February 29, 2008
Laptop sold on eBay contained with Home Office disc
By Dave Nixon
The Home Office has begun an investigation after a buyer purchased a laptop on eBay that contained a disc with confidential information.
The disc was concealed under the computer’s keyboard, and discovered by a local PC repair firm, Leapfrog Computers in Bolton, when it was submitted for repair. The disc had the words “Home Office” and [...]
February 29, 2008
eBay accused over pirated software
By Dave Nixon
A principal anti-piracy body has pointed the finger at eBay over counterfeit software, claiming in a new report that “at least 90 percent of all software available on eBay is illegal.”
The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is an association for software companies whose anti-piracy division acts rather like the UK’s Federation Against Software Theft [...]
February 29, 2008
Malicious Code FTP-Toolz*pack Discovered
By Lashan Clarke
The new FTP-Toolz*pack has made it possible for fraudsters to hack into the biggest Web sites on the Internet. After doing so, the hackers release a code that will leak the file-server credentials. This leads to the possibility of an iframe attack, and any visitor would be infected with the code. Security firm Finjan has [...]
February 29, 2008
‘Data guardians’ appointed in HMRC to improve data security
By Isabelle Chaize
The Treasury this week revealed the appointment of seven ‘data guardians’ across all areas of the Customs and Revenue department.
The newly created role involves monitoring the handling and transfer of data throughout the department. According to Jane Kennedy, financial secretary to the Treasury and MP for Liverpool Wavertree, the guardians have been given support including [...]
February 29, 2008
Microsoft suffering problems with Hotmail service
By Isabelle Chaize
The software giant Microsoft’s Hotmail service, which with approximately 80 million users takes up nearly a quarter of the global webmail market, has been experiencing serious malfunctions.
No details have yet been released about the exact nature of the problem, but Microsoft said that they were aware that some of their customers were experiencing difficulty [...]
February 27, 2008
Pin and Chip Data Not Secure
By Lashan Clarke
The researchers at the University of Cambridge have confirmed what the public knew all along, that the debit card and credt card readers are not safe. The data is not being encrypted on the pin pad, and as such, thieves are able to easily steal your data. The PIN pad gives a thief access to [...]
February 26, 2008
Trend acquires encryption vendor
By Dave Nixon
Trend Micro has acquired Identum, an email encryption software vendor based in Bristol, in a move to reinforce its software-as-a-service product portfolio.
Identum’s Private Post desktop and gateway server products will be incorporated into Trend’s present line of products and rebranded “Identum as Trend Micro.”
The Identum server software, which will routinely encrypt messages depending on the [...]
February 26, 2008
Company Workers Have Access To Sensitive Data
By Lashan Clarke
It was revealed this week that numerous company workers are accessing confidential information stored by their bosses. This was revealed about a woman who would spend time looking up information about her ex-boyfriend.
Many company employees have been found to access personal information for their own gain. According to Joan Shafer, at WE Engergies, “People [...]
February 26, 2008
‘Out of office’ messages converted into spam relays
By Dave Nixon
Spammers have created a new deception that circumvents many existing anti-spam filters: exploitating the “out of the office” auto-respond feature found in legitimate webmail services.
Security firm McAfee has encountered numerous instances of the trick, the company said this week.
The spammer initially signs up for a legitimate webmail account, turning on its auto-respond feature, with the [...]
February 26, 2008
Glasgow School filters proxies with Bloxx
By Brian Turner
Bloxx, the enterprise web filtering specialist, today announced that The High School of Glasgow has deployed Bloxx web filtering technology to monitor pupil and staff online activity and to provide enhanced security for its IT network.
With 1,100 pupils, The High School of Glasgow caters for children of all ages, from kindergarten up to the [...]
February 25, 2008
Service Pack 1 designed to alert user to illegal copies of Vista-early update this week
By Janine de Blois
Two popular cracks will be found by Windows Update (WU), Service Pack 1 (SP1), due in mid-March. The more common “Grace Timer” and its various versions, which extends the 30 day activation period perpetually. The other, more complicated, “OEM BIOS Emulation Toolkit”, emulates the pre-installed versions of Vista by large OEM companies. [...]
February 25, 2008
HMRC refund seekers target of plishing attack
By Janine de Blois
Friday McAffee discovered a plishing attack email which offers recipients a refund of £215 from HMRC. A link in the email led to a suspicious site which has since been taken down. The website was a legitimate one based in Germany, itself the victim of hackers. “It appears it was a benign [...]
February 22, 2008
Hard drive encryption not secure
By Dave Nixon
Encrypting your laptop’s hard drive does not maintain safe data, according to researchers at Princeton University.
They’ve revealed a method to appropriate the hard drive encryption key used by products such as Windows Vista’s BitLocker or Apple’s FileVault. With that key, hackers could get admittance to all of the data stored on an encrypted hard [...]
February 22, 2008
Hackers tool Google into vulnerability scanner
By Dave Nixon
The hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow (CDC) this week released a tool that converts Google into a preset vulnerability scanner, combing websites for susceptible information such as passwords or server vulnerabilities.
CDC primarily achieved infamy ten years ago with its backdoor Back Orifice, which verified in a highly public way just how straightforward [...]
February 22, 2008
WordPress has recovered from Saturday’s DoS attack
By Janine de Blois
Saturday’s Denial of Service attack was still causing some slowdowns on WordPress yesterday. The message yesterday on the site read, “Site slowness-we are aware that the site is performing slowly at times. We are actively working on this and will get things back to normal as soon as is possible. Sorry [...]
February 22, 2008
Commission On Cyber Security Created
By Lashan Clarke
The Commission on Cyber Security has been given the go ahead to establish a security report on for the computers and mainframes used by the federal government. The Commission will be regulated by Michael McCaul, the Republican representative for Texas, and Jim Langevin, the Democrat representative for Rhode Island.
The Commission will be required to [...]
February 22, 2008
Key addition to Firefox 3.0 Beta 3-default Malware Protection
By Janine de Blois
Malware Protection, a new tool released with Firefox 3.0 Beta 3, blocked a couple of popular add-on sites for its own browser. Much like the anti-plishing tool, the anti-malware tool works from a blacklist created by Google. The list includes both sites known to intentionally distribute malware as well as sites that [...]
February 21, 2008
BackStop service deletes sensitive files on lost or stolen laptops, computers and GSM devices
By Janine de Blois
Data protection is a major concern in a world that is becoming increasingly mobile and sophisticated. Encryption is not enough to protect sensitive data which may fall into the hands of criminals.
UK company, Virtuity, is now offering a hosted service using GSM, internet, and Radio-frequency identification (RFID) to erase sensitive files from both mobile [...]
February 21, 2008
IRS Reports Phishing Attacks
By Lashan Clarke
The IRS has issued a security warning to others stating that criminals involved in scams have recently been targeting taxpayers. These criminals will setup a phishing attack, by claiming to be the IRS. The fake website is used to collect details such as date of birth, address, and social security number.
This information was released [...]
February 19, 2008
Wikileaks whistle blowing site pulled by court
By Dave Nixon
A US court has closed down a contentious website that permits whistle-blowers to publish corporate and government documents incognito.
The site, famous as Wikileaks.org, has been taken offline in the US due to a court order from the District Court in San Francisco. Nonetheless, the site continues online in other countries, including Belgium and Germany.
The order [...]