Criminal Hackers

Report: Attackers sent Google workers IMs from 'friends'

People behind the China-based online attacks of Google and other companies looked up key employees on social networks and contacted them pretending to be their friends to get the workers to click on links leading to malware, according to a published report on Monday.

"The most significant discovery is that the attackers had selected employees at the companies with access to proprietary data, then learnt who their friends were," the Financial Times reported. "The hackers compromised the social network accounts of those friends, hoping to enhance the probability that their final targets would click on the links … Read more

Report: Companies unprepared for cybercrime

Many organizations are focused on stopping random hackers and blocking pornography when they should be concerned with bigger threats from professional cybercriminals, according to a new cybersecurity report.

In a survey conducted last year of 523 IT and security managers, top-level executives, and law enforcement personnel, hackers were rated the biggest threat, followed by insiders and foreign entities--probably because hackers are the "noisiest and easiest to detect," the 2010 CyberSecurity Watch Survey concluded.

However, attackers from nation-states and organized crime syndicates use more sophisticated techniques that can do more economic damage and go undiscovered, said the report, sponsored … Read more

Google's spy case: Not the first, nor the last

The recent cyberattacks on Google and other U.S. companies became public because they prompted Google's dramatic showdown with China, but attempts to steal corporate secrets using the Internet happen under the radar on a daily basis.

"Espionage has been going on for decades. The Internet has made it a lot easier to conduct espionage," said John Bumgarner, chief technology officer at the government-funded think tank U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit. "The targets are mostly defense contractors and high-tech companies that have some type of competitive advantage that someone wants to steal."

When regular business … Read more

Google China insiders may have helped with attack

Google is looking into whether employees in its China office were involved in the attacks on its network that led to theft of intellectual property, according to CNET sources.

Sources familiar with the investigation told CNET last week that Google was looking into whether insiders at the company were involved in the attacks, but additional details were not known at the time.

Insiders could have played a part in what is believed to have been a multi-prong attack on the company, according to the sources.

Employees in the Google China office were put on leave and others were transferred, Reuters reported … Read more

IE exploit code released on the Internet

Exploit code for the zero-day hole in Internet Explorer linked to the China-based attacks on Google and other companies has been released on the Internet, Microsoft and McAfee warned on Friday.

Meanwhile, the German federal security agency issued a statement on Friday urging its citizens to use an alternative browser to IE until a patch arrives.

"We still only see limited targeted attacks affecting Internet Explorer 6," Jerry Bryant, senior security program manager lead at the Microsoft Security Response Center, said in a statement. "While newer versions of Internet Explorer are affected by this vulnerability, mitigations exist … Read more

New IE hole exploited in attacks on U.S. firms

Attackers targeting Google and a host of other U.S. companies recently used software that exploits a new hole in Internet Explorer, Microsoft said Thursday.

"Internet Explorer was one of the vectors" used in the attacks that Google disclosed earlier this week, Microsoft said in a statement. "To date, Microsoft has not seen widespread customer impact, rather only targeted and limited attacks exploiting IE 6," the statement said.

The vulnerability affects Internet Explorer 6, IE 7, and IE 8 on Windows 7, Vista, Windows XP, Server 2003, Server 2008 R2, as well as IE 6 Service … Read more

Behind the China attacks on Google (FAQ)

Computer attacks on corporations happen all the time, but most companies don't publicize them. They fear damage to their reputation and they don't want to jeopardize the investigation or reveal any information that could be used in future attacks.

Google shocked the security community on Tuesday by disclosing that it and other companies had been hit by attacks that originated in China, with some targeting Gmail users who were human rights activists. As a result, the search giant said it would stop censoring its Web results in China and could end up exiting that market altogether.

Google hasn'… Read more

U.S. law firm behind China piracy suit targeted in attacks

A U.S. law firm representing a Web content-filtering company in a piracy lawsuit against the Chinese government said on Wednesday that it received malicious e-mails in a targeted attack from China similar to recent attacks on Google and other U.S. companies.

At least 10 employees at Gipson Hoffman & Pancione received the e-mails on Monday and Tuesday, according to Gregory Fayer, a lawyer at the Los Angeles-based firm.

The firm filed a $2.2 billion lawsuit last week on behalf of Solid Oak Software against the Chinese government, two Chinese software developers, and seven PC manufacturers. The suit … Read more

China-based Google attacks similar to prior ones

Updated 11:45 a.m. PST January 14 to note that iDefense and Adobe now say that an Adobe vulnerability was not involved in the attacks and 8:18 a.m. PST January 13 with Rackspace comment.

The targeted attacks on Google and more than 30 other U.S. companies late last year bear striking similarities to targeted attacks on 100 U.S. companies last summer, a security researcher familiar with the attacks said Tuesday.

Last July, workers at about 100 U.S. technology companies were targeted with e-mails containing malicious PDF files that exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe … Read more

Hacker Gonzalez pleads guilty in Heartland breach

A Miami hacker who had already pleaded guilty to computer fraud and identity theft for breaches at retailers T.J.Maxx, OfficeMax, and many other merchants, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to similar charges related to breaches at Heartland Payment Systems, 7-11, Hannaford Brothers supermarkets, and two other companies.

Albert Gonzalez, 28, reiterated terms of a plea agreement in U.S. District Court in Boston. A week earlier, co-conspirator Stephen Watt of New York, appeared in that same court and was ordered to serve two years in prison and pay $171.5 million in restitution for developing a sniffing program used … Read more