Kingston Recalls Drives with Memory Flaws
Kingston Technology has asked customers to return certain models of its DataTraveler secure flash drives for an update, following the discovery of a flaw in the memory sticks. Read the full article. [ZDNet]
Malware
Apple Malware Blocker Left For Dead?
Nearly six months after Apple added a malware blocker to Mac OS X (Snow Leopard), the feature appears to be collecting cobwebs.Apple has not added any anti-malware signature updates to the XProtect.plist file that launched with antidotes for OSX.RSPlug.A and OSX.Iservice, two known Trojan horse programs targeting Mac OS X users.
Sendmail Update Patches Memory Leak Flaws
Version 8.14.4 of Sendmail, the open source mail transfer agent (MTA),
includes fixes for several security vulnerabilities including some
integer overflows, memory leaks and for the SSL NUL character problem
disclosed in mid 2009. Read the full article. [The H Security]
Despite the fact that the majority of malware exploits use JavaScript to trigger an attack in Adobe’s PDF Reader product, the company says it’s impossible to completely remove JavaScript support without causing major compatibility problems.In a Q&A (listen to podcast) with Threatpost editors Dennis Fisher and Ryan Naraine, Adobe security chief Brad Arkin says the removal of JavaScript support is a non-starter because it’s an integral part of how users do form submissions.
The American Bankers Association and the FBI are advising small and
midsize businesses that conduct financial transactions over the
Internet to dedicate a separate PC used exclusively for online banking as they ahve become targets of banking malware. Read the full article. [The Last Watchdog]
The micro-blogging service rejects 370 passwords when new users sign up if
it thinks they are too easy to guess. However, bloggers recently discovered
that the list of banned passwords is embedded in the source code of the page
itself. Read the full article. [Telegraph UK]
In a proof of concept, researcher Nir Goldshlager demonstrated cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in Google Calendar and Twitter that he said could be used to steal cookies and session IDs. Read the full article. [eWEEK]
It occurred to me recently that I’ve been covering the security industry for just about 10 years. That’s a long time to be doing anything, and especially to be writing about one topic. But it’s hard to think of something that would have been much more interesting to cover this decade, given the huge change in the amount of attention paid to security and the fascinating cast of characters this industry has.
MS accepts there is an “inconsistency” in how IIS 6 handles semicolons in
URLs, but it denies that this lends itself to hacking attacks. Read the full article. [The Register]
Notorious hacker Albert Gonzalez pleaded guilty Dec. 29 to conspiracy to hack into the computer networks of Heartland Payment Systems, 7-11 and Hannaford Brothers and faces sentencing between 17 and 25 years on top of his previous guilty plea for the TJX breach and others. Read the full article. [eWEEK]
