Home Vulnerabilities Exploits Hacking IT Security Malware
Twitter
RSS

Archive for July 19th, 2010

« Older Entries

Network security for the masses

By admin on Monday, July 19th, 2010 | No Comments

Network World - Information security is an exalted field. Exalted both in the sense of “noble” and in the sense of “inflated”. We practice security as a dark art, a complex discipline of insiders with obscure acronyms. Even more than other areas of IT, security professionals are a “special” breed, as one can clearly see by the many certifications following our names, almost like titles of nobility. Yes, security is complex and esoteric. No, it should not be the practice of the few, but the practice of the many.

Black Hat’s most notorious incidents: a quiz

I’ve often talked about security awareness and education as the least expensive and most effective security investment. If this is true for large organizations, it is 10-fold so for small business. The luxury of staffing a security department is absent but the need for security is just

… Read the rest

Read More...

SCADA System’s Hard-Coded Password Circulated Online for Years

By admin on Monday, July 19th, 2010 | No Comments

A sophisticated new piece of malware that targets command-and-control software installed in critical infrastructures uses a known default password that the software maker hard-coded into its system. The password has been available online since at least 2008, when it was posted to product forums in Germany and Russia.

The password protects the database used in Siemens’ Simatic WinCC SCADA system, which runs on Windows operating systems. SCADA, short for “supervisory control and data acquisition,” systems are programs installed in utilities and manufacturing facilities to manage the operations. SCADA has been the focus of much controversy lately for being potentially vulnerable to remote attack by malicious outsiders who might want to seize control of utilities for purposes of sabotage, espionage or extortion.

“Default passwords are and have been a major vulnerability for many years,” said Steve Bellovin, a computer scientist as Columbia University who specializes in security issues.… Read the rest

Read More...

Detection & Defense Of Windows Autorun Locations

By admin on Monday, July 19th, 2010 | No Comments

As an incident responder and forensic investigator, there’s a truth that we expect to always be followed by malware: persistence is a must to survive. Well, maybe not the whole truth as there are exceptions, but the general rule of thumb is that malware seeks to persist and to do so, it will hook itself into common areas on a victim Windows machine in order to do so.

One of the first places we look is the common autorun locations, or areas in the file system and Windows Registry that cause processes and services to run when Windows boots. If you remember the old msconfig utility, it’s an example of one of the tools that allowed you to see what was was enabled to start within the Startup folder, autorun.exe, config.sys, and other files. There is also Windows Services MMC and Regedit that helped figure out what’s… Read the rest

Read More...

Wikileaks Re-Opens for Leakers

By admin on Monday, July 19th, 2010 | No Comments

Wikileaks is back in business for leakers, with two revamped ways to submit secret documents, the group announced Saturday.

The security certificate for uploading by HTTPS has been replaced, after expiring in early June. When the old certificate expired, it disabled Wikileaks’ upload system for over a month without any notice on the site.

Those with particularly sensitive documents can also once again cloak their uploads over the anonymizing system Tor. Wikileaks’ Tor Hidden Service had been a much-touted feature of the site, but was taken down without notice several months ago.

After Wired.com reported on Wikileaks’ technical issues last month, Julian Assange, the site’s leader, said that both outages were part of an upgrade to Wikileaks’ infrastructure.

The changes and other additions to Wikileaks were announced Saturday at the HOPE hacker conference in New York City by prominent Wikileaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum, who tacitly acknowledged that Wikileaks… Read the rest

Read More...

iPhone 4 antenna problem spooks Apple customers, says IDC

By admin on Monday, July 19th, 2010 | No Comments

Computerworld - The iPhone 4′s antenna and reception problems have given pause to two out of three current iPhone owners, who said they would postpone upgrading to the new model, said research firm IDC.

IDC’s survey, which polled IT professionals last week, showed that 66% of current iPhone owners will delay their purchase of the iPhone 4 because of the smartphone’s widely-publicized antenna and reception issues.

On Friday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs held a quickly-called news conference to defend the iPhone 4 antenna design and announce that the company would give customers a free case, which will reportedly minimize the signal- and call-loss problems.

Jobs’ news conference came after three weeks of negative publicity that reached a crescendo a week ago when Consumer Reports said it could not recommend the smartphone because it dropped calls and lost signals when users held it in

… Read the rest

Read More...
« Older Entries