Hacktivism: not a get‑out‑of‑jail card?
What we’re lacking here is a clear differentiation between types of “hacktivist” or, indeed, “activist”: much of the commentary that’s around at the moment seems to assume that all hacktivists are the same.
What we’re lacking here is a clear differentiation between types of “hacktivist” or, indeed, “activist”: much of the commentary that’s around at the moment seems to assume that all hacktivists are the same.
Forensic software developer PassWare announced a new version of its eponymous software forensics kit on Tuesday. Already several news sources are writing about how the program can automatically obtain the login password from a locked or sleeping Mac simply by plugging in a USB flash drive containing their software and connecting it to another computer
Well, really there are far more, but the latest study from Imperva of 10 million attacks against 30 large organizations from January to May of 2011 cites a cocktail of techniques used by would-be hackers to spot the weaknesses and exploit them. For those of us who’ve tailed a log file spinning out of control
The most common malware technique for avoiding detection is to create loads of “fresh” variants. Actually, the component that changes so frequently is the packer – the outer layer of the malware, used by malware authors to encrypt the malware and make it harder to detect – whilst the functionality of the malicious code inside
Or so the latest report from DEBKAfile states, claiming the Stuxnet worm broke numerous Iranian centrifuges by forcing them to overspeed, causing damage and prompting the replacement of some 5,000-6,000 units. They cite “intelligence sources” as the source of information. Whether or not this will be confirmed, it seems malware authors clearly are targeting political
With the proliferation of the data we hold on our mobile devices, it’s no wonder Neil Daswani, CTO of Dasient, says around 8% of the apps they tested have been leaking data. In a similar vein, he states, “The number of malware samples on mobile devices has doubled in the past two years.” Google tends
…one Yasuhiro Kawaguchi was arrested yesterday on suspicion of “saving a virus on his computer,” though the story suggests distribution of malware too…
2 days ago, the FBI announced a series of raids resulting in arrests of alleged members of the hacking group ‘Anonymous’. Hoping to deal a critical blow to the organization, they swept up more than a few potential members, and a tidy stash of computers to boot. So we’re done with ‘Anonymous’, right? Today, we
In their presentation “Cybercrime in Russia: Trends and issues” at CARO2011 — one of the best presentations of the workshop, in my unbiased opinion 😉 — Robert Lipovsky, Aleksandr Matrosov and Dmitry Volkov mentioned the Win32/Hodprot malware family, which seems to be undergoing something of a resurgence.
Sitting in an airport you rarely frequent, you grab your laptop and snap out a couple e-mails to send, and look, there’s a free WiFi hotspot. Bang, you connect and send, and are off on your way. What you don’t know is the free WiFi may come with a price: your login credentials and network
The mobile devices of late have more compute power than the full desktop PC of yesteryear, and they fit it your pocket, great news for folks “on the go.” And since you’re so multi-tasked anyway, why not load it up with things to make your life easier, after all, it’s really a phone with a
With Facebook’s launch of video chat powered by Skype underway and enabling a new level of communication on its platform, we take a look at permission settings and privacy options.
Google, in an effort to get more squarely into the center of the social networking scene, is implementing a system where private profiles you may have created in Gmail will become public after July 31, or you risk account deletion. While the information on the profile that is made public will be limited initially, the
It’s something of a truism, that ‘old viruses never die’, and that certainly seems to be the case for some of the older, more widespread, email worms. In this interview (http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041129/news_lz1b29five.html) back in 2004, I talked about an email worm called “Win32/Zafi.b” which, at the time, had recently been spreading on a global scale. However,
On Wednesday we heard additional documents had been leaked from the Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS). “Will this ever end?” has to be the most commonly-asked question in Arizona nowadays at the DPS. The original attacks last week were claimed by the group LulzSec, which was making the rounds exposing private information through hacking
Facebook recently launched a facial recognition feature that allows you and others to “tag” photos with your name. As has been the norm for Facebook, this “feature” is turned on by default and users must take their own initiative to limit, or turn it off. The implications are wide-ranging, so if you or anyone in
In a ComputerWorld article Gregg Kaiser cites a Microsoft engineer as saying that the trojan that Microsoft calls “Popureb” digs so deeply that the only way to eradicate it is to reinstall the operating system. If you read the Microsoft blog Feng didn’t actually say that this is the only way to eradicate the trojan.
“Infrastructure Attacks: The Next Generation?” now includes the speaker notes, which hopefully makes it more interesting and useful.
The Obama administration seems intent on pushing for stiffer sentences for hackers caught endangering national security to 20 years prison time, doubling the current sentence. A stiff penalty, to be sure, the latest in a series of volleys from D.C. to curb the flurry of recent high-profile attacks and restore confidence in the U.S. Government’s
Introduction LinkedIn is a social network platform whose specialty is connecting professionals together to build relationships and create business opportunity. Recently the company became publicly traded and grabbed the attention of the world as its initial public stock offering more than doubled on the first day. Here we focus tools and options for user privacy
…It’s a 419 (Advance Fee Fraud) message, of course. Stripped of the pseudo-governmental flim-flam, the core of the message is that they want you to forward them this…