AMI Firmware Source Code, Private Key Leaked
Source code and a private signing key for firmware manufactured by a popular PC hardware maker American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) have been found on an open FTP server hosted in Taiwan.
Michael Mimoso
Microsoft Expected to Patch Pwn2Own IE Vulnerabilities
Appropriately enough for the start of the baseball season, Microsoft is going to go 4-for-4 and release another set of critical Internet Explorer patches on Tuesday, the fourth consecutive month in which serious vulnerabilities in the browser are being addressed in Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday monthly security updates.
DDoS Attack, Database Breach Take Down Two Bitcoin Services
As with any asset of monetary value, once said asset reaches a noteworthy level, cybercriminals’ interest is going to pique. Such is the current situation with virtual currency Bitcoin, which hit a high of $142 yesterday and the value of all Bitcoins in circulation has soared to more than $1 billion.
Security-related policy or legislation is enacted and then enforced to protect corporate, government or military interests. Civil organizations are often left flailing in the wind, fending for themselves with fewer IT resources and experience than a Middle America mom-and-pop operation. Yet these non-governmental—and not-for-profit—organizations have tasked themselves with helping those targeted by lethal adversaries who aren’t just after corporate secrets, but are out to deny people their freedom or, in some cases, their lives.
Tibetan activists in China as well as those living in exile around the world are being targeted by dangerous malware that not only steals data from infected computers, but also has graduated to reporting location data from mobile devices for surveillance purposes.
It’s the ultimate what-if scenario: What if an attacker could own all the customer premises equipment (CPE) doled out by ISPs such as routers and modems? Would it be trivial with available scanning equipment and other tools to find vulnerable gear, and then modify and re-upload the firmware to be able do anything such as control Web traffic, launch DDoS attacks, or even disconnect large blocks of machines from the Internet?
Microsoft said it has received 70,000 reports this week of a new Trojan disguised as an Adobe Flash Player update that will change your browser’s home page and redirect a Web session to an attacker’s page.
Some spammers, looking to launder the dirty links they email you, are relying on the positive reputation of Google Translate to redirect victims to rogue websites. Researchers at Barracuda Labs who maintain the company’s spam honeypots have spotted a rash of illicit messages trying to beat reputation filters by using this tactic.
For some perspective on what 300 Gbps of traffic represents, let’s just pretend that your company, as a potential customer, put this massive volume of bits and bytes in front of 20 of the leading Internet service providers. Chances are, all but three or four will tell you “Thanks, but no thanks, we can’t handle your business.”
So you thought the 100 Gbps distributed denial-of-service attacks against U.S. banks were big? Ongoing attacks against Spamhaus have three times the fury and have affected unrelated online services as collateral damage.
