The U.S. Department of Defense in a new report covering espionage for 2009 said that attempts by foreign spies to obtain classified or restricted U.S. technology increased and that foreign governments are focusing their spying efforts on naval and marine technology that could provide the foundation for a next generation “blue water” navy.
A new spam campaign that appeared shortly before the New Year is part of a new effort by the crew behind the Storm/Waledac botnet and is using some rather elementary tactics–in combination with fast-flux–to attempt to compromise unsuspecting users.
GSM mobile phone networks are becoming the backbone of communications and commerce in the developed and developing worlds, but those networks may be easily susceptible to eavesdropping, according to a presentation at the annual Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) in Berlin.
A Kaspersky Lab research report for November 2010 showed
the amount of email based spam fell 0.06 percent to 76.8 percent from October.
The study also showed there was a .47 percent decrease in the prevalence of
phishing emails across all mail traffic and a .13 percent decrease in the frequency
of malicious files found in email.
Ever since the traditional print industry collapsed in on itself like a decommissioned ‘Vegas casino, replaced with blogs, micro blogs, social networking and other forms of Web based publishing, the end of the year has brought with it a blizzard of retrospective and prospective Top 10 lists from click hungry sites. There’s a good reason for this, of course: data says that you readers like ’em. Top 10 lists are really like editorial Happy Meals – conceptual packages that say to the reader “You don’t have to do anything – we’ve got everything you need behind this one link!”
Security researchers say they have discovered a new Trojan horse program that targets mobile phones running Google’s Android operating system that may be the first to attempt to create a so-called ‘botnet’ of infected mobile devices.
2010 ended with dire predictions about a new age of Internet enabled hacker-activism, but the big story in 2011 will be the explosion in IP enabled, loosely secured, Internet connected stuff.
The creators of the Phoenix exploit kit have begun using obfuscation and other techniques to prevent security researchers and others from reverse-engineering the installation process for the kit, adopting a tactic that has become increasingly popular among attackers recently.
By Alex RothackerDenial of Service (DoS) attacks are a common method used to take down Websites, servers, or even sections of the Internet. These attacks typically come in two forms: Distributed DoS (DDos) and DoS attacks. DDoS create a flood of traffic to a Website, server, or section of the internet that overwhelms it to a degree that it cannot function and eventually shuts down. Regular DoS exploits a vulnerability in a Web server, database server, etc. to crash the server.
A french IT security firm is warning of a previously unknown (“zero day”) vulnerability that affects most versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser. The hole, if exploited, could allow remote attackers to circumvent defensive features in fully patched WIndows 7 and Windows Vista and run malicious code on vulnerable systems.
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