Vulnerabilities

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. 

Malicious text messages can crash many types of mobile phones, including devices by Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG, according to a presentation given at the Chaos Communication Congress hacking conference this week 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.

In response to a 24 hour outage that occurred last week on
their internet voice and video chat platform, Skype’s Chief Information Officer has revealed that an error in some versions of the company’s software client is to blame. 

With increasingly sophisticated exploits and well-informed adversaries targeting systems and data – fighting for more security budget is essential. Too bad, then, that management doesn’t always agree.

Microsoft on Wednesday issued a security advisory to users of its Internet Explorer Web browser about a newly disclosed vulnerability that could be exploited and used to run malicious code on vulnerable Windows systems.

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.