One of the most widely used SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) applications in China may be harboring a critical security vulnerability that could allow an attacker to exploit the bug
and execute arbitrary code.
The inventiveness and avarice of the underground community knows few bounds and one of the latest bits of evidence of this is the creation of a new service designed to help newbies get their Zeus botnets up and running as quickly as possible.
Sometimes news events just come together in a way that opens a window
– even if its a kind of cloudy window – onto the future. So it was this
week, as stories about a coming generation of wired automobiles
collided with some thought-provoking reports on the vulnerability of
said cars to traditional kinds of wireless attacks.
An onslaught of spammy holiday cards ushered out a 2010 that saw spam, for the first time ever, in decline. Meanwhile, the DoD warned about foreign governments stealing military technology, while researchers warned that application sandboxes might not be so safe to play in, after all. Read on for the full week in review.
Mobile devices are making us dumber – at least when it comes to security, according to research conducted by security firm Trusteer. Research published by the company found that smartphone and computer tablet users are three times more
susceptible to email phishing scams than traditional PC and laptop users.
A survey conducted by Information Security Media found that new fraud methods, including phishing
and Internet enabled account takeovers are an increasing problem for
banks, but that many organizations are ill equipped to combat the new
threats.
Microsoft issued an advisory to Windows users about a security vulnerability in a common Windows component that could be used by remote attackers to run malicious code on machines running the Windows XP, Vista and Windows Server 2003 operating systems.
In response to the embarrassment and perceived threat resulting from the WikiLeaks disclosures in recent months, the Office of Management and Budget has issued a hefty memo with pages of questions that federal agencies must use to conduct an initial assessment of their programs to handle and protect classified information by the end of the month. The document directs agencies to “assess what your agency has done or plans to do to address any perceived vulnerabilities, weaknesses, or gaps on automated systems in the post-WikiLeaks environment.”
The Microsoft Malware Protection Center has urged users of its Office suite to apply a security update, MS10-087, released last November. The company says it has become aware of attacks exploiting the hole in Office applications that are circulating on the Internet.
The simplistic spam campaign that hit around Christmas and purported to be a holiday greeting from the White House not only included a piece of Zeus-related malware that searches hard drives for documents and uploads them to a remote server, but also appears to be connected to a similar attack from early 2010 that exposed a nascent botnet.
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