The U.S.’s leading Internet Service Providers signed on to a new Federal Communications Commission code of conduct to limit the impact of major cyber security threats including botnets, attacks on the Domain Name System (DNS) and Internet routing attacks.
Spam volume is down, there are fewer unpatched software holes and oftware application developers did a better job of writing secure code over the last year. But IBM’s X-Force Trend and Risk Report still found plenty to worry about in 2011, according to a copy of the report released this week.
There are a number of compromised sites on the popular blogging platform, WordPress, which, according to a Trend Labs report, are actively infecting users with the CRIDEX worm.
It can be hard to parse the results of the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report (DBIR), what with the shifts from year to year in the sources of breach data collected. Last year’s report, if you recall, found a stunning drop in incidents of data theft in 2010, even as tracking sites like Datalossdb.org reported no noticeable change that year.Frankly, it’s hard to read the DBIR and not have the term “sample bias” float into your head time and again. But the DBIR report has always been a good way to understand the security Zeitgeist, and this year’s report is no different, with more normal-seeming results and a focus on the actions of ideologically motivated hacking groups which, Verizon claims, were linked to 58% of all the data stolen from customers in 2011.
The security firm Alienvault reports that its own research on phishing attacks against non governmental organizations supporting the Tibetan Government in Exile is now being used as bait in a new round of phishing attacks on those same NGOs.
Mozilla has made a small but important change to the way that its Firefox browser handles search queries directed to Google, making the search provider’s encrypted search service the default option. The modification is in is not in the stable version of Firefox yet, but users who download the daily beta builds can access it now.
If there’s one thing attackers love, it’s readily accessible remote-connection services running on a target company’s network. Once an attacker knows that an organization is running a specific kind of VPN or has RDP enabled on a bunch of machines, he can then start looking for known vulnerabilities or target users’ credentials for those systems. The folks at Duo Security are releasing a new service today called VPN Hunter that will help companies identify which remote-access services on their networks are exposed to the Internet.
Threatpost spent much of the last year chasing after Greg Hoglund, the founder and CEO of HB Gary. First, it was to get his reaction to the bruising encounter his firm had with the hacking group Anonymous. Then it was an endless series of requests on the aftermath of that hack, including the departure of HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr, and the company’s decision to pull out of the RSA Conference in 2011. When Greg finally did speak out it wasn’t to us.So we were happy when Hoglund, whose firm was recently acquired by the company Mantech International Corp., agreed to speak at the Kaspersky Lab Security Analysts’ Summit in Cancun, Mexico in February. His talk there on “Lateral Movement and Other APT Interaction Patterns Within the Enterprise” reinforced Hoglund’s reputation as one of the top experts on malicious code.Threatpost editor Paul Roberts caught up with Hoglund after the speech. And, while Anonymous and HBGary Federal were not up for discussion on the record, Hoglund offered some great insights into the delicate art of tracking down remote access trojans (or RATs) after they have a foothold in your network, as well as the mistakes companies make in trying to prevent and respond to security incidents.
Mozilla announced this week that it plans to integrate a silent updater in the next build of its flagship browser, Firefox, allowing future patches for Firefox 12 to be downloaded and installed in the background while the browser is running, according to a blog post by Robert Nyman, Mozilla’s Technical Evangelist on hacks.mozilla.org on Wednesday.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned this week that political activists in Iran and Syrai are being targeted in malware attacks disgiosed as Adobe Flash Player updates on Youtube.
Infosec Insider content is written by a trusted community of Threatpost cybersecurity subject matter experts. Each contribution has a goal of bringing a unique voice to important cybersecurity topics. Content strives to be of the highest quality, objective and non-commercial.
Sponsored Content is paid for by an advertiser. Sponsored content is written and edited by members of our sponsor community. This content creates an opportunity for a sponsor to provide insight and commentary from their point-of-view directly to the Threatpost audience. The Threatpost editorial team does not participate in the writing or editing of Sponsored Content.
