cyberattacks

Google hasn't been shy about wagging its finger at China recently. And in what appears to be another veiled snipe at Chinese authorities, the tech company says it is now warning users if state-sponsored phishing or malware attacks appear to have targeted their Gmail accounts.

"We are constantly on the lookout for malicious activity on our systems, in particular attempts by third parties to log into users' accounts unauthorized," Eric Grosse, vice president of security engineering at Google, wrote in a blog post today. "When we have specific intelligence -- either directly from users or from … Read more

YoVille players starting posting complaints on the gaming company's forum about a month ago. Strange happenings were afoot -- players' virtual items were stolen and not returned and some players' property supply was completely depleted.

Apparently, the game had been hacked. According to the tech news site VentureBeat, hackers disrupted YoVille's gameplay for about 1,000 players during a couple weeks of April. "The Best YoVille Hackers" claimed responsibility for the hack.

"We detected unusual activity in YoVille, and it coincided with reports from a small number of users," Zynga's chief security officer … Read more

Lockheed Martin announced today it received millions of dollars to begin heading up the Pentagon's Cyber Crime Center. According to Reuters, the company won a $454 million contract from the government to help the military facility investigate the increasing number of cyber threats.

"Because of its size and importance, the [Department of Defense] is targeted by cyber criminals ranging from terrorists to spies to identity thieves," Lockheed told Reuters.

The security company's team of experts plans to assist the government in dealing with cyberattacks and crime by providing technical, functional, and managerial support to the center. … Read more

As the 2012 presidential election revs up, 33 states now permit some form of Internet ballot casting. However, a senior cybersecurity adviser at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned today that online voting programs make the country's election process vulnerable to cyberattacks.

"It is premature to deploy Internet voting in real elections at this time," DHS cybersecurity adviser Bruce McConnell said at a meeting of the Election Verification Network, which is a group that works to ensure every vote is counted. He explained that all voting systems are susceptible to attacks and bringing in Internet … Read more

Nortel Networks was the victim of a series of cyberattacks likely originating from China for almost 10 years, but the company ultimately failed to defend itself, says The Wall Street Journal.

Citing an internal investigation by former Nortel systems security adviser Brian Shields, the Journal (subscription required) found that hackers apparently based in China carried on a decade-long campaign of stealing technical papers, R&D reports, employee e-mails, and other sensitive documents from the network company.

By grabbing just seven passwords from top Nortel execs back in 2000, the hackers managed to gain access to the company's network … Read more

PCAnywhere customers' computers are apparently safe again as long as they apply the latest security patch to the software.

Following news of the theft of the product's source code, Symantec last week advised customers to disable the software to guard against cyberattacks.

But a round of free upgrades released last week were aimed at cleaning up the vulnerabilities.

On January 23, Symantec released a patch to secure PCAnywhere 12.5. And then January 27, the company rolled out another patch directed toward PCAnywhere versions 12.0 and 12.1.

Posting the latest information about the security updates and the source code theft, … Read more

Hackers in China have found a way to infiltrate supposedly secure smart cards used by U.S. government employees, according to security company AlienVault.

The security firm said it has seen dozens of such attacks, which tap into a unique variant of a nasty bit of malware known as Sykipot.

The hackers appear intent on stealing data from the Department of Defense and other related agencies. The malware is capable of capturing the PIN numbers used by government smart cards, thereby allowing access to supposedly secure information.

"Like we have shown with previous Sykipot attacks, the attackers use a … Read more

A significant but unsuccessful cyberattack was launched on the U.K. Foreign Office and other government departments this summer, according to the head of the country's communications spy agency.

Iain Lobban, director of the U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters, wrote today in a piece for The Times, based in London, that there was a "disturbing" volume of e-crime and attacks on government and industry systems.

"I can attest to attempts to steal British ideas and designs--in the IT, technology, defence, engineering and energy sectors as well as other industries--to gain commercial advantage or to profit … Read more

Wall Street banks and financial companies vulnerable to hackers from abroad are getting a helping hand in defense from the nation's top security officials.

The National Security Agency has been sharing key intelligence about foreign hackers with financial firms to help them combat cyberattacks, according to a story published yesterday by Reuters.

Citing interviews with U.S. officials, security experts, and defense industry executives, Reuters said that the effort is based on growing concerns in the U.S. over the damage that would result from financial sabotage. Envisioning several "worst-case scenarios," government officials point to the possibility … Read more