Windows 7 RC ignores file extension security risk Microsoft's Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) continues a long-running practice of hiding file extensions that puts users at risk, a security researcher said today. Read more...
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'Hacker' threatens to expose health data, demands $10M
The alleged ransom note posted on the PMP site claimed that the hacker had backed up and encrypted more than 8 million patient records and 35 million prescriptions and then deleted the original data.
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Seagate drives hit by firmware glitch
According to DiskEng, the serious firmware issue concerns the 500GB to 1.5TB range of Seagate hard drives. These include the Barracuda 7200.11, Barracuda ES.2 SATA, and DiamondMax 22 drives, with firmware revisions SD15, SD16, SD17, SD18 and MX15.
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Image spam returns with a vengeance
Image spam, which hit a peak in late 2006 and early 2007, has made a comeback, said Holly Stewart, the threat response manager of IBM Internet Security System's X-Force team. After barely registering during most of 2008, image-based spam accounted for about 25% of all spam by the end of last month.
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Swedish man indicted in 2004 Cisco code theft
Philip Gabriel Pettersson, 21, was indicted on one count of intrusion and two counts of misappropriation of trade secrets. He was also indicted on two counts of intrusion involving NASA. The U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division and Joseph Russoniello, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, announced the indictment after an investigation by the FBI and other agencies.
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Bank of America still not ready for iPhone
Bank of America Corp. offers a mobile banking application that runs on the iPhone smartphone, but the bank does not allow its many employees to use iPhones at work, a bank official said at the Go Mobile 2009 conference here.
The biggest concern is that the bank can't centrally manage the iPhone as easily as it can manage BlackBerry devices from Research In Motion Ltd., said Jamie Young, vice president of enterprise technology at Bank of America.
...
Young said he believes that the large businesses using the iPhone are not in banking or financial services. "I don't know of a bank using it," he said, noting that security worries are higher for banks than they are for other companies.
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As wireless monitoring device popularity grows, so do privacy worries
The wireless industry is abuzz with plans for expanding remote monitoring of just about any device over wireless networks.
Examples range from reading water and power meters remotely, to helping police see how long a car has been parked on a city street and monitoring traffic congestion via wireless cameras.
But with the growth in the technology, there's also growing concern that Big Brother will have more eyes and ears than ever before.
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Apple, Opera slammed over browser patch regimes
Apple and Opera lag behind Google and Mozilla when it comes to distributing Web browser updates due to how they've structured their patch programs, according to new research.
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Update: Strike Fighter data was leaked on P2P network in 2005, security expert says
The intrusions that were reported by the Journal were believed to date back to 2007. Boback's testimony makes it clear that data on the Joint Strike Fighter project has been available for at least two years before that.
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Acquisition Boosts Top-Line Growth At Computer Security Company
Investor's Business Daily - Thu Apr 30, 6:28 PM ET
You wouldn't know it from McAfee that personal-computer sales and corporate spending on technology are weak.
"Security is a pillar of strength," said Daniel Ives, a tech analyst with FBR Capital Markets. "It's almost like a utility."
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Sale of Spock Spooks Privacy Advocates
Analysis: Does the Intellius-Spock marriage signal a slippery slide toward an invasion of privacy?
There's some hand-wringing going on over the recent announcement that Intelius, an online background check service has purchased Spock, a people search engine...
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Small- To Medium-Sized Businesses Often Hit Hardest By Botnets
May 06,2009
Bot infections, spam can be 'silent killer' for SMBs due to drain on email servers, network resources
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Researchers Take Over Dangerous Botnet
May 04,2009
Computer scientists at the University of California-Santa Barbara expose details of infamous botnet known for stealing financial data after temporarily wresting control of it
A group of researchers at the University of California-Santa Barbara boldly hijacked a notorious botnet known for stealing financial information and discovered that the botnet is even more dangerous than had been thought.
Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara have published a report (PDF) that exposes details about how the infamous Torpig/Sinowal/Anserin botnet operates, its makeup, who it typically victimizes, and just what type of financial data it's stealing. The researchers seized control of the botnet for 10 days in late January, after which Torpig's operators reclaimed it.
"Torpig provided a unique opportunity to understand a live botnet. Most of the time, researchers only gain access to offline data, [such as] through a dropzone server that may be years old, while the data that we received was in real-time," says Brett Stone-Gross, one of the UCSB researchers.
...
...the UCSB researchers were able to collect some 70 gigabytes of data during the 10 days they controlled the botnet, which they estimate was at about 182,914 machines. During that time, Torpig stole banking credentials of 8,310 accounts from more than 400 different financial institutions -- namely PayPal (1,770 accounts), Poste Italiane (765), Capital One (314), E-Trade (304), and Chase (217).
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Every dot matters
Couple of days ago, one of our readers, Lee Dickey, reported a strange behavior of a link on Microsoft's Technet web page with information about SP2 for Vista. At first look, it appeared that a web page hosted by Microsoft was compromised as it redirected the browser to an external web site which was simply some kind of a search engine.
IMAGE AT SITE
That's right – a dot is missing between technet and microsoft.com, so the link actually pointed to technetmicrosoft.com, which is a domain registered by someone in the USA as easily checked with WHOIS.
So what happened here? Nothing malicious – it was simply an error by someone at Microsoft or a typo, however, what should be stressed out is the importance of link validation – if the owner of the technetmicrosoft.com domain was malicious, he could have done some serious damage. Luckily, Lee notified Microsoft as well and this was fixed quickly.
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Why Information Must Be Destroyed, Part Two
Ben Rothke looks at how to destroy digitally stored information. Includes pros and cons of in-house and outsourced data destruction.
Read more
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South Carolina to Craigslist: close Erotic Services—or else!
May 6, 4:33 p.m. UTC - by Jacqui Cheng Posted in: Law & Disorder
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster is threatening Craigslist with criminal charges if it doesn't close its Erotic Services section by May 15. The threat comes just as Craigslist is making headlines for playing a part in an Erotic Services-related murder, catapulting the site into mainstream attention for its red light district.
Read more
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AutoRun changes in Windows 7
As some of our readers are well aware, Conficker and other malware is taking advantage of the AutoRun functionality as a spreading mechanism. Furthermore, over the last couple of months, there has been a significant increase of this threat, as more malware is abusing this functionality. Further information about this specific threat has been highlighted in the recent Security Intelligence Report (look for Win32/AutoRun) and the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) blog.
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Secure Version of Windows Created for the U.S. Air Force
I have long argued that the government should use its massive purchasing power to pressure software vendors to improve security. Seems like the U.S. Air Force has done just that:
The Air Force, on the verge of renegotiating its desktop-software contract with Microsoft, met with Ballmer and asked the company to deliver a secure configuration of Windows XP out of the box. That way, Air Force administrators wouldn't have to spend time re-configuring, and the department would have uniform software across the board, making it easier to control and maintain patches.
Surprisingly, Microsoft quickly agreed to the plan, and Ballmer got personally involved in the project.
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How many Intel CPUs will fail the XP Mode test in Windows 7?
Ed Bott: Some of the most popular PCs on the market today, equipped with fast and powerful dual- and quad-core CPUs, won't be able to use the vaunted Windows XP Mode in Windows 7.
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Big jump in spam volume
May 4, 2009
The volume of spam jumped sharply up last week, coupled with a rise in image spam.
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McAfee Releases First-Quarter Threats Report
Today McAfee Avert Labs released its Threats Report for the first quarter of 2009. In it we reveal that cybercriminals have taken control of almost 12 million new IP addresses since January, a 50 percent increase since 2008. The United States is now home to the largest percentage of botnet-infected computers, currently hosting 18 percent of all zombie machines. Seems the bad guys are attempting to recover from last November’s takedown of a central spam-hosting ISP by rebuilding their army.
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Baidu Censorship Keyword Leak (wikileaks)
This article lists words that if searched for, will cause censorship filtering to kick in.
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If ISPs Meter, Who Verifies Meter Accuracy?
Despite some substantial differences, ISPs eager to bill by the byte love to compare broadband to electrical utilities, where meters are heavily regulated. But carriers that have spent millions and worked tirelessly to remove regulation aren't going to be particularly keen on new government rules. Consumers aren't going to want to ad and malware bandwidth, and they're going to want ISP totals to match their routers.
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Mass. police snooped on celebrities' records
Angela Moscaritolo May 06, 2009
Massachusetts law enforcement personnel tapped into the state criminal records database and inappropriately viewed the personal records of celebrities on dozens of occasions, according to a state audit released Tuesday.
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Mac worm poses little risk, represents cross-platform innovation
Angela Moscaritolo May 05, 2009
A recently discovered Macintosh worm, known as OSX/Tored.A, remains a low-risk threat but is an indication that malware authors are not turning a blind eye to the Apple platform, researchers said Tuesday.
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LexisNexis admits to another major data breach
Angela Moscaritolo May 04, 2009
About 32,000 people are being notified that their personal information may have been compromised after a breach at consumer data provider LexisNexis resulted in identity theft and credit fraud, the company has disclosed.
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The Credit Card That Won't Go Away
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - A customer says HSBC Bank Nevada sent him a credit card he did not ask for or want, so he cut it up and mailed it back to the bank, refusing it. He says the next month the bank billed him $99.99 on the unwanted card, proceeded to charge him $35 a month in "late fees," and put the insane charges on his credit report, despite repeated complaints from his attorney.
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