Donald Sears

Authorities in the U.K. have arrested two people in connection with using a notorious Trojan in a scheme to steal online banking information. The man and the woman, both 20, were arrested by the Metropolitan Police Service in Manchester, according to police. The duo is accused of using the Zeus Trojan, also known as Zbot, in a plot to steal information. It is believed the Trojan was configured to record victim’s online bank account information and passwords, as well as credit card numbers and other information. Read the full article. [eWEEK]

Computer systems with proper security and network controls should be able to withstand about 80 percent of known cyberattacks, according to a senior National Security Agency official. Richard Schaeffer Jr., the NSA’s information assurance director, told the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee that three measures in particular are especially effective: “Best practices, proper configurations [and] good network monitoring.” Read the full article. [Government Computer News]

An email which purports to
relate to a recent Apple retail transaction and asks for details of any
recent orders is out there. The email also carries a stuffed file.
This contains an ‘exe’ file which will only launch on a Windows machine. The email reads: “We recorded a payment request from ‘Apple Inc.’ to
enable the charge of $7,548.45 on your account.” Read the full article. [9to5Mac]

Technologists already are worried about the security implications of linking nearly all elements of the U.S. power grid to the public Internet. Now, privacy experts are warning that the so-called “smart grid” efforts could usher in a new class of concerns, as utilities begin collecting more granular data about consumers’ daily power consumption. Read the full article. [Washington Post]

Mozilla will add a new lockdown feature to
Firefox 3.6 that will prevent developers from sneaking add-ons into the
program, the company said. The new feature, which Mozilla dubbed “component directory
lockdown,” will bar access to Firefox’s “components” directory, where
most of the browser’s own code is stored. The company has billed the
move as a way to boost the stability of its browser. Read the full article. [Computerworld]

MassMutual officials this week confirmed that one of its employee
databases was accessed by an unauthorized person or persons, exposing
an unknown number of employees’ personal data for a
yet-to-be-determined amount of time. The Springfield, Mass.-based insurer said the compromised
database was being maintained by an unidentified, third-party vendor
and contained “a limited amount of personal employee data.” Read the full article. [internetnews.com]

Security researchers have detected a massive blackhat SEO (search engine optimization) campaign consisting of over 200,000 compromised web sites, all redirecting to fake security software (Inst_58s6.exe), commonly referred to as scareware. The massive blackat SEO campaign has been launched by the same people who operate/or manage the campaigns for the Koobface botnet. Read the full article. [ZDNet]