Category: Security
Microsoft Releases New Free Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.0 for Windows
Microsoft has announced the release of their updated Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA), version 2.0. For those of you not familiar with this nifty piece of free software, it essentially scans your computer for security risks, including poor or sloppy configuration, security holes which have not been patched, and the…
Republican Specter and Democrat Leahy Unite in Proposing New Personal Data Privacy and Security Law
Following this year’s rash of personal data security breaches, starting with the ChoicePoint and Lexis-Nexis leaks, and culiminating with the CardSystems hack and exposure of the credit card information of more than 40million customers, Democratic Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy has teamed up with Republican Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to introduce…
New W32 Kedebe-F Worm Announces Osama’s Capture, My Doom Arrest, and Pope Conspiracy
The newest version of the W32 Kedebe-F worm is playing on the natural curiousity and rubber-necking of the email-reading public, or as it’s known in the trade, “social engineering”. Masquerading as a variety of news headline stories, Kedebe-F has been seen breaking the news of the arrest of the My…
Identity Theft Impacting the Uptake of On-Line Banking & E-Commerce
Are you one of the people mentioned in this release who are now avoiding Internet banking due to fears of identity theft? DALLAS, June 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Entrust, Inc. (Nasdaq: ENTU) today released the findings of its second Internet Security Survey. Conducted by an independent research firm, Infosurv, the survey…
Outlook Express Flaw Elevated to Higher Risk
The security flaw in Outlook Express revealed by Microsoft in their June Security Bulletin, and covered by Aunty here, has taken on a new urgency as certain websites have begun sharing samples of the code required to take advantage of the security flaw. While the flaw is still considered to…
CardSystems Compromises Data of 40 Million MasterCard and Visa Cardholders
In case you were listening to the radio or televion news today, yes, you heard it right, and your ears were not deceiving you. The credit card information of 40 million MasterCard and Visa cardholders was compromised when someone hacked into the computers of Arizona-based CardSystems Solutions. 40 million. That…
Security Hole in Adobe PDF Reader and Acrobat PDF Viewer, Warns Adobe
Adobe Systems, the makers of the popular Adobe Acrobat, is warning today of a security hole in both their Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer software. Adobe Reader is a widely distributed and used free software program for viewing PDF files. According to the Adobe website, “The vulnerability is…
Your Checking Account Is Not Safe!
Forget Qchex and other services which let anyone register your checking account and use it. Your monies in your checking account are at risk from a scam far less complicated than even that! That’s right, and your old Aunty discovered it, quite by accident. Today Aunty called up her cell…
ISP Not Responsible for Policing Zombies Says Jury of ITs Peers
A mock trial, in which ISPs were sued for damage done by a zombie network to a few fictitious companies’ business and financial interests, found that a jury of IT professionals overwhelmingly held the opinion that the ISPs were not responsible for the damage flowing from their networks via the…
June’s Security Updates for Windows Include IE, Outlook and Telnet
The second Tuesday of each month heralds Microsoft’s monthly Security Updates for Windows. This month’s batch includes security updates for Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Telnet, and HTML Help, to name a few. The update for Outlook Express affects OE primarily when it is used as a newsgroup reader. In that…
Pentagon and NASA “UFO Hacker” Gary ‘Solo’ McKinnon Apprehended
Gary McKinnon, Nasa’s ET hacker, has been arrested in London.
Firefox and Mozilla Still at Risk for Spoofing “Frame Injection” Security Flaw
Online security company Secunia has said this week that versions of Firefox and Mozilla, as well as the lesser known Camino, are again at risk for a frame injection security flaw which has dogged Mozilla on and off for nearly seven years. The problem, which plagues Firefox versions 1.x, Mozilla…
3.9 Million Citigroup Customers’ Data Compromised
In the latest in a rash of incidents in which the personal data of customers of various institutions has been compromised, Citigroup has revealed that the personal account information of 3.9 million customers has gone missing. 3.9 million customers. Wow. In one fell swoop, the number of people in the…
New Improved Bagle Worm Win32.Glieder! Now with Win32.Fantibag and Win32.Mitglieder
Not content to just do its normal wormly dirty work, a new variation on the infamous Bagle worm, Win32.Glieder, brings with it two companion Trojans, Win32.Fantibag and Win32.Mitglieder (literally, in German, “with Glieder”). Said Chris Thomas, a security architect with Computer Associates, “We’ve seen blended threats before where a virus…
Corporate Espionage: International Giants Implicated in Israeli Industrial Spy Ring
Talk about spyware versus spyware. Authorities in Isreal have arrested dozens of people, including high level executives of multinational corporations, in what increasingly is developing into the Internet Trojan spyware custerfluck of the year. Only on the Internet can a Trojan horse disgorge its contents in several places at once,…
