Information Security News and Exploits

Providing you with Security News and Exploits from all over the web.

Entries for July 16th, 2010

Defending against hackers at their own conference

Part of going to any conference is picking and choosing the presentations to attend. But, going to a hacker conference, such as the upcoming HOPE in New York City, means taking extra care for security. In my case, I’m going to bring a Windows XP laptop. Am I asking for it?
Here’s my plan, many parts [...]

Leave a Comment

Black Hat, DefCon and B-Sides: A survival guide

I’m sad to say it, but I won’t be going to Las Vegas in a couple weeks for Black Hat, DefCon or B-Sides. There’s simply too much happening on the home front for me to break away this year.
I’ll feel left out, for sure. When my security associates start tweeting about hanging out in a [...]

Leave a Comment

Vulnerability Discovered in Patched Windows 2000, XP

Secunia, an Internet security company, reports that another critical flaw has been found in Microsoft Windows. This time the flaw discovered in wholly patched Windows XP and Windows 2000, which hackers could exploit to execute harmful assaults.
Marking the flaw with a "moderately critical" label, Secunia says that it is due to a boundary error within [...]

Leave a Comment

Is Intelâ??s Celeron saying goodbye?

Since 1998, Intelâ??s Celeron brand has been the red-headed stepchild of the company, a value chip designed to be installed in the absolute cheapest computers so that Intel could compete with companies like AMD, which were well entrenched in the value computing space.
But Celeron has never really gotten any respect. Out of the box, performance [...]

Leave a Comment

Password crack could affect millions

A well-known cryptographic attack could be used by hackers to log into Web applications used by millions of users, according to two security experts who plan to discuss the issue at an upcoming security conference.
Researchers Nate Lawson and Taylor Nelson say they’ve discovered a basic security flaw that affects dozens of open-source software libraries — [...]

Leave a Comment

How Elmer Fudd can improve your password security

eople are using bad passwords. Actually, there are a lot of terms being bandied about to describe these passwords — "bad," "simple," "lazy," etc. — when the most accurate term is "easy-to-figure-out." A recent study found that a large number of people are using "123456," "password," etc.
I will defend the "bad" passwords on one account. [...]

Leave a Comment

Hackers masked as Team Gmail

If you have a Gmail account and happen to receive a mail claiming to be from the Gmail Team, asking for details like your password, date of birth and nationality, do not respond. It is a new trick adopted by hackers to fool the users.
The mails say that Gmail is working on total security on [...]

Leave a Comment

Mozilla to revamp add-on code review process

Mozilla is dealing with another case of a malicious plug-in for its Firefox web browser, and as a result, is considering changes to its code review process.
The company on Monday removed the "Mozilla Sniffer" add-on from its archive and added it to what it terms a "blocklist," according to a vulnerability announcement released this week. [...]

Leave a Comment

White House just getting started on cybersecurity

The White House yesterday released a progress report highlighting its accomplishments in securing cyberspace following last year’s Cyberspace Policy Review. And although the administration has made some real progress, security experts say the job is far from finished.
Since President Obamaâ??s statement in May 2009 that the â??cyber threat is one of the most serious [...]

Leave a Comment

Users need to beef up their iTunes passwords following second hack

It’s been a second bad weekend for Apple Computer, following another alleged app-driven hack of its iTunes store. And, says Fortify Software, the software assurance specialist, iTunes users should now change the password on their iTunes account – upping their security by using a mixture of letters and numbers – as well as switching to [...]

Leave a Comment

Researchers expose privacy flaws in Chatroulette

Privacy shortcomings in Chatroulette expose users to security risks, according to a study by security researchers.
Boffins at the University of Colorado at Boulder and McGill University were able to show that a pre-recorded low-quality video of an attractive woman could fool the majority of participants into thinking the feed was live. The approach might be [...]

Leave a Comment

25,000 PCs Affected By Microsoft Zero-Day Vulnerability

Hackers have attacked 25,000 PCs affected by the Windows Help and Support Center zero-day vulnerability, patched yesterday. According to a post on the Microsoft Malware Protection Centre (MMPC) blog, the attacks on infected systems accelerated significantly after the company announced that it would be patching the vulnerability in this month’s MS10-042 bulletin.
Writing on the MMPC [...]

Leave a Comment

Virus infects data at OSU

Oregon State University is notifying 34,000 current and former employees that a computer containing some of their personal information was recently infected by a virus.
In a press release issued Wednesday, the university said its computer experts believe it is â??highly unlikely that the virus put any of that information in the hands of unauthorized users.â?
[...]

Leave a Comment

Inside Apple’s changes to the iPhone’s signal strength visual bars

With the release of iOS 4.0.1 on Thursday, Apple instated changes to the way its iPhone handsets visualize bars representing cellular signal strength, doing away with a previously optimistic approach that compressed the dynamic range of bars to make it appear that a user’s reception was much stronger than it actually was.
In fact, AnandTech, which [...]

Leave a Comment

Verizon scrambles to meet demand as Motorola Droid X sells out

Motorola’s Droid X is currently in short supply across the continental United States. ?Android enthusiasts hoping to snag the sleek smartphone via Verizon’s online store will now have to wait until at least July 23 for the device to ship.
"This has been a very good day one for Droid X sales. Customers were in [...]

Leave a Comment

FSF developing social networking software

Creators of free and open source software are often criticised for not bothering to make equivalents of proprietary software and web applications to attract users over.
This criticism is frequently levelled at the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project which kicked off the process of creating a free operating system back in the 1980s. Such [...]

Leave a Comment

Kontron AG suspects fraud at Malaysian subsidiary

Shares of a major German company, a global leader in embedded computer technology, fell sharply as word got around that the company has been unable to recover large sums of debts from customers in Asia and because of alleged fraud at its Malaysian facility.
Headquartered in Eching, near Munich, Germany, Kontron AG maintains a number of [...]

Leave a Comment

Microsoft names new managing director of research

Microsoft has named a new managing director for its Research division.
The company said that US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program director Dr. Peter Lee would be taking over as managing director of the Microsoft Research Redmond operation beginning in the Fall of 2010.
Formerly a professor at Carnegie Melon University, Lee had previously worked [...]

Leave a Comment

Apple has no plans for iPhone 4 recall

Although Apple has called a press conference tomorrow to discuss well-documented problems with the iPhone 4’s antenna and reception, a new report claims that a recall of the handset won’t be among the announcements.
Citing a person familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple doesn’t plan to instate a recall of [...]

Leave a Comment

Talk on China Cyber Army Pulled After Pressure

A talk on China’s military cyber-attack capabilities has been pulled from the Black Hat security conference schedule following pressure from Taiwanese and Chinese agencies.
The talk, entitled "The Chinese Cyber Army: An Archaeological Study from 2001 to 2010," was billed as an analysis of China’s government-backed hacking initiatives, based on intelligence gathered from a variety of [...]

Leave a Comment