Brian Donohue

About

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

M86: Email Spam Down; Third Party Phishing and Exploit Kits Up

Email users may have experienced a serious decline in spam
over the past couple months, however, a Web security trends report by M86 Security released today at RSA in San Francisco says cybercriminals are coming
up with new and innovative methods of phishing as well as producing increasingly
robust and complicated exploit kits.

Chrome 9 Security Update

Following last week’s release of Chrome 9 and a rather brazen $20,000
offering to anyone who can hack their browser at CanSecWest, Google
released a stable
channel update addressing some security flaws and containing a new version
of Flash Player (10.2).


NASDAQ OMX, owners and operators of the NASDAQ Stock Exchange, reported
this weekend that their systems had been infiltrated by unknown hackers. According
to a report in the New York
Times,
NASDAQ OMX contacted federal law enforcement officials after discovering suspicious
files in a part of their US server that is not related to trading.

Cyber security has been at the forefront of American politics in recent months following high profile cyber security attacks like the Stuxnet worm and Aurora attacks. Those attacks underscored growing concern over the future of cyber security in the U.S. and the lack of native cybersecurity talent. Now a new multi-state competition is seeking to encourage U.S. teens to develop the kinds of cyber security skills needed in the workforce.