The organizers of this year’s CanSecWest Pwn2Own have painted a big bulls-eye on mobile devices, offering up an whopping $60,000 in prizes to entice hackers to exploit vulnerabilities on iPhones, Android, Nokia and BlackBerry smartphones.
Apple has banned at least two prominent iPhone hackers from accessing its App Store. Read the full article. [The Register]
A former security
researcher turned criminal hacker has been sentenced to 13 years in
federal prison for hacking into financial institutions and stealing
credit card account numbers. Max
Ray Butler, who used the hacker pseudonym Iceman, was sentenced Friday
morning in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh on charges of wire fraud
and identity theft. Read the full article. [Computerworld]
Web robots, commonly referred to as “bots,” are software programs
written to do automated tasks, like crawling the Web looking for new
sites. They also appear in chat rooms and instant messaging services
masquerading as real people. Read the full article. [cnet]
There are indications that the system crashes and the dreaded blue
screen of death (BSoD) that many Microsoft Windows users reported
suffering after installing this week’s batch of security updates may be caused at least in part by malware infestations on the affected machines. Read the full article. [KrebsonSecurity]
Critical infrastructure organizations, such as those in the energy,
oil, pharmaceutical and chemical sectors, encountered at least twice as
much web malware as other organizations during 2009, researchers found. Read the full article. [Secure Computing]
Adobe Systems on Thursday warned of new critical holes in Reader and
Flash Player, released a security update for the Flash hole, and said a
patch for Reader would come next week. Read the full article. [cnet]
A group of researchers has found a significant flaw in the chip-and-PIN security system used by credit card companies in the UK. The weakness allows an attacker to use a card without the PIN associated with it.
Google has released version 4.0.249.89 of Chrome for Windows, a security update that addresses three high risk vulnerabilities in its WebKit-based browser. Read the full article. [The H Security]
The targeted attacks that hit Google, Adobe,
and other U.S. organizations are still ongoing and have affected many
more companies than the original 20 to 30 or so reported by Google and
others. One researcher believes they are close to naming the suspected coder. Read the full article. [Dark Reading]
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