This has been a busy year for both hackers and computer forensic specialists. Whether it was the 4 million usernames and e-mail addresses swiped in a hack of The Pirate Bay or AT&T's Website hack that exposed the e-mail addresses of iPad 3G owners, the first six months of 2010 are a reminder of the realities of today's IT security landscape. With this backdrop, security professionals will meet the week of July 26 at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas to discuss the latest threats and what can be done about them.
Think of it as one more reason not to write checks.
Hackers believed to be operating out of Russia have figured out a high-tech way to carry out the decidedly low-tech crime of check fraud, a computer security company says — writing at least $9 million in fakes against more than 1,200 legitimate accounts.
But these hackers got the account information in an unusual way: They broke into three websites that specialize in a little-known type of business — archiving check images online.
One important piece of a multilevel security defense for companies of almost any size is network access control (NAC), which lets you enforce policies for end-user machines.
Yahoo is considering investing in hackers with good ideas and technologies, a company executive said on Saturday.
"We are open to many ways of having a stake in creative young companies," said Jeff Kinder, Yahoo’s senior vice president for media products and solutions, on the sidelines of a Yahoo Open Hack Day in Bangalore.
The Internet company does not have a fund earmarked for this purpose, or a definite model or set of criteria for such investments, Kinder added.
This week, Mozilla released a security update for their popular Firefox web browser. Firefox 3.6.7 fixes several security issues that were found in the 3.6.6 version. Over half of the vulnerabilities fixed were listed as "Critical," which is the highest danger level that Mozilla associates with security issues.
A new report reveals that cybercriminals are attacking millions of computers every month – and infecting approximately 10 per cent
Cybercriminals are increasingly focussing on money, a new report suggests, and improved organisation means that “toolkits” have been developed to methodically infect PCs so that illegally obtained information can be bought and sold.
In a survey by security firm AVG, 165 internet domains were found to have attacked 12 million visitors over the course of two months. More than 1.2 million computers were subsequently infected.
The Zeus/Zbot banking Trojan is reported to be attacking the Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode verification systems introduced in recent years to stop old-style card not present (CNP) fraud.
Security company Trusteer, which has carved out a speciality in reporting on Zeus/Zbot bank Trojan activity, does not say where and how it encountered the latest attack, but reports that the it is aimed at customers of 15 unnamed US banks.
Microsoft on Tuesday officially retired Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), the company's most significant service pack, several security experts said.
"Windows XP SP2 was a game changer," said Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer of Qualys, a California-based security risk and compliance management provider.
"SP2 was a major, major course correction by Microsoft," added John Pescatore, an analyst who covers security for Gartner Research. "It was the first time that Microsoft could tout Windows as being secure."
Some IT execs dismiss public cloud services as being too insecure to trust with critical or sensitive application workloads and data. But not Doug Menefee, CIO of Schumacher Group, an emergency management firm in Lafayette, La.
"Of course there's risk associated with using cloud services – there's risk associated with everything you do, whether you're walking down the street or deploying an e-mail solution out there. You have to weigh business benefits against those risks," he says.
BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) today took the wraps off its latest offering for consumers, BlackBerry Protect, a free service meant to help non-corporate BlackBerry users secure and manage their smartphones.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |