Monday News Feed 8/4/08

You gotta love it...
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August 4, 2008 (IDG News Service) In an attempt to rid its Blogger service from spam blogs (splogs), Google mistakenly flagged a number of legitimate sites last week, prompting the company to scramble to unlock them.

A bug in Google's data processing code caused the problem, leading the detection system to lock Blogger blogs that had otherwise passed the inspection by the company's spam algorithms, Google said on Saturday in an official blog.






Gartner: 'Caveats apply' for enterprise iPhone use
August 4, 2008 (Computerworld) After three weeks of testing and reviewing Apple Inc.'s new iPhone 2.0 firmware and an iPhone 3G for use in large businesses, analyst firm Gartner Inc. said the device can be supported by IT shops — but only for a narrow set of uses such as voice, e-mail, Web browsing and the storage of personal information.

The reason for the restrictions? Security concerns.

The newest iPhone "does not deliver sufficient security for [running] custom applications" commonly used on handhelds in enterprise settings, Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney wrote in a nine-page research note. The report, "iPhone 2.0 Is Ready for the Enterprise, but Caveats Apply," concludes: "Enterprises should approach expanded use of the iPhone slowly and with close examination."
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IE6 more vulnerable to unpatched Microsoft flaw, Symantec says







Firewall vendors scramble to fix problem with DNS patch






Beijing Braces for Olympic Cyber-War - 8/4/2008 9:10:00 AM Can the world's most futuristic data center protect the Olympics' storage?





Group offers tools to evade China's Web censorship
Reporters covering the Beijing Olympics who are frustrated by Chinese Internet censorship can use... ...1




Microsoft Access Snapshot Viewer ActiveX Control Vulnerability - Extremely critical - From remoteIssued 7 July, 2008. A vulnerability has been reported in Snapshot Viewer for Microsoft Access, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system.






Freezing the Cold-Boot Attack - 8/1/2008 3:45:00 PM Researcher reveals new technologies he built to combat attacks that crack disk encryption on machines





Data Breach Fallout: Do CISOs Need Legal Protection?
Since the security executive is on the hot seat after a data breach, some industry experts suggest CISOs get themselves some form of liability protection. The downside is that such protection could shield those who deserve the blame for an incident.
Read more





Google Adwords Advertisers Targeted By Phishing Cyber Criminals From China By Grey McKenzie 07/25/2008






75 Percent Of Banking Websites Vulnerable To Cyber Thieves Study Shows By Grey McKenzie 07/24/2008





For all you number crunchers out there, CNNIC has released its 22nd Statistical Report on Chinese Internet Development. They have posted an English summary on their website, the full report is in Chinese:
With the Largest Amount of both Netizens and ccTLDs in the World, a Big Internet Power Is Taking Shape

By the end of June 2008, the amount of netizens in China had reached 253 million, surpassing that in the United States to be the first place in the world. This is according to a newly released Suvery Repot by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

This report, the 22nd Statistical Report on the Internet Development in China, also indicates the number of broadband users has reached 214 million, which also tops the world. The CNNIC also announced that, by the time of July 22, the number of CN domain names, which was 12.18 million, had exceeded .de, the country-code Top Level Domain for Germany, thus becoming the largest country code Top-Level Domain names in the world. These three major breakthroughs show a big Internet power is taking shape.
Continue Reading »






How Much Is Antivirus Slowing Down Your PC?PC Magazine - Mon Aug 4, 8:33 AM ET
PC Magazine will be testing the major security suites on how their background tasks affect real-world actions.






InformationWeek - An RSA survey found the e-mail-borne malware and phishing that affected 69% of respondents' companies, may not have led to serious consequences in every instance.






For Ham Radio Operators:
Police Call Publisher Gene Hughes Dead at 80
The southern California man who published the radio scanning bible Police Call has passed away. Under the pen name Gene Hughes, Gene Costin became a household word among geeks in the 1970s when he started cataloging the radio frequencies used by various police and fire departments and other agencies, giving hobbyists something to do with the first generation of programmable scanners then hitting the market. I had the privilege of interviewing him for a profile in 2005, when he made the decision to close down Police Call after 41 years.





Tracking a Shopper's Habits
By Michael FitzgeraldMonday, August 04, 2008
Infosys's sensor network turns stores into mini-Internets.






Countrywide loses personal data in insider scam
Sue Marquette Poremba August 04, 2008
A former Countrywide Home Loans employee was one of two California men charged in a scam to steal and sell personal data of customers.






Attackers ramp up zero-day ActiveX exploits
Dan Kaplan August 04, 2008
Roughly one month after Microsoft disclosed that attackers were exploiting a zero-day Active X vulnerability, the attacks are multiplying; but mostly in China.






Facebook and MySpace attacked by new worms
Joy Persaud August 04, 2008
New worms attacking social networking sites Facebook and MySpace have been uncovered.





McAfee picks up DLP maker Reconnex for $46 million
Dan Kaplan August 01, 2008
McAfee filled out its data-loss prevention (DLP) portfolio on Thursday with the $46 million acquisition of Reconnex.







Porn Star Name Suit Heading for Dismissal?
By MATTHEW HELLER
A Houston woman who alleges an actress in a porn film stole her name has admitted she has no "ownership interest" in the name Syvette Wimberly, perhaps dooming her hopes of winning an unusual privacy case. more






Should The Next President Use A Computer?





Top Botnets Pushing Rogue 'Antivirus' ProgramJuly 30, 2008Four of the top spamming botnets are sending malicious spam in order to install a rogue anti-virus program on victims' machines.





Intel's reveals multi-core 'Larrabee'






Did Apple forget to patch something?
Ryan Naraine: Less than 24 hours after Apple released a patch for the DNS cache poisoning vulnerability, there are reports that the DNS client on the OSX 10.4.11 distribution still has not been patched.






Deploying Service Pack 3 directly on top of a fresh installation of Windows XP Service Pack 2 will kill all subsequent updates from Microsoft's servers. The Redmond giant warned that integrating SP3 into the operating system straight after performing a new installation of XP SP2 via Windows Update will result in the failed implementation of any additional releases from Windows Update, Microsoft Update or through Automatic Updates. In this context, installing the third and last service pack for Windows XP onto a freshly-deployed copy of XP SP2 will virtually cut off the operating system from the life-line represented by the company's updates, served either through WU, MU or AU.

"This problem occurs when the latest Windows Update client has been installed and then you install Windows XP SP3 before restarting the computer. This causes the new Wups2.dll file not to be enabled (registered). When Windows XP SP3 is installed, it does not detect the Wups2.dll file, and it sets the registry to point to the original Wups.dll file version that is included in Windows XP SP2 and Windows XP SP3. Because the registry files that correspond to the Wups2.dll file are missing, update installations are unsuccessful," Microsoft indicated.





ValueClick agrees to $1m settlement fund over adware
Online advertising network ValueClick has agreed to a preliminary settlement in a class-action lawsuit over its business practices when it comes to dealing with adware. The company and its subsidiaries plan to pay $1 million into a settlement fund and its has agreed to an independent audit of its practices.
August 04, 2008 - 12:10PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng





Active Administrator - Voted WindowSecurity.com Readers’ Choice Award Winner - Group Policy Management
by The Editor
Site News
Active Administrator was selected the winner in the Group Policy Management category of the WindowSecurity.com Readers’ Choice Awards. Active GPOAdmin and Special Operations Suite were first runner-up and second runner-up.





Worm builds botnets with MySpace, FacebookNews Brief, 2008-08-04
Two variants of a worm advertise a fake Flash update in an attempt to infect victims' computers with bot software.






Washington State Supreme Court Rules in Support of Privacy
Fifteen teachers accused of sexually abusing students, but cleared of suspicion, sued their school districts to block release of their names to news organizations. The court stated that the names of teachers must be disclosed only in cases where sexual misconduct has been found.
Washington Supreme Court says privacy trumps identifying teacher in cases of unsubstantiated sexual misconduct,
Seattle Times, August 1, 2008
Posted by EPIC on August 4, 2008.Permanent link to this item.





New Browsers Fight the Malware Scourge The just-released Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5, and the upcoming IE 8, respond to the growing threat with enhanced blocking features.