An ongoing analysis of the Duqu malware by researchers at Kaspersky Lab finds many links between the two pieces of malicious code and casts doubt on the conventional wisdom about Stuxnet’s origins.
The security industry can be a giant repetitive, follow-the-loser echo chamber of unoriginal thoughts, familiar flaws and copycat theories. But if ever there was a year in which folks could stand back and look at what’s gone on and say, what in the hell just happened, 2011 was it. So rather than going in for the typical year-in-review or top stories shtick, let’s just have a look back at some of the more absurd, unexpected and amusing twigs and berries from the last 12 months, shall we?
After first denying their existence, a Siemens spokesman acknowledged on Thursday that his company was aware of a series of security vulnerabilities in its software that could allow remote attackers to take control of industrial control systems.
As the public debate over the merits and drawbacks of the SOPA bill continues, consumers and privacy advocates already are looking for ways to get around the provisions in the proposed anti-piracy law that they see as unreasonable and oppressive. In one example, a developer has published an extension for Firefox that helps users circumvent SOPA’s domain blacklisting.
A month after an unknown gray hat hacker calling himself “pr0f” used a three character password to hack his way onto computers used to manage water treatment equipment in South Houston, Texas, a security researcher is accusing the company that makes the industrial control system (ICS) software, Siemens, of trying to cover up the existence of other, more serious vulnerabilities.
The federal government is planning to focus some of its research and development efforts on developing methods for building security into software and hardware systems used in federal agencies. This a major change for the government, which has historically focused its energies on defenses such as IDS, custom desktop images and firewalls.
A group of engineers, networking specialists, security experts and other specialists deeply involved with the Internet’s development and growth have sent a letter to lawmakers criticizing the highly controversial SOPA and PIPA bills and imploring them not to pass the legislation, which they say would stifle innovation and “threaten engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S. government.”
The FBI is one of a handful of U.S. agencies tasked with investigating computer crimes and one of the many roadblocks that has stood in the way of more successful cases and prosecutions is a lack of resources, mostly in the form of trained agents. It looks like the bureau will be getting the money in 2012 to hire more agents for its cybercrime unit, but the 14 new agents included in next year’s budget still aren’t nearly enough to address the full scope of the problem in the U.S., let alone globally.
A long list of industrial-control modules manufactured by Schneider Electric and used to control operations at various industrial facilities contain multiple weaknesses and vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to modify the firmware, login remotely and run arbitrary code on the vulnerable components. Security researcher Ruben Santamarta discovered and disclosed the problems and the ICS-CERT is warning users about the issue, as well.
In the wake of the hack of water and sewer infrastructure operated by a Texas community, the Department of Homeland Security is again warning owners and operators of critical infrastructure to take note of SCADA and industrial control systems that may be accessible from the Internet.
Infosec Insider content is written by a trusted community of Threatpost cybersecurity subject matter experts. Each contribution has a goal of bringing a unique voice to important cybersecurity topics. Content strives to be of the highest quality, objective and non-commercial.
Sponsored Content is paid for by an advertiser. Sponsored content is written and edited by members of our sponsor community. This content creates an opportunity for a sponsor to provide insight and commentary from their point-of-view directly to the Threatpost audience. The Threatpost editorial team does not participate in the writing or editing of Sponsored Content.
