Apples announcement that it will provide a fix for the MacDefender family of fake antivirus scams and the rising concerns about mobile security in general dominated IT security news for the week of May 23. - Several security firms, including ESET, Intego and Sophos,
raised the alarm beginning earlier this month about the proliferation of fake
antivirus programs specifically targeting the Mac OS platform.
These scareware programs worked in the same way as the PC
variants, with users being told their...
Security writer Brian Krebs may have found a link connecting Russian payment processor ChronoPay with some of the recent Mac scareware software in circulation. - It appears that a Russian online payment company may be
behind the rogue
antivirus MacDefender scam that has dominated security headlines for the past
few weeks.
A few days after the first attacks surfaced, users on Apple
support forums reported that the Mac malware was directing them to
mac-...
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin is dealing with problems in its internal network after a suspected intrusion reportedly using the RSA SecurID tokens. - Lockheed Martin has been battling a
major disruption to its computer systems after its IT security team detected
a network intrusion earlier this week, Reuters reported.
The disruption began May 22 when the
company detected an intrusion to the network, according to the May 26 Reuters
story, w...
In one of the several congressional hearings on cyber-security, lawmakers discussed data breach notification laws and how to protect critical infrastructure. - Security
experts and public officials testified at a congressional subcommittee hearing
about the role the federal government should play in defending cyberspace and
protecting critical infrastructure from attackers.
There
are more kinds of malware and online threats, and cyber-criminals are be...
Russian company ElcomSoft hasnt cracked AES-256 encryption, but figured out a way to obtain the cryptographic keys necessary to decrypt all the data on Apple iOS devices. - Russian security firm ElcomSoft claims to have cracked the
AES-256 encryption Apple used to encrypt data on user iPhones. Despite the claim of the company's CEO, thats not quite the case.
The publicly available ElcomSoft Phone Password Breaker
application provides users with the ability to view e...
An independent security consultant demonstrated a cookiejacking technique to show how attackers can steal Web cookies to access user accounts online. - An
unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer allows attackers to steal login
credentials to various Websites via cookies, according to a security
researcher.
Attackers
can exploit the Internet Explorer flaw to steal cookies from user computers and
use the saved information to access user da...
News Analysis: The days of Mac OS X being seemingly immune from viruses and other malware are gone forever as Apple has finally acknowledged the existence of fake Macintosh antivirus scams. - Over
the years, Mac users have been conditioned to believe that their computers were
immune from security threats. The folks who went to the Apple Store to get a
Mac were told by friends, family and even Apple that they were much safer using
a Mac than they would be with a Windows-based computer...
IT Security Network Security News Reviews eWeek HOME NEWS REVIEWS STORAGE SECURITY DESKTOPS NOTEBOOKS MOBILITY APP DEV BLOGS TechDirect WHITE PAPERS WEBCASTS Security News Security Reviews Security Blogs IT Infrastructure Government IT Open Source Enterprise Networking Applications Videos All eWeek Topics Home IT Security Network Security News Reviews News Reviews Data Breaches Add Urgency to Demands for Security Code of Conduct IT Security Network Security News Reviews : Data Breaches Add Urgency to Demands for Security Code of Conduct Share By Fahmida Y . Rashid on 2011-05-26 Millions of consumers are put at risk each year as companies lose control of personal data , according to Consumer Reports . Lawmakers in Congress have been discussing data security , and the Obama Administration
Despite spending a lot of time making sure they are compliant with federal and state regulations, health care organizations claim they are still seeing a lot of data breaches. - Being regulatory-compliant
does not necessarily reduce the chances of a data breach, at least for the
health care industry, according to a new study. Even more worrisome,
organizations appear to be focusing more on compliance and less on security.
About 56 percent of IT
security professionals i...
During the morning of May 26, 2011, the SoftPak Director (SPD) data center experienced a network equipment failure. The redundant systems were able to take over automatically.
AccessPatrol was selected the winner in the Endpoint Security category of the WindowSecurity.com Readers' Choice Awards. GFI EndPointSecurity and Netwrix USB Blocker were runner-up and second runner-up respectively.
Machiavellianism is also a term that some social and personality psychologists use to describe a person’s tendency to deceive and manipulate other people for their personal gain. In the 1960s, Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis developed a test for measuring a person’s level of Machiavellianism. This eventually became the MACH-IV test, a twenty-statement personality [...]
Damballa updated its CSP appliances to help Internet service providers and telco carriers roll out systems that can monitor and identify infected subscriber devices on their networks. - Damballa updated its cyber-threat monitoring service for
internet service providers and telecommunications providers. The appliances detect
malware infections affecting any device on the CSP (Communications Service
Providers) networks, including PCs, Macs, tablets and smartphones.
Damballa CSP 1...
A SQL injection attack exposed customer certificate information and employee log-in credentials for a Comodo reseller in Brazil. No certificates were issued or compromised. - Browser
security is back in the spotlight as another Comodo partner suffered a security
breach that allowed attackers to access customer data.
Brazil-based
ComodoBR is at least the fourth Comodo partner to be compromised this year. In
this incident, attackers used SQL injection to access certif...
IT Security Network Security News Reviews eWeek HOME NEWS REVIEWS STORAGE SECURITY DESKTOPS NOTEBOOKS MOBILITY APP DEV BLOGS TechDirect WHITE PAPERS WEBCASTS Security News Security Reviews Security Blogs IT Infrastructure Government IT Open Source Enterprise Networking Applications Videos All eWeek Topics Home IT Security Network Security News Reviews News Reviews 10 Biggest Data Breaches of 2011 So Far IT Security Network Security News Reviews : 10 Biggest Data Breaches of 2011 So Far Share By Fahmida Y . Rashid on 2011-05-25 Expedias Trip Advisor , email marketing provider Epsilon , Sonys online entertainment services , professional engineering society Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . They all suffered some kind of a data breach in the first four months of 2011. At
The three amigo’s are united again! After what seems like forever, Martin, Rich and Zach manage to find the time to actually talk on the podcast again. And even though everyone’s been over the Sony compromises (10 as of this evening) we talk about that, as well as the Apple malware problem that’s currently ongoing [...]
While digging through the hard drives seized as part of the Rustock takedown in March, Microsofts forensic experts have uncovered thousands of compromised email addresses. - Microsoft
investigators have uncovered more than 400,000 email addresses from a single
hard drive seized during the Rustock botnet takedown in March, according to
court documents. The Rustock gang also had stolen credit card numbers.
Microsoft
outlined its investigation into the hard drives bel...
There is an inherent value to vulnerability assessment and attack data beyond the security team. Making relevant data available to other solutions, departments, and team members can streamline the vulnerability management process and ensure the workflow is seamless between departments and management. In addition, having tight data integration makes it easier to document workflow processes [...]
Yesterday, SecurityWeek published my article "Don't Panic Over the Latest Mac Malware Story." I ask and answer four questions: Who benefits from the story? Why should we care? If we do care, what do we do about it? What else should we be thinking about? You can read the column in full at the SecurityWeek website.
We expect our smart phones to handle all of our business needs: phone calls, voicemail, email, and calendar functionality, at the very least. Why not expect the same consolidated approach with your security products? Take for example the relationship between vulnerabilities and malware. Most of the malware, trojans, worms, etc., get into a system by [...]
While Martin and Rich are away, Zach will pla^Wrecord an interview. I managed to snag Aldo Cortesi for a bit to discuss his research into de-anonymizing Apple UDIDs, as well as his work on mitmproxy, a man-in-the-middle proxy tool. Network Security Podcast, Episode 241 Time: 30:24
What do retailers worry about the most? Outside of remaining profitable and competitive, theft is always a concern. Theft can occur for a retailer in a variety of ways. Everything from shoplifting, hijacking cargo shipments, to electronic identity theft. Thieves are always trying to find new ways of stealing “something” and making money from it. [...]
The Swedish technical IT security conference SEC-T will be held on 8th and 9th of September this year. The SEC-T conference is a really nice arrangement that brings some high quality speakers from around the world to Stockholm for two days. The call for papers (CFP) for SEC-T was released a couple[...]
In this article, we'll look at the security mechanisms in IE 9 and compare it not only with earlier versions of IE, but with top competitors Firefox and Chrome.
It’s been one of those weeks. Martin spent the weekend in Amsterdam and only got a few hours at home before heading out on the road again. Rich is home with a sick child. And Zach is doing Zach things off somewhere and not communicating much. Luckily, Martin interviewed Eric Chiu, the President and founder [...]
Oh how I am starting to enjoy the odd numbered months this year. Back in January Microsoft released 2 bulletins. February followed with 12, March with 3, and April with 17. Now May has arrived with only 2 bulletins. If you are looking to avoid piles of patch deployment work this summer, I’d bet on [...]
In configuration we trust. This statement couldn’t be truer to my research team and me, especially after discovering some of the findings in our latest report, which we publicly released last week. In the report, we describe simple configuration changes and software version upgrades that could mitigate many application vulnerabilities before patches are available. Some [...]
This article discusses the limited privileges of standard user accounts. It explains Authentication tokens, file/folder and Registry permissions at the time the user or application attempts to access that resource.