security

In an interview posted on SecurityFocus, a person identifying himself as "DCT" denied that there is a cybergang responsible for creating the MPack tool, a package of malicious software responsible for the latest wave of PC compromises.

"We are just a group of people working together, but doing some illegal business," he said. He also denied any contact with real-world Russian criminals. He said the "Dream Coders Team" (DCT) consists of three people, plus a few other freelancers. The developers are all Russian, while the others are from various countries. He said $ash, an … Read more

If you ever wanted to be Nevada's governor for a day, it doesn't seem to be that hard.

In what could be a whopping security hole, Nevada has posted the password to the gubernatorial e-mail account on its official state Web site. It appears in a Microsoft Word file giving step-by-step instructions on how aides should send out the governor's weekly e-mail updates, which has, as a second file shows, 13,105 subscribers.

The Outlook username is, by the way, "governor" and the password is "kennyc". We should note at this point that … Read more

A soap opera is playing out on the mailing lists of several security newsgroups this morning, complete with people hiding behind pseudonyms, people "outing" one another and rumors of death threats against the major players. At stake? A possible worm for Apple's Mac OS X operating system.

Over the weekend, someone using the name Infosec Sellout posted on the BugTraq mailing list news of a worm exploiting a vulnerability in mDNSResponder, a component of Apple's Bonjour automatic network service. Apple patched the mDNSResponder vulnerability in May, but the author claims there remains an unpatched vulnerability. The … Read more

Today, Mozilla patched nine vulnerabilities including the Firefox portion of the Internet Explorer-Firefox flaw identified last week. That flaw occurs when IE passes malformed URLs from IE to another application such as another browser. Mozilla wrote, "this fix only prevents Firefox and Thunderbird from accepting bad data." And it stated in boldface, "this patch does not fix the vulnerability in Internet Explorer."

This security update also addresses known issues involving browser crashes, privilege escalation, and cross-site scripting vulnerability. Current users of Firefox 2.0.0.4 or earlier will be automatically prompted to install the new … Read more

A cheesy, old security riddle goes like this: how do you protect your bagels? Put lox (locks) on them. Ha, ha. Ha. I can see you rolling your eyes, and I understand. Smack-you-over-the-head Brooklyn humor isn't for everyone. Yet when the nitty gets gritty, this easy-as-smoked-salmon-pie security technique must not be as obvious for mobile phone users as it should be, because although mobile attacks have been steadily rising, users have been more interested in games, ringtones, and customization apps for their PDAs than in protecting mobile data. (See the related CNET News.com article.)

Last December, I put together a little something with tips on how to secure your wireless mobile device. I've updated that below, because it never hurts to rediscover some good security "lox."… Read more

Various security companies are today reporting targeted attacks made on Fortune 1000 companies over the weekend. What's notable is that documents within each of the affected companies were stolen, encrypted, then the companies were offered a decryption key for a fee. What's odd is that the amount requested as ransom was a mere $300.

Reuters reports companies hit by the attack include Booz Allen, Unisys, Hewlett-Packard and Hughes Network Systems. Security vendors report having identified hundreds more.

The attack works like this. Malware writers target a handful of companies, somehow manage to sneak their code past the corporate … Read more

As we head into the dog days of summer, most technology announcements are lukewarm at best. Usually vendors save their juicy stuff for September and the push toward the end of the year.

With that as a back drop, one announcement last week may have been a curious exception to this rule. Cisco, EMC, and Microsoft got together with a few others and announced the Secure Information Sharing Architecture (SISA). What is SISA? The press release defines it as a "commercial off-the-shelf architecture that was created to make data easily, and securely shared among multinational environments."

Pretty vague, … Read more

Intended to be a convenience, the unique dialing feature included in the iPhone version of the Safari browser might soon become a nightmare.

SPI Labs' lead researcher Billy Hoffman says that the feature that is designed to dial any number displayed on a Web page after a user taps it is subject to various attacks, including cross-site scripting and drive-by downloads. This issue was first reported to Apple on July 6, but Hoffman believes the "unique urgency" and its potential to affect a large number of people warranted public disclosure.

Potential uses of this vulnerability cited by Hoffman … Read more

Spybot Search & Destroy has for years been a household standard in free antispyware protection. Originally winning respect for offering comprehensive malware-slashing features that competing software lacked, Spybot Search & Destroy has lost this advantage, as most reputable antivirus programs have added similar features. This First Look video takes you on a features tour, and hits upon the pros and cons that may have you standing by the sought-after program or searching for a spyware-busting alternative.