The media storm over the Stuxnet worm may have passed, but many of the software holes that were used by the worm remain unpatched and leave Siemens customers open to a wide range of potentially damaging cyber attacks, according to industrial control system expert Ralph Langner.
RSA acknowledged on Monday that a hack at Lockheed Martin was tied to the theft of information on its SecurID tokens. The company offered to replace the tokens for customers, but experts wonder whether RSA should go further and recall SecurID tokens from the market.
A group calling itself Lulzsec took credit for yet another high profile attacks over the weekend, compromising an information sharing program run by the FBI that counts some of the nation’s leading security and private sector firms as partners, then publicizing another hack of electronics giant Sony on Monday.
VMware has issued an update for a number of its more popular products, fixing several vulnerabilities. Some of the flaws could lead to arbitrary code execution.
In addition to widely publicized attacks targeting the Gmail accounts of government officials and activists, Trend Micro reported yesterday that Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail are being targeted with similar but separate attacks as well.
The release of the International Strategy for Cyberspace late last month marked a major shift in the way that United States officials think about and treat information security, which now seems as if it will have a place at the table during diplomatic discussions. However, experts and U.S. officials say that there still is quite a lot of road ahead if security is to become one of the country’s top priorities.
ED: Gmail Hackers Conned Victims for MonthsDEK: An independent security researcher says that victims of the account takeovers were repeatedly phished over almost a year by attackers believed to be located in China. An independent security researcher who was among the first to investigate a large scale phishing attack aimed at U.S. government and military personnel says that attackers controlled victim accounts for months and repeatedly phished victims during that time. Mila Parkour, a Washington D.C. based independent says that victims of the account takeovers were repeatedly phished over almost a year by attackers believed to be located in China. Victims of the attack included government and military personnel in the U.S. and Asian nations, as well as human rights activists and journalists in China and elsewhere, Google said on Wednesday. According to Parkour, the group or individuals responsible for the attack controlled those accounts for more than a year and repeatedly targeted both the legitimate account owner and his or her associates during that time. The attackers used spoofed e-mail addresses and information harvested from the victims’ accounts to engage in “mini conversations” with their victims, Parkour said. “They used personal knowledge for some phishes…they were very persistent and invasive,” she said. Among other things, the attackers continued to try to harvest online credentials from victims – user names and passwords – using the same technique they used, successfully, to gain access to- and control over the users gmail account. “They would send a new message with the same type (of) password harvesting technique. Sometimes even the same message sometimes (a) new (message),” said Parkour, who described herself as a IT administrator who researches malicious programs as a hobby. Google said in a blog post on Wednesday that it had disrupted the campaign, which it traced to Jinan, China. The campaign affected hundreds of Gmail users, using malware and phishing attacks to harvest user login credentials. The campaign appears to have been designed to monitor the content of users’ email correspondence.An independent security researcher who was among the first to investigate a large scale phishing attack aimed at U.S. government and military personnel says that attackers controlled victim accounts for months and repeatedly phished victims during that time.
Search giant Google has again sounded the alarm about sophisticated attacks emanating from mainland China and targeting officials within the U.S. and Asian governments, as well as human rights activists and journalists. Samples of some of the messages posted on an independent researcher’s blog indicate that personnel in the Department of State as well as the Department of Defense were targeted.
The Pentagon is compiling a list of offensive cyber-weapons capable of deliberately crippling or destroying an adversary’s critical infrastructure according to a recent report in the Washington Post.This collection of cyber weapons is part of a broader list of weapons approved by the Pentagon for use against America’s enemies.
Executives at U.S. defense contractor L-3 Communications warned employees in April about an attempt by unknown assailants to compromise the company’s network using forged SECURID tokens from RSA. The report, if accurate would be the second attack on a leading defense contractor with links back to a high-profile hack at RSA Security, the security division of EMC Corp. in March.
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.
