Security

A not-so-merry holiday gift for Amazon.com: hackers say they've successfully cracked copyright protections on the company's Kindle e-reader, making it possible to export e-books to other devices.

One hack reportedly resulted from a Kindle DRM challenge issued on Israeli forum Hacking.org. On that site, an Israeli hacker known as Labba claims to have created a tool that lets e-books stored on the Kindle be transferred as PDF files.

A U.S. hacker has written a program to crack copyright protections on the Kindle for PC application.

(Credit: Amazon)

A U.S. hacker who goes by the name "i♥cabbages," meanwhile, created a program called Unswindle that promises to convert books stored in the Kindle for PC application into a different file format.

The free Kindle for PC app lets book buyers read their books right from their PCs without having to buy a Kindle reader. Unswindle has to be used in conjunction with MobiDeDRM, a program by another hacker named "darkreverser."

Posters on i♥cabbages' blog give Unswindle mixed reviews, ranging from "works like a charm" and "worked flawlessly" to descriptions of various errors.

You and just about everyone else, it seems, are spending more and more time on Facebook and Twitter, updating statuses and checking friends' tweets. That's all well and good, of course, but the amount of personal information that all of you share in real time, and the level of trust implicit with the social networking sites, do pose particular security and privacy problems.

A recent study from Sophos found that Facebook users reveal a lot of personal information to new friends, including ones they really don't even know or have never met. Using fake profiles, Sophos sent out friend requests to 100 random Facebook users, and more than 40 percent blindly accepted, giving the company access to birth dates, e-mail addresses, phone number and addresses--private information strangers shouldn't have.

The openness of Twitter--anyone can follow anyone else, and posts are indexed in search engines--makes it a nirvana for spammers. Kaspersky says there are nearly 500,000 new unique URLs that appear in Twitter posts daily, and of those, anywhere between 100 and 1,000 are malware attacks.

Here's a look at some of the specific threats users of the sites face and what they can do about it.

FACEBOOK

A rogue app that appeared early in the year sent notifications to Facebook users reporting they were violating terms of service and offering a link that lead to an application called "facebook -- closing down!" which then spammed all the friends of affected users.

(Credit: Trend Micro)

Problems: Malware, account hijacking, phishing, and social engineering

The biggest malware risk is Koobface, (an anagram of Facebook), which is a worm that targets social networking sites and affects Windows-based computers. Once a computer is infected, it hijacks the Facebook account and sends messages to other friends of the victim, enticing them to click on a link. The link redirects to a Web site where they are prompted to download software ostensibly to watch a video. However, there is no video; only malware that infects the system, blocks access to security sites, and can be used to steal sensitive information from the computer, such as credit card numbers. Infected machines can then be used to spread the worm to others on Facebook, send spam and distribute fake antivirus alerts, said Rik Ferguson, a security researcher at Trend Micro. Koobface now can automatically create new profiles using infected machines, he said.

Facebook accounts can be hijacked in several ways. A brute-force attack can be used to guess passwords. Users can fall for phishing attacks by clicking on links in messages or e-mails purportedly coming from friends that redirect to a fake Facebook log-in page. Or malware such as Koobface can steal passwords.

Social engineering is a huge problem for social networks because the trust that users have for messages and posts from friends can be easily exploited by scammers. Hijacked accounts are used to send everything from spam touting weight loss plans to links that install malware and steal passwords to fake emergency messages saying a friend is stranded in another country and needs someone to send money. Scammers are also sending e-mails that look like they come from Facebook and include an attachment that contains a Trojan.

Solutions: Use antivirus and anti-malware software and keep it up-to-date. Install security updates for operating system and other software. Use software like AVG Linkscanner or McAfee Site Adviser to protect against phishing and malware attacks. Become a fan of the Facebook Security page, which has posts related to all sorts of security issues, tips, resources and other information. If you think you've been infected with Koobface or other malware you should reset your password and notify friends who may have been affected.

Use an up-to-date browser that features an antiphishing black list, such as Firefox 3.0.10 or Internet Explorer 8. Be aware of where you enter your password. Check to see that you are logging in from a legitimate Facebook page with the Facebook.com domain. Be wary of unusual stories or offers that are too good to be true. Verify information with sources directly. Be cautious of any message, post or link that looks suspicious, requires an additional log-in or asks you to download or upgrade software. If a link seems odd or lacks context, don't click on it. Don't click on links or open attachments in suspicious e-mails. You can add a security question from the "Account Settings" page if you would like an additional layer of protection.

Problem: Rogue applications

Facebook doesn't vet every app that appears on the site, which means there is a risk that some apps will have bugs in them or will violate Facebook's privacy policies. Facebook has proven diligent in removing rogue and problem apps quickly when it is notified, but unlike iPhone apps, pretty much anyone can write a Facebook app. "Because the code is not always of professional standard or hosted or audited by Facebook, we've seen innocent apps compromised externally and used to deliver malware, such as fake antivirus," Ferguson said. One rogue app that appeared early in the year sent notifications to Facebook users reporting them in violation of terms of service and offering a link that lead to an application called "facebook -- closing down!" which then spammed all the friends of affected users, according to Trend Micro.

Solution: See solutions above, and be cautious about adding applications. Research the developers and perform Web searches to see if anyone has complained about the app. And ask yourself, what value does the app provide? Do I really need to play zombie?

Problem: Privacy leaks due to user error

Because people control who they are friends with on Facebook it is easy for users to have a false sense of security about the privacy of their data and activities on the site. Social engineering attacks, lax security practices by users like using weak passwords and design or implementation problems with the site itself can undermine the privacy protections users rely on. Users who fall for phishing scams and get their accounts hijacked have everything in their account exposed to strangers who can then use the different types of data for identity fraud or to target the victim's friends with social engineering attacks.

Solution: See solutions above. Also, use unique logins and passwords for each Web site you access. Use strong passwords, change them often and don't share them with anyone.

These instructions explain how to keep most people from viewing your friends list on Facebook.

(Credit: CNET)

Problem: Privacy leaks due to design or implementation issues

Privacy advocates contend that Facebook's lenient apps approval process, privacy policies and confusing privacy settings put users at risk. Two weeks ago, Facebook asked users to configure their privacy settings. The options were confusing and many people were inclined to just keep the default settings, which are set to make the data visible to the Web rather than opting to use the old settings established by the user. Screenshots and descriptions are detailed on this photo gallery.

Many people have complained that it is difficult to figure out how to change the privacy settings, that they are not intuitive and that there doesn't seem to be one central place for that. And using Facebook Connect with outside apps, like the iPhone app Foursquare, can expose more information than a user expects to share. The new privacy changes at Facebook have prompted the Electronic Privacy Information Center to ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate.

Facebook encourages people to share their full names, date of birth, home town and other information, all pieces of information that are commonly used in identity fraud. Scammers on underground sites even refer to Facebook as a "free date-of-birth look up service," according to Ferguson. People don't realize that their profile information can be accessed by total strangers who happen to be in the same groups or networks unless they specifically change the settings. People who don't trust random apps--which in general have access to profile information even if it isn't necessary to the function of the app--don't realize that the apps their friends are using also have access to their data. "Friends apps can access most of your profile, interests and groups. There is no way to prevent them from accessing your name, profile, photo, town and gender," said Joseph Bonneau, a PhD candidate in security at the University of Cambridge. In response to user feedback, Facebook made a change that allows users to hide their friend lists from everyone but their friends, a Facebook spokesman said.

Solution: CNET has a tutorial on how to hide your Facebook friends list by clicking on the pencil in the friends box on your profile. Detailed instructions and tips on dealing with Facebook privacy settings are available on the DotRights.org site and on the All Facebook blog. Facebook also has a blog post about the privacy changes.

Problem: Privacy leaks related to marketing

The relationship between the apps and advertisers can also cause problems. Adding an app allows the app to show ads inside the Facebook domain, and that can leak a user's profile information to the advertiser, said Peter Eckersley, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Meanwhile, cookies and other browsing tracking technology combined with data from social networks can be used by marketers to identify users for targeted advertising and other purposes, Eckersley said, providing details in a blog post on different ways data can be leaked from social networks to third-party tracking firms. Once marketers know a specific person's user name, they can use that identifier in the URL to get to a user's public profile page, according to Eckersley. "They can create a social graph of your date of birth, city, employment, relationship status, all uniquely codified in a way that can be automatically sucked into a database," he said.

Solution: Pick a good cookie policy for the browser, such as manually approving all cookies or only keeping cookies until the browser is closed. Disable Flash cookies. Use Firefox extensions such as RequestPolicy and NoScript to control when third-party sites can include content or run code in the browser page. Use the Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out plugin or AdBlock Plus to block ads. To hide your IP address and other browser characteristics, use Tor via Torbutton.

Problem: Information used to suppress dissent and target political activists

As with e-mail, blog postings and other public expressions of dissent, Facebook and Twitter have been used by governments to target protesters. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that family members of Iranian Americans had been arrested or questioned because of anti-Iranian government posts on Facebook by members outside the country. In other instances, Iranians living abroad were forced to log into their Facebook accounts or reveal passwords to government officials as they arrived at the Tehran airport and some even had their passports confiscated because of their political posts. In the U.S., the EFF says, officials have taken actions against U.S. citizens based on information discovered on their social networks; the group has sued the CIA and other agencies for allegedly refusing to release information about how they are using such sites in surveillance and investigations.

"Basically, every time you post something to Facebook you should assume that the whole world will know what you've posted, your family, employer, the government, people you don't trust," Eckersley said.

Solution: Think carefully about what information you want to share about yourself and consider only posting information you would want to let the general public see.

TWITTER

This screen shot shows a Koobface attack message on a Twitter page.

(Credit: Trend Micro)

Twitter has many of the same malware, phishing, hijacking and social engineering issues that Facebook has, and the solutions for those problems would be the same. Because users don't provide much personal information to Twitter, and can even create accounts using all fake information, and because anyone can follow anyone else, there aren't the same issues with privacy, either. But that makes life easy for spammers.

Security does seem to be a worrisome thing with Twitter. The site has had several serious problems from employee accounts getting compromised. In January, someone hacked into the Twitter internal network -- possibly by guessing the password -- and gained access to the Twitter accounts of President Obama, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, and 31 other high-profile Twitterers. In May, someone broke into Twitter's network and gained access to 10 accounts, which appeared to include Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher. In that breach, a hacker was able to gain access to a Twitter employee's Yahoo account through the password recovery system and from there get information from other sites, including access to the employee's Twitter account. And last week, the legitimate account of a Twitter employee was used to hijack the site and redirect visitors to an external page displaying a banner for the "Iranian Cyber Army."

Meanwhile, Twitter was crippled (and Facebook and other sites also affected) by a rare politically motivated denial-of-service attack targeting one user in August. However, that incident reflects more on Twitter's ability to keep the site up in the face of an attack and accessibility than it does about security risks to users.

Twitter users are susceptible to getting their accounts hijacked, and the site has been targeted by clickjacking pranks. In these social engineering attacks, users were encouraged to click on links that distributed the original tweet to all of the Twitter user's followers.

Users with large numbers of followers have an added responsibility to be careful, particularly when setting accounts to automatically post items from news feeds. A malicious post on an unmoderated news feed that venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki was re-tweeting distributed a Trojan to more than 139,000 followers in June.

Kaspersky offers a Krab Krawler tool that analyzes tweets as they get posted on Twitter and blocks any malware associated with them. Trend Micro has technology that monitors Twitter posts for malicious URLs, as well as looks for attack patterns in the posts, such as use of popular terms to indirectly lead people to malicious links. And Finjan offers a free browser plug-in dubbed SecureTweets that warns users when they encounter a malicious URL in Twitter, as well as Blogger, Gmail, Google and a host of other popular sites. To keep up with security issues on Twitter follow Twitter's Spam Watch account.

Social networks are also susceptible to other serious security problems that can hit any type of Web site. For instance, last week passwords of 32 million stored in plain text on the RockYou site were exposed by a SQL injection attack, according to security firm Imperva. Because the passwords are used on other affiliate sites to the social networking application maker, the breach jeopardized other accounts, like Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo.

Citigroup denies it, but its Citibank unit was reportedly robbed of tens of millions of dollars, the victim of a cyberattack by members of a Russian criminal gang, says Tuesday's Wall Steet Journal (subscription required).

The attack was discovered this past summer, says the Journal, but investigators for the FBI and National Security Agency believe it could have happened months or a year prior. The two agencies have reportedly shared information with the Department of Homeland Security and Citigroup to defend against the attack. The investigation is supposedly ongoing, with no word on whether or not any of the stolen money has been found.

Investigators initially became suspicious after spotting traffic coming from IP addresses once used by the Russian Business Network, a Russian gang of cybercriminals who went off the radar back in 2007, notes the Journal. But reports have surfaced that members of the gang have since regrouped to launch a wave of new attacks.

One of the tools allegedly used by the hackers to break into Citibank was Black Energy, says the Journal, a $40 piece of software that launches Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to prevent access to a specific Web site. Designed by a Russian hacker, Black Energy is commonly sold on certain Russian language forums. But Black Energy is now being sold as part of a $700 kit called the YES Exploit System. The kit includes other crimeware that steals bank account credentials, making it an especially dangerous threat to firms like Citibank.

But Citigroup denies that such an attack ever took place. In a prepared statement e-mailed to CNET, Citigroup said: "Allegations of a breach of Citi systems and associated losses are false. Denial-of-service attacks are directed against companies around the world. While there have been attempts to interfere with the availability of our systems, none of these have resulted in any breaches, compromise of customer information, or losses to Citi."

A company spokesperson further denied any involvement from the FBI. "We had no breach of the system and there were no losses, no customer losses, no bank losses," said Joe Petro, managing director of Citigroup's Security and Investigative services. "Any allegation that the FBI is working a case at Citigroup involving tens of millions of losses is just not true."

Phone calls to the FBI and NSA were not returned.

New cybersecurity chief Howard Schmidt

(Credit: The White House)

The White House's new cybersecurity chief faces a tough agenda, but will be able to draw on the lessons of a 40-year career, including stints at Microsoft and eBay.

Former security adviser Howard Schmidt is returning to the White House as President Obama's new cybersecurity coordinator, the White House announced Tuesday.

In his new role, Schmidt will report to the National Security Council. Schmidt will also "have regular access to the president," said an official who spoke to The New York Times.

Earlier this year, President Obama initiated a review of the government's cybersecurity policies in an effort to streamline operations. Turf wars among various agencies and a perceived weakness in the Department of Homeland Security had raised red flags, prompting the president to declare that the country was not adequately prepared on the cybersecurity front.

Following that review, the White House identified a need for a new cybersecurity chief, then plunged into a tricky, months-long process that now brings Schmidt back to public service.

President Barack Obama greets his new White House cybersecurity chief Howard A. Schmidt in the Cross Hall of the White House.

(Credit: Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

In a recorded speech introducing himself, Schmidt said he sees information technology as offering great opportunities but also great dangers to national security, public safety, economic competitiveness, and personal privacy. As dependence on technology increases, he said, the need to protect our security and privacy also increases.

As such, Schmidt said that the president has directed him to focus on several key areas:

• developing a new and comprehensive strategy to secure U.S. networks to ensure an organized response to future cyber incidents;
• beefing up both public and private partnerships in the U.S. and abroad;
• promoting research and development of next-generation technologies;
• and leading a national campaign to promote cybersecurity, awareness, and education.

Acknowledging that Washington can't solve cybersecurity problems on its own, Schmidt said his agenda is to bring together the government, the private sector, and other stakeholders as part of a new and comprehensive cyberstrategy to strengthen online defenses.

Following Schmidt's appointment, a variety of security analysts offered their thoughts.

In a Tuesday blog post, Randy Abrams of security vendor ESET said that Schmidt is very smart and personable, possessing a depth of knowledge and experience that makes him one of the best possible candidates for the job. But Abrams cautioned people not to expect miracles or fast changes as Schmidt will face huge obstacles trying to coordinate security across different government agencies, most of which have people who think their way is the only way to do things.

Phillip Dunkelberger, president and CEO of security vendor PGP, where Schmidt serves on the board of directors, said: "Howard's familiarity with public sector, private sector, large vendors and small innovative companies should be a great asset to this unique position; one that will just expand as our nation's dependency on cyber communications continues to grow." He also stressed that Schmidt will need to jump in quickly and form a solid working relationship with the Department of Defense and with the federal government's chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, and chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra.

Schmidt brings to his new post a lengthy resume of government service, with a particular niche in computer crimes and forensics. Early in his career, he worked for the FBI's National Drug Intelligence Center, where he ran the Computer Exploitation Team. He also was a special agent and program director for the Air Force, where he set up one of the government's first dedicated computer forensic labs.

His new post will be Schmidt's second stint at the White House. In December 2001, just after the 9/11 attacks, he was appointed vice chairman for President Bush's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and deputy to former White House cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke. Schmidt left his post in February 2003 to return to the private sector. During his tenure with the Bush administration, he helped create a new cybersecurity plan, which at the time was criticized as being too watered down, a charge that Schmidt disputed.

In the private sector, Schmidt served as chief security officer for Microsoft from 1997 to 2001 before joining the White House. After leaving his government post, he joined eBay in 2003 as vice president for security.

More recently, Schmidt was the president and CEO of the Information Security Forum, an international nonprofit organization that focuses on risks and research in the cyberworld.

Updated December 23, 4:00 a.m. PST with comments from security analysts.

What Twitter's homepage looked like before it went down on Thursday night.

(Credit: CC u07ch/Flickr)

Twitter stumbled again overnight on Thursday. But this time, it wasn't the work of the "fail whale," the cuddly cartoon personification of the site's excessive technical baggage. Rather, the site was replaced with a foreboding message from "Iranian Cyber Army" before crashing entirely, indicating that it had been the victim of a malicious attack that targeted its internal servers.

Co-founder Biz Stone posted a brief clarification on the issue late on Thursday night. "Twitter's DNS records were temporarily compromised tonight but have now been fixed," he explained. "As some noticed, Twitter.com was redirected for a while but API and platform applications were working. We will update with more information and details once we've investigated more fully."

At the risk of sounding like an evening-news anchor calling attention to exactly how dangerous your treadmill is or how many diseases you can get from the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese, I think it's time to explore the question: Is it safe to use Twitter?

For one, Twitter's track record with security has been shaky at best. A security flaw this spring exposed the data of a number of employees and allowed a hacker to pilfer some internal documents. Several high-profile accounts, like those of Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, and CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, have been targeted individually. Twitter has been the victim of phishing attacks. Other hackers have proved that Twitter accounts can be set up specifically to corral botnets of infected PCs. And in perhaps the biggest incident of all, a politically motivated denial-of-service attack in August that targeted multiple social-media sites managed to cripple Twitter entirely.

Think of it this way: if Facebook, a far bigger and more mainstream site that's had concerns about user privacy splashed all over the news recently, saw its homepage replaced with a nefarious political message, there would probably be a fresh round of calls for CEO Mark Zuckerberg's resignation. Twitter's heavy users are, for better or for worse, accustomed to sporadic downtime and glitches. They're also less likely to ever visit the Twitter.com homepage, considering the service has so many points of entry--text message, as well as third-party apps for mobile, Web, and desktop. Users have become accustomed to logging into third-party applications with their Twitter credentials.

That, perhaps, makes the overnight hack a bigger concern. Even though it's unlikely that user accounts were compromised in this DNS redirect, it's yet another sign that Twitter's security operations have time and again proven weak enough that the service doesn't exactly seem watertight.

A political message, or just plain obnoxious?
On the other hand, we still don't know much about this attack and it may have been less sophisticated than some may fear. One, nobody's exactly sure yet who the hackers were. "Of course, just because a message saying 'This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army' has been posted on a Web page does not necessarily mean that hackers from Iran are responsible for the defacement," Sophos security consultant Graham Cluley wrote on his blog Friday.

Additionally, Cluley said, the aim seems to have been to either get a political message through or to simply be obnoxious. "Fortunately there is no indication at this point that the page was carrying malicious code, and this attack appears to have had political motivations rather than being designed to steal confidential information from users," he wrote.

"It really looks like it was people were redirected to a 'hactivism' site," weighed in fellow Sophos analyst Beth Jones via e-mail. "There was no malicious code on the site claiming to be the 'Iranian Cyber Army' either. It looks like they just hacked the registrar to redirect traffic. So it's quite probable that none of Twitter's own servers were touched."

Another reassurance is the fact that Twitter simply doesn't have the kind of sensitive data that a Facebook or Google does. While it does have millions of mobile phone numbers stored to power its text-message app, not to mention archived private "direct messages" between users, Twitter does not index a whole lot more that isn't otherwise public. Facebook, for example, has many members' credit card numbers on hand (if they've ever used its "gift shop" feature), not to mention extensive personal data in profiles like addresses, birthdays, and family connections. Members who are still concerned about the security of their Twitter accounts can take the obvious step of changing their Twitter passwords to something that they don't use on their e-mail, Facebook accounts, or elsewhere--just in case.

Beth Jones says she has confidence in Twitter. "I wouldn't say their security is second-rate by any means," Jones said via e-mail. "As it stands, they weren't actually compromised, but I can see from a user point of view the questions and concerns. At Sophos we see a new site compromised every 3.6 seconds. That's easily close to 24,000 sites a day, and of those, the vast majority are legitimate sites that get hacked."

That doesn't mean that Twitter shouldn't start making it more clear that it takes security seriously. If the company, which is now beta-testing a "Contributors" feature that may pave the way to paid corporate accounts, begins storing financial information, we can only hope that their security operations are turned up a few notches. Or, ideally, an order of magnitude.

This post was expanded at 6:23 a.m. PT with comment from Sophos' Beth Jones.

Twitter.com was down Thursday evening, and it appears that the microblogging site may have been hacked or the victim of a DNS hijacking.

The site, which was inaccessible for about an hour starting around 10 p.m. PST, was defaced with the following image before it was taken offline:

Twitter's home page before it went offline Thursday evening.

(Credit: CC u07ch/Flickr)

The message at the bottom of the image appears to be written in Perso-Arabic script and when translated to English it read:

Iranian Cyber Army

THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM

U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don't, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To....

NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA?

WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST

Take Care.

Chris Hoare, a Flickr user in Leicester, England, captured the screenshot above and said his attempt to connect to Twitter bounced through a second Web-hosting server before the image was displayed but that he couldn't catch the address.

"The HTML was pretty basic, and everything that it showed was local on the server it was being sent from," Hoare told CNET News.

A Twitter update message posted at 11:28 p.m. said the site was "working to recovery from an unplanned downtime" and indicated that the incident was indeed a hijacking of Twitter's DNS records:

Twitter's DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.

Security has been a thorny issue for Twitter in the past. In January, a hacker hijacked CNN anchor Rick Sanchez's feed and proclaimed the journalist was "high on crack." Twitter users have also been the target of a password-stealing phishing scam. Disguising itself as a private message that led to a fake Twitter log-in screen, the scam was widespread enough for Twitter to put a warning message on all members' home pages alerting them of the issue.

Certainly, there is a contentious history between Twitter and Iran. In the wake of supposed results of that nation's presidential election in June, protesters in Iran used Twitter to skirt government filters to report events, express outrage, and get people out to opposition rallies. Twitter even rescheduled some planned downtime in order to stay accessible for Iranian users in the midst of political upheaval at the request of the U.S. Department of State.

Firefox was the application that had the most reported vulnerabilities this year, while holes in Adobe Reader more than tripled from a year ago, according to statistics compiled by Qualys, a vulnerability management provider.

Qualys tallied 102 vulnerabilities that were found in Firefox this year, up from 90 last year. The numbers are based on running totals in the National Vulnerability Database.

However, the high number of Firefox vulnerabilities doesn't necessarily mean the Web browser actually has the most bugs; it just means it has the most reported holes. Because the software is open source, all holes are publicly disclosed, whereas proprietary software makers, like Adobe and Microsoft, typically only publicly disclose holes that were found by researchers outside the company, and not ones discovered internally, Qualys Chief Technology Officer Wolfgang Kandek said late on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Adobe took the second place spot from Microsoft this year. The number of vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader rose from 14 last year to 45 this year, while those in Microsoft Office dropped from 44 to 41, according to Qualys. Internet Explorer had 30 vulnerabilities.

A shift in focus
The numbers illustrate the trend of attackers turning their focus away from operating systems and toward applications, Kandek said.

"Operating systems have become more stable and harder to attack and that's why attackers are migrating to applications, he said. "Adobe is a huge focus for attacks now, around 10 times more than Microsoft Office. However, other widely used targets like Internet Explorer and Firefox are still far from secure."

Research from F-Secure earlier this year provides further evidence that holes in Adobe applications are being targeted more than Microsoft apps. During the first three months of 2009, F-Secure discovered 663 targeted attack files, the most popular type being PDFs at nearly 50 percent, followed by Microsoft Word at nearly 40 percent, Excel at 7 percent, and PowerPoint at 4.5 percent.

That compared with Word representing nearly 35 percent of all 1,968 targeted attacks in 2008, followed by Reader at more than 28 percent, Excel at nearly 20 percent, and PowerPoint at nearly 17 percent.

As a result, Adobe needs to respond the way Microsoft did in 2002 when it launched its Trustworthy Computing initiative, and make securing its software a company-wide priority, researchers say. F-Secure even recommended that people stop using Reader and use an alternative PDF reader.

Adobe has taken some action, announcing in May that it would release its security updates on a regular schedule, quarterly and coinciding with every third Microsoft Patch Tuesday.

Another study released this week focuses on which applications are the riskiest to users. Based on the most severe vulnerabilities in popular applications that run on Windows and which are not updated automatically, Firefox again tops the list, followed by Adobe Reader and Apple QuickTime, according to Bit9, a provider of application whitelisting technology.

The list of risky software compiled by Bit9 based on the National Vulnerability Database also includes Java, Flash Player, Safari, Shockwave, Acrobat, Opera, Real Player, and Trillian. Last year, the Bit9 list of the most risky apps included Skype, Yahoo IM, and AOL IM, but those three were not on this year's list.

Not included on the list are programs from Microsoft and Google because of the ability for users of their software to have patches installed automatically. Microsoft software can be automatically and centrally updated via the Microsoft Systems Management Server and Windows Server Update Services, and Google Chrome is automatically updated when users are on the Internet, Bit9 said.

The lists do not take into account the amount of time it takes for companies to release patches, particularly when there is an exploit in the wild. Bit9 noted that Microsoft Internet Explorer was given an "honorable mention" because of a zero-day vulnerability related to ActiveX that went unpatched for three weeks in July.

Microsoft isn't alone in taking longer than customers would like to fix holes. In March, Adobe released a patch for a zero-day vulnerability in Reader and Acrobat--about two weeks after it was disclosed to users and nearly two months after exploits had been discovered in the wild.

Adobe customers will have to wait about a month for a fix to the latest critical zero-day hole in Reader and Acrobat. The company announced on Wednesday it would not patch the vulnerability until its next scheduled quarterly security update release on January 12.

Updated December 21: to clarify in paragraphs one and four that Adobe Reader specifically is ranked second in vulnerabilities, followed by Microsoft Office, and that Internet Explorer alone had 30 vulnerabilities.

The MQ-1 Predator.

(Credit: U.S. Air Force)

Iraqi insurgents have reportedly intercepted live video feeds from the U.S. military's Predator drones using a $25.95 Windows application that allows them to track the pilotless aircraft undetected.

Hackers working with Iraqi militants were able to determine which areas of the country were under surveillance by the U.S. military, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, adding that video feeds from drones in Afghanistan also appear to have been compromised.

Meanwhile, a senior Air Force officer said Wednesday that a wave of new surveillance aircraft, both manned and unmanned, were being deployed to Afghanistan to bolster "eyes in the sky" protection for the influx of American troops ordered by President Obama.

This apparent security breach, which had been known in military and intelligence circles to be possible, arose because the Predator unmanned aerial vehicles do not use encryption in the final link to their operators on the ground.

Read more of "U.S. was Warned of Predator Drone Hacking" at CBSNews.com.

Adobe on January 12 will patch a critical hole in Reader and Acrobat that is being exploited in attacks. That date is the company's next scheduled quarterly security update release.

The zero-day hole, which affects Reader and Acrobat versions 9.2 and earlier, could crash the system and allow an attacker to take control of the computer.

Malicious Adobe Acrobat PDF files are distributed via an e-mail attachment that, when opened, executes a Trojan that targets Windows systems, according to Symantec. The rate of infection is extremely limited and the risk assessment level is very low, the company said.

Adobe decided to issue the patch in cycle in about four weeks rather than work on an earlier patch release because that would take between two and three weeks to deliver and would put the regular quarterly update off schedule, the company said in a blog post.

"The team determined that by putting additional resources over the holidays towards the engineering and testing work required to ship a high confidence fix for this issue with low risk of introducing any new problems, they could deliver the fix as part of the quarterly update on January 12, 2010," Adobe's Brad Arkin wrote.

In the meantime, customers can use a new JavaScript Blacklist mitigation feature that allows for easy disabling of JavaScript, Arkin said.

"Additionally, an informal poll we conducted indicated that most of the organizations we talked with were in favor of [releasing the patch in cycle] to better align with their schedules," he wrote.

Meanwhile, Webroot analyzed the payload of the malware and found that it installs three files that look like Windows system files that are digitally signed with a forged Microsoft certificate. Unlike legitimate Microsoft-signed certificates, these lack an e-mail address and a time stamp, the company said in a blog post.

"Authors of Trojan horse apps rarely go to the trouble of digitally signing files in this way," writes Webroot researcher Andrew Brandt. "It's not clear why they would be digitally signing files, but clearly the person or people behind this are up to no good."

Updated 3:50 p.m. PST with Webroot finding forged Microsoft certificates in the malware.