[security] Forum Topics

What, you hadn't heard? "A Senate bill would offer President Obama emergency control of the Internet and may give him a "kill switch" to shut down online traffic by seizing private networks -- a move cybersecurity experts worry will choke off industry and civil liberties," [URL="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/28/senate-president-emergency-control-internet/"]FOX News[/URL] said breathlessly. (Nice …

It's always fun to stand and watch as two big names slug it out, and they don't come much bigger than Microsoft. Sophos, it has to be said, is no small fry either when it comes to the world of IT Security. So when a Sophos [URL="http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/07/17/guest-blog-xp-mode-demonstrating-security-microsofts-priority/"]blog posting[/URL] from it's …

As someone who works within the IT Security space, I have to say that rogueware (also known as [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20938/53/"]scareware[/URL]) is starting to seriously hack me off. Not that I have ever been conned into purchasing it, I hasten to add, but rather because so many others have and so many …

Want to do a public records search on email messages from your state legislator? Chances are, you won't be able to, even with the recent move toward [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4592.html"]transparency in government[/URL]. Even states that do have an email retention policy in state government -- and many of them don't -- often …

One last quick entry before the weekend starts (and before the month ends) - I saw a story on [URL="http://twitter.com"]Twitter[/URL] today in which some hackers claimed they'd found a flaw in the iPhone that would allow a malicious person to take control of every one of those phones in rthe …

Gary McKinnon is either a UFO-obsessed nerd who happens to suffer from a form of autism, or a fugitive from justice who was responsible for the biggest military hack of all time. The description varies depending upon whether you are a balanced individual with no axe to grind or the …

There has been a lot of comment in the past on Gary McKinnon and his hacking into US military computers. Readers might understand that some of the comment in the UK has been about how he should have been tried over here, there's no need to extradite him and if …

There are two things you can be sure of about the annual Las Vegas Black Hat security conference: nobody will use the free wifi as they are all too [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19935/53/"]worried about being hacked[/URL], and someone will demonstrate an exploit that will scare the living bejesus out of you. The latter …

A group of University of Washington students and professors has developed an application called Vanish that automatically makes data used with it disappear after eight to nine hours. The open-source software is [URL="http://vanish.cs.washington.edu/download.html"]downloadable[/URL] now, as well as information about how to use it and a research paper about its development, …

The High Court in the UK will this Friday decide if an appeal against the Home Office backed decision to extradite Gary McKinnon on hacking charges to the US is to be upheld or, as seems likely, not. McKinnon has been accused of what US prosecutors refer to the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2863.html"]biggest …

So Google reckons that it can provide [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26281/53/"]the perfect operating system[/URL] in Chrome, even to the point where according to Google's Engineering Director, Linus Upson, it will herald the end of malware. That's what he went [URL="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html"]on the record[/URL] to say, promising that Google was "completely redesigning the underlying security …

Adobe has issued a security advisory following the discovery of what it describes as a "critical vulnerability" which exists within the current versions of Flash Player (v9.0.159.0 and v10.0.22.87) across all platforms, Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems, The same vulnerability can be found within the authplay.dll component that ships …

Can anyone top this: the Ministry of Defence here in the UK has admitted that last year it managed to lose a server. A whole one, and get this, it was meant to be located in a secure government building for good measure. Over the years I have become more …

Usually quarterly spam trend reports from security vendors are, how can I put this nicely, actually I can't so I will just have to say it as it is: bloody boring and mostly pointless. However, the latest such report to fins its way into my mailbox from [URL="http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/"]Sophos[/URL] caught my …

Some users discovered last week that Amazon has the capability to remove books from their Kindle electronic reading devices, even though they were bought, paid for, downloaded, and in the users' possession. Ironically, among the books with which this was discovered was George Orwell's [I]1984[/I], which postulated a society where …

Anyone else getting pretty fed up with the number of headlines both online and in the print media which have been exclaiming 'Twitter hacked' this week? I have even just got a press release, from a storage systems company of all things, that has the strap line of "Twitter hack …

Another of those security trending reports has dropped onto my desk, this one coming from PandaLabs which is now apparently part of 'Panda Security, The Cloud Security Company.' Jeez, someone needs to give the marketing director a kick up the pants for that one. Anyway, back to the report: it …

Last weekend Twitter was apologising for accidentally suspending a number of user accounts due to human error. Now it is suspending accounts again, but this time there is no error: Twitter is getting serious about malware. In a status posting on Thursday July 9th, Twitter [URL="http://status.twitter.com/post/138789881/koobface-malware-attack"]admitted[/URL] that it had come …

[URL="www.facebook.com"]Facebook[/URL]'s page on which the location of the head of MI6's flat was available has been taken down. You also can no longer find information about his family and their whereabouts, which you could on the site previously. There has been a debate about this, of course. For Americans who …

Security stories abound on the Internet, and as we enter a new month an old one has resurfaced. There are legal questions over the Sarah Palin hacking event last year. Graham Cluley has [URL="http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/07/01/legal-arguments-sarah-palin-email-hack/"]blogged[/URL] about it. For me he's buried the main point right at the end of the story. …

Am I surprised that many 'IT Security Professionals' appear to have had a common-sense bypass when it comes to the security of their own mobile devices? Nah, not really. Look, we already know that [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2009/06/11/88-percent-of-web-users-are-morons/"]88 percent of web users are morons[/URL] and [URL="http://happygeeknewmedia.blogspot.com/2009/06/are-you-stupid-it-administrator.html"]93 percent of IT Admins are idiots[/URL] so …

You might have seen the announcement [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8116387.stm"]yesterday[/URL] that Microsoft is going to start offering free antivirus protection to its customers. The initial reaction is no doubt going to be reasonably positive, and speaking as someone with a family member who's been hit by a computer virus fairly recently, the easier …

Hackers managed to get root access to a large Internet Service Provider, reportedly via a zero day vulnerability over the weekend, and destroy data from 100,000 websites as a result. The UK-based ISP, VAServ, has [URL="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/08/webhost_attack/"]stated[/URL] that the attackers apparently exploited a vulnerability in virtualisation software called HyperTM in order …

Remember the 14 million missing email messages from the White House under President George W. Bush? [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3815.html"]Remember[/URL] the (albeit flawed) court order (issued days before President Barack Obama's inauguration) directing the Bush White House to figure out what happened to them? Never mind. A federal appeals court recently ruled that …

The FBI has confirmed reports that it was forced to shut down it's external unclassified email network "as a precautionary measure" following the discovery of a virus infection. I am led to understand that the particular virus concerned has been identified by the FBI but this information has yet to …

This is a good idea. Not for the first time the American President is keeping his earlier word. This time he is appointing a [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8073654.stm"]Cyber Tsar[/URL]. This, it strikes me, is an excellent idea. In the UK we have a data protection commission and a commissioner in charge of that. …

The latest Symantec [URL="http://www.messagelabs.com/intelligence.aspx"]MessageLabs Intelligence Report[/URL] has landed on my desk and makes for the usual rather depressing reading. I guess that most depressing of all, if not surprising when you take a look at your inbox or worse still your junk folder, are the figures relating to spam activity …

InterOp 2009 is a success by anyone's measure but it's been a mixed bag for me so far. Internet access on the show floor is almost non-existent. For a major tech show like this, it's absolutely ridiculous. You'd think that Internet access would be a standard feature of any technical …

Recently Google has hit the headlines with [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4163.html"]concerns over privacy[/URL] courtesy of Street View mapping, plus [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4305.html"]allegations of trademark infringements[/URL] with the Android open source mobile phone OS. The latest headlines, though, look like returning to the heart of Google: the search engine. Google SERPs malware manipulation has hit new …

Microsoft has made a double whammy of Windows 7 update announcements. The first concerns a hotfix for a bug that could "cause some application failures on the English version of Windows 7 Release Candidate 32-bit Ultimate" while the second brings news of the arrival of as many as 10 'fake' …