Virus Information News

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Secret Service to Provide Data to Verizon Business for Upcoming Report on Data Breaches | WHIR Web Hosting Industry News"

thewhir.com

May 6, 2010

To better understand security breaches and how they can be prevented, global IT services provider Verizon is joining forces with the US Secret Service on this year's Data Breach Investigations Report to include computer crime cases investigated by the Sec

According to Verizon's Thursday announcement, the 2010 DBIR, to be released this summer, will feature aggregated findings from Verizon's own caseload as well as hundreds of computer crime cases investigated by the Secret Service. This first-of-its-kind collaboration will give Verizon security researchers a unique perspective on data breaches, including what happens after a breach to identify suspects, make arrests, and extradite foreign nationals, and how cybercriminals are prosecuted. "Verizon is significantly broadening the scope of the 2010 DBIR to gain new insight into how data breaches occur, especially in the consumer sector," Verizon Business technology and innovation vice president Peter Tippett said in a statement. "With a greatly expanded dataset, this year's report will give a more accurate picture of data breaches around the globe while delving into new areas in an effort to better arm organizations worldwide in the fight against cybercrime." In cooperation with Verizon, the Secret Service is using the open-source Verizon Incident Sharing, or VERIS, framework. Verizon used this framework to describe security incidents to classify and analyze its 2009 breaches. This year, the company started using it to publicly collect, analyze, and share security incident data for its data breach investigations reports. Enabling Verizon security researchers to compare the Secret Service's caseload data with Verizon's historical dataset, the VERIS framework is expected to provide a better understanding of how security breaches occur and what can be done to better manage risk. "Combating computer-related crimes targeting the US financial infrastructure is a top Secret Service priority," Secret Service investigations assistant director Michael Merritt said in a statement. "We are proud to partner with our colleagues in the private sector, academia and at all levels of government to better identify and prevent these insidious attacks."

Trustwave Launches the First Data Privacy Program

thewhir.com

May 6, 2010

Security and compliance solutions firm Trustwave announced on Thursday it has launched what it calls the first-of-its-kind Data Privacy Program, which offers security services that help businesses protect their customers' personally identifiable informati

Protecting PII is increasingly important as security and identity theft issues continue to pervade the Internet. Along with this, many organizations must adhere to compliance mandates in different industries, while new data privacy legislation has broaden that scope to all businesses that receive, store or have access to PII. Data privacy laws already exist in 46 states and legislation designed to protect PII is currently pending on the federal level. Trustwave's Data Privacy Program is the first such data protection offering specifically designed to help organizations protect PII. "Our compliance engagements and forensic investigations reveal that many organizations do not know where sensitive data is stored within their environment," says Robert J. McCullen, chairman and CEO of Trustwave.

How can they misuse thee Google - Let us count the ways.. (Part 2)

blog.commtouch.com

May 5, 2010

In Google's words, "Google Sites is a free and easy way to create and share webpages". Of course there are loads of spammers seeking free webhosting for the usual pharmaceuticals, replicas and porn sites.

KHOBE - 8.0 earthquake for Windows desktop security software

matousec.com

May 5, 2010

The protection implemented by kernel mode drivers of today's security products can be bypassed effectively by a code running on an unprivileged user account. If you ever heard of SSDT hooks or similar techniques to implement various security features such

The task of today's security software is to protect computers against malware and hacker attacks. This kind of application is generally very complex because it is trying to protect its users against threats of various kind. The security software use signatures and heuristic to detect known viruses, rootkis and trojan horses. Malware writers are skilled enough to write malicious software that bypasses these detection techniques. To close this hole, modern security solutions implement HIPS and other forms of behavior control and blocking. Because there were not many documented interfaces and APIs in the past which allowed to monitor and filter applications' activity in the system, many software vendors decided to make direct modifications to the user and kernel code and data structures. These modifications are often called as hooks. Today's security software often use tens of them to implement their security features. Kernel mode hook implementation in security applications were subject of our research in 2007. This research showed that most of security software vendors implemented their kernel hooks very poorly and their applications were creating another holes into the operating system instead of protecting it. A special tool, BSODhook, was developed to find these vulnerabilities automatically. You can read more details about the research in Plague in (security) software drivers. After we disclosed the results of our previous research, many vendors fixed the bogus implementation of their kernel mode hooks in reaction to the great publicity. This approach is required again because without the pressure from the media, it seems that many vendors are (again) absolutely uninterested in security holes in their software.

Loveletter 2000-2010

f-secure.com

May 4, 2010

One of the most important worm outbreaks in history happened ten years ago to the day. Loveletter (aka ILOVEYOU or Lovebug) spread around the world in matter of minutes.

This turned out to be very effective. People would be surprised by the message, open the attachment and spam all of their friends with the same message. In couple of hours, millions of users around the world were infected. And we were in the middle of this. As far as I know, we were the first ones to discover this worm. I remember working with the case with Katrin Tocheva (nowadays at Microsoft), Sami Rautiainen (nowadays at Stonesoft) and Alexey Podrezov (still here at F-Secure).

How can they misuse thee Google - Let us count the ways.. (Part 1)

blog.commtouch.com

May 4, 2010

Being the number one name on the Web and also offering so many useful services naturally attracts misuse by the shadier side of the Internet.

We've written in the past about the abuse of google docs and spreadsheets. And in our Q1 trend report we discussed the high percentage of spam emails with forged sender addresses showing Gmail. But wait... there's more. In this series we discuss 3 more examples where the legitimacy and trust conferred by the Google name has been misused...

Symantec to Acquire PGP and GuardianEdge for $370M

WHIR Web Hosting Industry News

April 30, 2010

Security firm Symantec announced on Thursday it will acquire two data encryption companies for $370 million. Symantec will pay $300 million in cash for PGP and $70 million in cash for GuardianEdge.

The agreements for the companies -- which both provide technology for standards-based encryption of full-disks, removable media, files, folders and smartphones -- are expected to close this quarter. Once the acquisitions are completed, Symantec will combine the technology with its own to offer data encryption across different mobile devices associated to corporate networks. The security firm will use technology from both companies and standardize it on the PGP encryption-key management platform, delivering centralized policy and key management abilities. Symantec will then integrate the PGP platform into its Protection Center, which provides a range of services including threat, security and operational dashboards and reporting. This will help Protection Center better manage endpoint security, prevent data loss and secure gateways, says the company.

Why doesn't Windows include native PDF reader support?

f-secure.com

April 29, 2010

Dear Microsoft, we'd like you to consider developing a PDF reader for your Windows OS. Something such as Apple's Preview would be great.

Mac doesn't require a third-party app to view PDFs, so why does Windows? Heck, you don't even need to build it into the OS. Just make it an optional download such as your Save As PDF add-in for Office. We know, we know... even though anyone is allowed to create applications that can read and write PDF files without having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems, you guys can't. You're just too big and can't ship add on PDF functionality without freaking out Adobe. But you know what? You really shouldn't care anymore. Freak them out. Your customers are tired of the exploits and the complications that so many of today's PDF readers include. We just want to read PDFs. We don't want to launch executables, to play video & audio, or to run JavaScript. A viewer that provides the basic functionality of the PDF/A standard is all we want. Is that so much to ask? Please give it some thought, thanks. Sincerely yours, F-Secure Labs

Fake Antivirus Programs on the Rise

thewhir.com

April 28, 2010

There has been a rise in fake antivirus software finding its way across the Internet, as developers use new ways to trick unsuspecting users into installing the programs, according to a new report from Google, according to a report by PC World.

In a recent 13-month study, Google analyzed some 240 million Web pages where it eventually found that 11,000 of those domains were distributing fake antivirus software. These program were discovered to account for 15 percent of the malicious software on the Internet. While there are thousands of different kinds of these programs, the one commonality they all share is that they all attempt to dupe users into believing their computers have been infected with malware. The programs then try to convince users to purchase the fake antivirus software.

Spammers aren't Tinkerbell; Identity Theft Takes the Disney Magic Out of the Magic Kingdom

blog.commtouch.com

April 27, 2010

Scammers aren't above using the most trusted brands to con you out of money. This scam allows spammers to whistle while they work - all the way to the bank. This time, they are offering "free" Disneyland tickets.

The email explains that the free tickets you signed up for a few months ago were shipped to the wrong address. It directs you to a URL requesting your name, address, and many other personal details. Once you submit these you are informed that your information is being processed (it sure is...). Of course, you don't get the tickets, and they do get a vacation, thanks to your trust in the Disney brand.

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