Web Security


Researcher Finds Holes Aplenty in Wireless Chips

A new study from Prof. Avishai Wool of Tel Aviv University’s School of Electrical
Engineering finds serious security drawbacks in chips that are being embedded in credit, debit and “smart” cards. The
vulnerabilities of this electronic approach — and the vulnerability of
the private information contained in the chips — are becoming more
acute. Read the full article. [ScienceDaily]

IE8 Open to XSS Attacks

The good news is that Microsoft’s Internet
Explorer 8 browser offers a new set of filters designed to prevent some
cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. The bad news is that those same
filters could be used to enable XSS attacks. That was the gist of a presentation offered by security
researchers David Lindsay and Eduardo Vela Nava at the Black Hat Europe
conference in Barcelona. Read the full article. [Dark Reading]

Zeus Botnet Exploiting PDF Flaw

The Zeus botnet is now using an unpatched flaw in Adobe’s PDF document
format to infect users with malicious code, said security researchers. Read the full article. [Computerworld]


Security researchers have discovered flaws in common file formats,
including .zip, which can be used to sneak malware onto computers by
evading antivirus detection and will present their findings at Blackhat Europe. Read the full article. [CNet]

New research from Google underscores the breadth of fake antivirus operations on the Web. An analysis of 240 million Web pages collected by Google’s malware detection infrastructure over a 13-month period discovered more than 11,000 domains involved in the distribution of rogue antivirus (AV). Read the full article. [eWEEK]

Oracle has dealt a sweeping blow to vulnerabilities in its
quarterly Critical Patch Update (CPU). The vendor closes a total of 47
holes in many of its products, among them the database, the business
suites, Sun Solaris and the Java System Directory Server. Read the full article. [The H Security]