Cyber Security

Microsoft held its first Security Development Conference in Washington DC to share information about computer security with industry, government and academia, as well as to promote the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL). - Microsoft held its Security Development Conference 2012 in Washington DC to host a diverse set of companies, government agencies and academic institutions sharing their own experiences with adopting a Security Development Lifecycle (SDL). The event, held May 15 and 16 at Washingtons Fairmont hotel...

Twitters move comes the same day that Mozilla officials tout the acceptance by Firefox users of the "Do Not Track" initiative. - Twitter is the latest online business to join the quot;Do Not Track quot; crowd, announcing the move appropriately enough in a Tweet May 17. Carolyn Penner, a spokesperson for the social media business, said in the Tweet, “The Federal Trade Commission's CTO, Ed Felten, just mentioned Twitter n...

Researchers at Trusteer uncovered a version of the notorious Zeus Trojan being used to steal financial data in a series of scams targeting Facebook, Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo. - A malware campaign targeting Facebook, Google Mail, Hotmail and Yahoo user debit card data has been linked to the infamous Zeus Trojan. Zeus is one of the most prevalent pieces of financial malware on the Web. During the past several years, Zeus variants have been linked to major criminal opera...

Google plugs 20 security holes in its new Chrome 19 release and adds a new tab-synchronization feature into the mix. It also handed out $16,500 to security researchers who ferreted out the flaws. - Google closed 20 security vulnerabilities in the latest edition of its Chrome browser, coupling a bevy of security fixes with a new tab-synchronization feature. In Chrome 19, Google closed eight vulnerabilities ranked quot;high, quot; seven ranked quot;medium quot; and five classified as quot;lo...

The Shadowserver Foundation reported that attackers are leveraging Adobe Flash Player and Java vulnerabilities to target human rights groups and political think tanks with drive-by exploits to infect visitors. - Hackers are targeting Websites for human rights and foreign policy think tanks to spread malware and to conduct cyber-espionage. According to the Shadowserver Foundation, attackers have launched a series of “strategic Web compromises” that infect users via drive-by exploits. Attacks targeting human...

Apple issued an update that will detect and remove the Flashback exploit, which at one time had infected more than 600,000 Macs worldwide. - Apple has released a tool that will detect and remove the notorious Flashback malware from Macs running the older Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system. Apple in April had issued a similar tool for the current Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and more recent 10.6 Snow Leopard operating systems, but until May 14...

Apple released two updates on May 14 to remove older versions of Adobe Flash Player and thwart the infamous Flashback Trojan. - Apple released a pair of security updates May 14 for Mac OS X 10.5 to disable outdated versions of Adobe Systems' Flash Player and fight off Flashback infections. The Flashback Trojan was at the center of news reports last month when it was discovered attackers had used it to build a botnet of more...

A woman arrested by federal investigators in a takedown of a phishing scheme has been sentenced to five years in federal prison. The conviction stemmed from Operation Phish Phry, a massive operation that has led to nearly 50 convictions in Los Angeles. - A California woman linked to an international phishing operation was sentenced May 14 to five years in federal prison. Nichole Michelle Merzi, 26, of Oceanside, was convicted in 2011 after being tied to a gang that sought to defraud banks of more than $1 million. After a six-week trial, she was ...

NEWS ANALYSIS: Recent surveys show that businesses are feeling confident about cloud security. Anyone care for a grain of salt? - In cloud storage land, it's all roses, sunny skies and rock-solid security with fewer employees frittering away less time on securing data that is, if you trust vendor-funded studies. For example, Microsoft released on May 14 a study that shows that 35 percent of small and midsize businesses have e...

A Microsoft study shows 35 percent of small and midsize businesses have experienced higher levels of security in cloud environments, dispelling the notion that security qualms make businesses reluctant to go to the cloud. - A study released May 14 by Microsoft reveals that security worries among small and midsize businesses about embracing cloud computing are easing. A similar survey from Symantec shows SMBs are seeing improved disaster preparedness in virtual or cloud environments. The global Microsoft study, con...

Cyber-security is considered by many Americans to be a “very important” issue for this years election candidates. In particular, a focus on defending utilities and transportation systems from cyber-attacks is important, according to a survey by Unisys. - Cyber-security has worked its way onto Americans list of hot-button issues in the coming presidential election, according to research from the Unisys Corporation. According to the bi-annual Unisys Security Index, 74 percent of those surveyed listed protecting government systems from hackers as a ...

Kaspersky CTO Grebennikov called the OS "really vulnerable" and pointed to the Flashback botnet as proof that the company's asleep at the wheel. - Apple is asking Kaspersky Labs to analyze security on its Mac OS X platform, Kaspersky Labs CTO Nikolai Grebennikov has told Computing magazine. Its a good thing, Grebennikov told Computing, seeing as how Apple quot;doesn't pay enough attention quot; to security and given that its OS is basically ...

NEWS ANALYSIS: Perhaps the former comedian is joking in suggesting theres a link between physical trespass and asking phone companies for GPS location data. - U.S. Senator Al Frankens letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder regarding the U.S. Justice Department requests for GPS location data from phone companies appears to be based on a flawed understanding of the law. In a letter sent to the Attorney General May 10, Senator Franken suggested that la...

Security research firm Zscaler found that Apple iOS traffic on the Web is growing, which will most likely draw more hacker interest to the mobile devices. - Apple devices from iPhones to iPads to Macs are becoming more prominent in enterprises as employees bring them to work, fueling the burgeoning trend of the consumerization of IT. And that could cause security problems for businesses, according to researchers at security software maker Zscaler. The...

A Dutch court has ordered The Netherlands Pirate Party to quit helping people skirt ISP blocks of The Pirate Bay file-sharing site. - A court in The Hague has ruled that ISPs must block access to The Pirate Bay and that the Pirate Party has to stop publishing not only instructions on how to circumvent those blocks, but links to instructions, as well. The Pirate Party is a political party devoted to universal, unrestricted acces...

The Department of Defense is expanding a program aimed at increasing the sharing of security intelligence between the Pentagon and critical infrastructure companies. - The Pentagon is expanding a cyber-security program meant to promote information sharing between the private and public sectors. In partnership with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Defense (DoD) announced on May 11 that it is expanding its Defense Industrial Base Cyber...

U.S. Senator Al Franken has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice expressing concerns that authorities were circumventing a court ruling by getting GPS location data from wireless carriers without a warrant. - A U.S. senator is requesting that the Department of Justice hand over information about how it goes about requesting location data from wireless carriers. In a letter, Sen. Al Franken, (D-Minn.), expressed concern about media reports that law-enforcement agencies are “working around the protections...

The FBI warned people traveling abroad that attackers are targeting users on hotel networks by tricking them into installing malware under the guise of software updates. The agency's Internet Crime Complaint Center says any government, business or academic personnel traveling abroad should be especially wary. - The FBI issued an advisory this week alerting international travelers about attempts to infect their computers with malware when they log on to hotel networks. In an intelligence note from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), the agency warned that attackers have been targeting trave...

Twitter has asked a New York judge to block a subpoena seeking its records on accused Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris. - Twitter has thumbed its nose at a court order seeking data about an alleged Occupy Wall Street protestor. The order seeks to force the handover of data about Malcolm Harris, as well as his tweets. In a motion filed on Monday in New York state court, Twitter sought to quash the subpoena. Harris is ...

The question of the day is where the hacker group Anonymous got that list of nearly 60,000 names and passwords since Twitter says it wasn't from them. Or was it some wannabe hacker who got decoyed by a stash of phony data? - The reports this week that the hacker group Anonymous somehow managed to extract nearly 60,000 user names and passwords from Twitter and subsequently post them online are raising more questions than there are answers available. Clearly, someone or some group got a list of names and passwords tha...