers as, while President Obama is reportedly close to appointing a Frank Kramer, former assistant defense secretary under President Bill Clinton, as his new cybersecurity chief, we will be hosting a topical IT security webinar looking at how to protect your critical data on a budget.
14 September 2009 Fake anti-virus team exploits September 11 anniversary Online scams related to holidays, global events, and popular news stories are common, but September 11 scammers really scraped the bottom of the moral barrel last week. Scareware scammers are using the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks to sell their fake anti-virus software to unsuspecting users.
13 September 2009 Astaro offers free business firewall for VMware Astaro Corp., has released a free business firewall for the VMware environment. The IT security vendor says that the firewall - which offers the base functionality of its Astaro Security Gateway Virtual Appliance by using a special license key - will allow organizations with virtual environments to secure their network from external threats.
10 September 2009 Weekly brief – September 7, 2009 In this week’s information security news: Marshal8e6 rebrands as M86 Security; Australian federal police mock hackers - and are hacked in return; Raytheon releases industry's fastest cross-domain sharing solution; and more...
07 September 2009 How is the information security industry coping in the economic downturn? As the recession continues to chew into budgets, and cybercriminals see increased opportunity for looting, CISOs need to ensure that their information security defences remain strong but affordable. Find out more for free!
07 September 2009 How to protect critical data on a tight budget Whilst threats against business critical data have been rising steadily in recent times, almost all companies have had their IT security budgets cut or placed under intense scrutiny.
05 September 2009 Weekly brief – September 1, 2009 In this week’s information security news: Trojan eavesdrops on Skype; Snow Leopard only recognizes two Trojans; private messages are sent to wrong recipients; search warrants are needed for digital data; and more…
01 September 2009 US Civil Liberties Union tells UK to defend McKinnon The American Civil Liberties Union has called on the UK foreign secretary to review the "lopsided" extradition treaty to prevent people like UFO hacker Gary McKinnon being "unfairly" removed from their home country to stand trial abroad.
28 August 2009 Weekly brief – August 24, 2009 In this week’s information security news: Microsoft patch exploited by hackers; Office 2010 sandbox security welcomed by security industry; hackers get their revenge on police; and more…
24 August 2009 NCSA preps for national cybersecurity awareness month The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) - one of the primary promoters of National Cyber Security Awareness Month each October - has launched a website to encourage broad-based participation in education and awareness activities on cybersecurity this year.
17 August 2009 Campaign Monitor hit by hacker server incursion Campaign Monitor, the Australia-based email marketing software developer, has warned users of compromise to its servers that took place over last weekend.
17 August 2009 BigFix podcasts talk about security compliance issues, Black Hat and Defcon If you want to hear an eclectic mix of views on recent events in the world of IT security, you could do worse that visit the Bigfix blog site, where Amrit Williams, the firm's chief technology officer, has been talking with industry luminary Ryan Russell in his latest podcast.
17 August 2009 Web-based malware attacks soaring says ScanSafe In its second quarterly report on IT security threats of 2008, software-as-a-service (SaaS) specialist ScanSafe reported that web-based malware had surged by over a third when compared to the first quarter of the year.
17 August 2009 Hold software providers accountable for IT failures Regulation could protect businesses and governments from poor IT implementations that have cost billions of dollars. But at present, software is generally shipped with a disclaimer which states that the manufacturer does not guarantee it will work, unlike regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals where the supplier is held accountable for a failure in manufacturing.
11 August 2009 Koobface social networking worm gets a facelift Koobface, the first - and arguably the most successful of the social networking worms - is back, having been significantly tweaked by black hat hackers on the internet, reports Kaspersky Lab, the anti-malware and IT security vendor.
10 August 2009 Weekly Brief - August 10 2009 In this week's information security briefs: ISPs team up in bid to tackle botnet problem; Former superhacker Kevin Mitnick dumped by ISP; US cyber-security tsar steps down; US military worried over Twitter security and more...
10 August 2009 US phishing attacks soared 50% plus during July Research just released by Symantec shows that phishing attacks rose 52% in July while spam - as a percentage of all email - stayed about the same compared as the previous month.
07 August 2009 Symantec teams up with LifeLock to expand offline After 27 years in the online and IT world, Symantec is moving into the offline/off-computer world thanks to a partnership with LifeLock Inc., a proactive provider of identify theft protection.
06 August 2009 WatchGuard acquires BorderWare in private transaction Seattle-based WatchGuard Technologies - the unified threat management (USM) security vendor - has announced plans to buy privately-held BorderWare Technology, which employs around 90 staff, for an undisclosed sum.
05 August 2009 Defcon: Researchers warn software updates can be hijacked Researchers with Radware were busy over the weekend showing a Defcon audience how a classic man-in-the-middle attack could be engineered when notebook computers attempt to seek out updates for their software across public access WiFi networks.
04 August 2009 Zeus botnet traced to Latvian operation Researchers have been busy over the last few days tracing where the Zeus botnet is being controlled from, following investigations by the University of Alabama in the US, which tracked down the Zeus Bot virus to a raft of fake internet postcards circulating on the internet.
04 August 2009 Weekly Brief - August 3 2009 In this week's information security briefs: AVG flags up iTunes as malware; hackers score $219 000 from city; Microsoft's sandboxing criticised, and more...
03 August 2009 Programme available for the Virtual Conference on Information Security 2009 The programme for Infosecurity Magazine’s Virtual Conference on Information Security 2009 is now available with an exciting line-up of speakers from the IT security industry.
03 August 2009 NASA hacker McKinnon loses extradition appeal The UK hacker Gary McKinnon who became famous for hacking US military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002 looking for evidence of UFOs, has lost his appeal against extradition to the USA.
31 July 2009 Black Hat: San Francisco meters hacked for free parking At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, researchers have revealed how the security of San Francisco's plans to become a showcase for the US on computerised parking has been compromised.
31 July 2009 Black Hat: major iPhone hack to be revealed today You could never describe the Apple iPhone as totally secure, given the number of jailbreaks that crackers have developed to unlock the popular handset from its partner networks, but researchers at the Black Hat security conference are scheduled to reveal a serious chink in the mobile's armour today.
30 July 2009 IBM acquires Ounce Labs - boosts application security IBM has acquired another IT security development firm - Ounce Labs - to add to its ITsec research and development efforts.
29 July 2009 Symantec develops pooled high-end cyberthreat analysis service Symantec has joined the growing ranks of IT security vendors that are offering their pooled information on the latest ITsec threats as a value-added outsourced option for major corporates.
29 July 2009 Forensics links fake online postcards to Zeus Bot The Computer forensics department at the University of Alabama has tracked down the Zeus Bot virus to a raft of fake internet postcards circulating on the Internet.
28 July 2009 Weekly Brief - July 27 2009 Information security: Fox News, Eugene Kaspersky reveals all, Marshal8e6's new hosted email service and more...
27 July 2009 Privacy rankings: LinkedIn and Bebo high, Facebook and MySpace average, Badoo low Cambridge academics have revealed that social networks that promote their security controls are likely to deter users from joining, and as a result privacy guidelines are inaccessible.
24 July 2009 Weekly Brief - July 20 2009 Information security: Microsoft, South Korea, China, Twitter, Facebook in the news...
20 July 2009 Botnets arrive on mobile phones - first worm has been spotted A mobile phone worm called Sexy Space has been spotted by Trend Micro and is the first, the IT security vendor says, to spread itself by spamming text (SMS) messages.
20 July 2009 One in six spam emails from USA The USA continued to be the top email spam country in the second quarter of 2009 making up 15.6% of global spam traffic, according to a report on the latest trends in spam from IT security and data protection firm Sophos.
20 July 2009 New Trojan malware variants evade major anti-virus engines claims CommTouch Based on an analysis of two billion emails and internet transactions processed by its OEM anti-spam and anti-malware customers every day, CommTouch says that millions of email-borne malware such as Trojans and viruses bypassed several major anti-virus engines during the second quarter of 2009.
17 July 2009 Cybercriminals adopt business strategies Online criminals are using state of the art business strategies to commit cybercrimes, says network equipment maker Cisco.
16 July 2009 Businesses face deluge of patches from Microsoft and Oracle IT security administrators will have to deal with more than 10 security patches from Oracle and nine from Microsoft this week.
16 July 2009 Firefox' reputation takes a battering on the security front The reputation of Mozilla's popular Firefox web browsing software - now into version 3.5 - took a battering this week as the Secunia security research advisory team revealed a flaw in the way the browser handles Javascript calls.
15 July 2009 Google Chrome OS: no viruses, malware or security updates… As Google announced the future launch of its Google Chrome operating system (OS) based on an open source Linux kernel, it also claimed that “users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work”, but is that possible?
13 July 2009 575 variants of Koobface detected during June says Kaspersky Lab Researchers with Russian IT security vendor Kaspersky Lab say they detected 575 new variants of the Koobface worm during June.
13 July 2009 Net hacks and hoaxes more sophisticated than ever says Network Box Network Box, the managed security internet service provider, has published a free guide explaining - in plain English - a guide to spotting common hoaxes, hacks and other internet horrors.
10 July 2009 Waledec botnet sweeps web in July 4 campaign The team behind the Waledec botnet mounted a new malware campaign over the July 4 weekend that has infected thousands of PCs.
07 July 2009 Gartner expects IT spending to fall 6% in 2009 Worlwide IT spending could fall 6% to US$3.2 trillion in 2009, according to Connecticut-based IT research and advisory company Gartner.
07 July 2009 Weekly Brief - July 6 2009 Techniques, Tools, Concerns, Crimes, and Crashes
05 July 2009 New trojan causes problems for Google AdSense advertisers A nasty new trojan that triggers multiple click-throughs on Google AdSense - the pay-per-click sponsored web search service operated by Google - has been discovered by SecureWorks.
02 July 2009 Jackson's death rocks net Never one to miss a trick, the blackhat community capitalised on the death of Michael Jackson over the weekend by seeding the web with spam and malware designed to steal email addresses and join the troubled star's fans to botnets.
30 June 2009 Weekly Brief - June 30 2009 Danny Bradbury explores some of the more interesting stories in the security field from the last week.
30 June 2009 Java delays approval of Oracle’s Sun takeover The US Department of Justice (DoJ) wants more time to consider Oracle's $7.4bn Sun deal before giving its approval.
30 June 2009 ATM malware likely to spread The malware that has been infecting automated teller machines in eastern Europe could be about to spread to other places in the world, according to the company that uncovered the fraud. Experts at SpiderLab, the research arm of security firm Trustwave, say that there is "increased activity" around this particular strain of malware in other parts of the world.
23 June 2009 CISOs not ready to deperimeterize, say experts. Chief information security officers are still ignoring the need for deperimeterization, according to a survey carried out by security firm Netwitness, and the MIS Training Institute.
23 June 2009 Weekly Brief - June 22 2009 Danny Bradbury documents Tools, Twitter, Law, Hacked, Patched, and the Totally Whacked this week.
22 June 2009 ‘Brad Pitt’ more dangerous than ‘Hugh Jackman’ – McAfee rates risky search terms online Searching for ‘Brad Pitt’ is riskier than searching for ‘Hugh Jackman’ according to a McAfee study on the most dangerous search terms online.
19 June 2009 GoldenCashWorld botnet, malware and hacker data exchange portal revealed Security researchers with Finjan have uncovered a highly sophisticated online botnet, malware and hacker exchange network for buying and selling access to infected PCs.
17 June 2009 Chinese computer protection system against malware insecure, say researchers Researchers at the University of Michigan have criticized an alleged initiative by the Chinese government to protect the public's computers from malware, arguing that it creates significant vulnerabilities on users' machines.
16 June 2009 Learn about resilience and optimization on IBM power systems Vision Solution’s explores the data protection, recovery and optimization technologies and strategies for running AIX and IBM i (i5/OS) environments in its white paper State of Resilience & Optimization on IBM Power Systems.
16 June 2009 Weekly Brief - June 15 2009 Information Security - Tools, Law, Techniques, Attacks, and Defenses
15 June 2009 Apple releases Safari 4.0 to counter security flaws Apple Computer has released v 4.0 of its increasingly popular Safari web browser for Windows and Mac OSX-based computers. The release counters the recent security flaws reported in CFNetwork, CoreGraphics, ImageIO, International Components for Unicode, libxml, Safari, Safari Windows Installer, and webKit
10 June 2009 Learn about PDF security LockLizard explores the pitfalls of PDF security in its white paper 10 Things You Really Wished You Had Known About PDF Security.
09 June 2009 Weekly Brief - June 8 2009 Information security: Privacy, enforcement, attacks, and defenses
08 June 2009 Weekly Brief - June 1 2009 Information security: Tools, Techniques, Law, Attacks and Defenses
01 June 2009 Twitter worm steals user details A worm on Twitter is tricking users into giving up their user details at the same time as redirecting victims to a dating website where the aggregate number of views result in affiliate revenue.
01 June 2009 Kaspersky researcher criticizes Facebook developer policy Malware attacks are becoming more targeted and more focused on social networks, according to a researcher at Kaspersky, who slammed Facebook for problems with its application certification process.
29 May 2009 Anti-malware groups align themselves Anti-malware efforts took a significant step forward this week with the announcement of an initiative to try and bring legitimate software businesses together and lock out malware writers.
22 May 2009 McAfee acquires Solidcore for whitelisting technology McAfee will acquire Solidcore Systems, a whitelisting specialist, in a US$33m deal which will allow McAfee to integrate Solidcore's technology into its blacklisting malware detection and prevention products, as well as to bolster its high-end corporate IT security offerings.
20 May 2009 Gumblar malware attack sweeps web A modified attack that alters Google searches is taking the web by storm according to security researchers, who have identified more malware domains being used in the attack.
20 May 2009 Infosecurity Weekly Brief - May 18 2009 Infections, Intrusions, Protections and Misdirections
18 May 2009 Unlimited online backup from F-Secure An unlimited online backup solution, which works automatically in the background, has been launched by Finnish IT security service provider F-Secure.
15 May 2009 Software piracy on the rise Worldwide software piracy is on the rise, according to a study by the Business Software Alliance and analyst firm IDC.
13 May 2009 Infosecurity Weekly Brief - May 12th 2009 Danny Bradbury rounds up the most important news in the security space from the last week.
11 May 2009 Fake search engines used to divert users to malware infected websites Hackers are starting to create fake search engine sites to divert hapless internet users to malware infected websites, says PandaLabs, the research operation of Panda Security.
07 May 2009 Conficker and Facebook / Twitter attacks dominate Q1 email threats The Conficker worm and attackers’ social engineering techniques exploiting users on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, dominated the email threats in the first quarter (Q1) of 2009, according to identity-based unified threat management (UTM) solutions provider Cyberoam and its Israeli messaging and web security partner Commtouch.
05 May 2009 Infosecurity Weekly Brief - April 27 Last week, Infosecurity Magazine was at the RSA show in San Francisco. A variety of vendors launched new products.
27 April 2009 RSA: Lumension and Microsoft ink whitelisting deal Endpoint security company Lumension teamed up with Microsoft at the RSA show to launch a software whitelisting service. The move, which sees the companies sharing information about legitimate software applications, lends increasing credence to the idea that blacklisting malicious software by signature is becoming less tenable as the number of malware variants increases.
22 April 2009 Finjan uncovers one of world's largest botnets Finjan has uncovered what appears to be one of the largest bot networks controlled by a single cybercrime gang, with 1.9 million infected zombie computers forming the swarm.
22 April 2009 RSA: Symantec CEO Enrique Salem calls for automated information security In his keynote at RSA in San Francisco, Symantec CEO Enrique Salem called for a significant shift in the way vendors and end-users approach information security. Change, said Salem, is needed to fight the current targeted threat landscape.
22 April 2009 RSA: NSA director Lieutenant General Alexander asks RSA conference to work with NSA to secure nation Director of NSA, Lieutenant General Keith B Alexander, congratulated the information security industry on its excellent work in his keynote address to RSA conference attendees in San Francisco on 21 April 2009.
21 April 2009 Symantec report observes surge in malicious code for 2008 Security provider, Symantec, found that malicious code activity continued to grow at a record pace throughout 2008, with the most prominent target being confidential information, according to the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Volume XIV.
15 April 2009 Infosecurity Weekly Brief - April 13 2009 Powerpoint, Porn and Twitter
14 April 2009 McCartney site serves up Zeus malware Paul McCartney's site was serving up the Zeus trojan for three days, according to UK security firm ScanSafe. The attack, in which paulmccartney.com was compromised with malicious Javascript, appears to have been tailored to coincide with interest in his New York reunion concert last weekend.
08 April 2009 Infosecurity gets twittered up Infosecurity magazine are now on Twitter. Please ‘follow’ us to receive our latest news, views and industry comments.
08 April 2009 Infosecurity - the Week in Brief Ghost in the machine The Information Warfare Monitor published a report on GhostNet, a cyber-espionage network that it discovered after conducting a security audit for the Dalai Lama's Tibetan Government in Exile. Almost 1300 machines were discovered in a micro-botnet controlled from servers mainly in Chinese IP blocks. The 30% of machines that it identified were of high importance to Chinese interests, it found. The Dalai Lama has condemned the whole affair, and the Chinese government is denying everything.
06 April 2009 Week in Brief - 30.03.2009 Conflicker, Congress and Pink Floyd
30 March 2009 Infosecurity - the week in brief Bugs, browsers, bureaucracy, backtracks and busts.
23 March 2009 Worm attacks Windows RPC flaw More worm activity has been spotted targeting a recently discovered Windows flaw.
20 March 2009 The week in brief Cyber intelligence There were big shakeups afoot in the US cyberintelligence community. Rod Beckström, last year's controversial pick for head of the secretive National Cybersecurity Center, resigned amid stormy allegations of bureacratic roadblocks.
09 March 2009 Mahalo employee nailed for botnet crime An employee of the human-powered search engine Mahalo[http://www.mahalo.com/] was sentenced to four years in prison this week for operating a botnet.
06 March 2009 Conficker concern continues Conficker continued to garner attention from security vendors this month as it spread across the internet.
05 March 2009 Damballa updates botnet detection Damballa has updated its botnet detection product with a host of new features, while slamming other anti-virus vendors for failing to spot large percentages of malware.
03 March 2009 Infosecurity - the week in brief Arrests A Chinese official has reportedly been arrested for taking backhanders to help one local anti-virus company disrupt the business of another. Yu Bing, director of the internet monitoring department of Beijing’s Public Security Bureau, allegedly took 4.5m Yuan ($657,000) to frame executives at antivirus company Micropoint and stop its products reaching the market. The money was said to have come from antivirus firm Rising, according to reports.
02 March 2009 Infosecurity - the week in brief Black Hat DC This week, Black Hat DC was on in Arlington, VA. Moxie Marlinspike announced a new attack against SSL that forces HTTPS traffic into HTTP to allow a man in the middle attack. Dan Kaminsky, who discovered the infamous DNS flaw last year and criticized SSL at the the time, reacts here. He also resolved at the conference to take two months off work to promote the adoption of DNSSEC - a more secure DNS standard that has not been widely implemented.
23 February 2009 Microsoft Conficker Microsoft's Conficker Cabal has been steadily registering domain names targeted by the Downadup/Conficker worm in a bid to choke off its update mechanism.
18 February 2009 Hackers hit the road In a fresh case of social engineering, ever-resourceful hackers in the US have found a new way to direct unsuspecting users into downloading a virus, through fake parking tickets.
10 February 2009 Mac Trojans Proliferate Malware writers must be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Mac. Intego, which produces antivirus software for the OS X. platform, noticed two Trojan programs circulating in the past week on peer-to-peer sites, buried within pirated copies of high-value Mac programs.
04 February 2009 Cyber criminals to Cash in on Credit Crunch Cyber-criminals are exploiting the economic downturn to scam users, according to the 2009 threat report from security firm McAfee.
26 January 2009 New Botnets on the Prowl Two new botnets have emerged in the past few weeks, and at least one shows signs of being an upgrade to a previous botnet that wreaked havoc in the wild.
16 January 2009 Downadup Worm Continues to Spread More evidence has appeared of the spread of a network work based on the RPC vulnerability that was found in Microsoft Windows in October. The network worm Downadup has failed to gain much traction on the open internet, according to anti-virus firm F-Secure, but is getting into corporate networks on a consistent basis.
12 January 2009 New Mac Tracking, iPhone Smartcard Debut at MacWorld Apple's own announcements at the MacWorld show last week may have been relatively underwhelming, but several companies rolled out new security technologies at the event. A stolen computer tracker accompanied a two-factor authentication system for the iPhone.
12 January 2009 FTC Pursues Alleged Scareware Firms The Federal Trade Commission has filed a complaint against two companies that it says operate 'scareware' scams that have scammed users into buying their software.
12 December 2008 Airline E-ticket Scam Infects Tens of Thousands of Users As the holiday season approaches, millions of Americans are making their travel preparations, so it's hardly surprising that a large number have `clicked through' on an email that purports to be an airline e-ticket and boarding pass.
24 October 2008 Airline E-ticket Scam Infects Tens of Thousands of Users As the holiday season approaches, millions of Americans are making their travel preparations, so it's hardly surprising that a large number have `clicked through' on an email that purports to be an airline e-ticket and boarding pass.
24 October 2008 Texas National Guard Web Site Hacked; Used To Launch Malware Attacks Officials with the Texas National Guard took their Web site offline overnight on Thursday, after it became clear the site had been hacked and was being used to offer fake (and possibly infected) IT security software, as well as planting rootkits on unsuspecting visitor's PCs.
22 September 2008 “Spam Kings”: One Jailed; One Escapes and Kills Family This week the media spotlight was turned towards “spam kings.” One was sent to jail while another escaped from his minimum security prison before killing his family and himself.
25 July 2008 New Efforts to Battle Botnet-Driven Spam Network operators and ISPs from around the world are working together to address issues that will help block botnet-induced spam.
27 June 2008 Spear-phishing Attacks Attain Record Levels Targeted social engineering attacks, also referred to as spear phishing, are on the rise.
13 June 2008 FBI Probes Counterfeit Network Hardware The FBI have revealed that the US government has purchased counterfeit networking equipment that could jeopardize the security of its military and other government systems.
19 May 2008 Show floor security software is “snake oil” BT’s security expert Bruce Schneier was scathing about lots of security software calling it “snake oil” in an interview this week.
24 April 2008 Malware protection before infection A US Department of Homeland Security-funded research program will help deliver Endeavor Security’s new method of targeting botnet and malware attacks before hosts are infected.
22 February 2008

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