Computer Worm to attack on April Fool’s Day
Rumors has it, the dreaded fast-moving computer that infected at least 3 million computers, is set to attack again on April 1, 2009.
The army of Conficker-infected machines, known as a "botnet," could be one of the greatest cybercrime tools ever assembled. Conficker’s authors just need to figure out a way to reliably communicate with it.
Infected Machines need commands to come alive. So far, Conficker-infected PC’s have been trying to connect each day to 250 Internet domains. The hackers needs to get just one of those sites under their control to send their commands to the botnet. (The name Conficker comes from rearranging letters in the name of one of the original sites the worm was connecting to.)
Mahalo vouches for criminal hacker in its midst
The founder of young Internet search engine Mahalo explained on Thursday how a convicted hacker wound up a cherished member of their team.
Mahalo hired John Schiefer without being aware of his cyber crimes, and regretted seeing him sentenced on Wednesday to four years in prison, founder Jason Calacanis said in a message posted online.
Schiefer used "botnets," armies of computers hijacked by using malicious software, to steal people’s identities and snoop on electronic communications, according to Los Angeles US attorney’s office spokesman Thom Mrozek.
Data about Obama’s helicopter breached via P2P?
An Internet security company claims that Iran has taken advantage of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One, President Barack Obama’s helicopter, according to a report by WPXI, NBC’s affiliate in Pittsburgh.
Tiversa, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pa., reportedly discovered a security breach that led to the transfer of military information to an Iranian IP address, according to WPXI. The information is said to include planned engineering upgrades, avionic schematics, and computer network information.
Kate Winslet hit in Facebook phoneys war
THE final straw was Kate Winslet calling Angelina Jolie, her fellow Oscar nominee, a “fat-lipped crazy cow”. That was when the monitors employed by Facebook, the social networking website, abruptly closed her account.
The real Winslet would have known nothing of the insult. Instead, the British actress had become the latest victim of the trend known as “Fakebooking”. In the past few days, as bookmakers reduced the odds against her taking home the best actress statuette at tonight’s Academy Awards in Los Angeles, Winslet has received the unwelcome accolade of having the most sites devoted to her by internet pranksters.
Conficker Hitting Hardest in Asia, Latin America
Computer networks in Asia and Latin America are the most susceptible to a fast-spreading computer worm, which has infected between 6 million and 9 million PCs worldwide, security experts said.
According to Symantec, China and Argentina are the countries that have been hit hardest by the worm, which started spreading about two months ago but is thought to have infected millions over the past few weeks. China accounts for close to 29 percent of the infections tracked by Symantec, and Argentina was second with just over 11 percent, according to Alfred Huger, vice president of Symantec Security Response. “We’re not seeing anywhere near the number of infections in western Europe and North America.”
The Facebook Virus Spreads – No Social Network is Safe
“Koobface” is the name of the Trojan worm that’s been making its way through the social networking site Facebook lately, but to the site’s users, it’s been simply known as “the Facebook virus.” That name will soon become a misnomer, though, because the worm is now spreading outside of Facebook’s walls to attack other social networks like Bebo, MySpace, Friendster, MyYearbook, and Blackplanet.
Facebook hit by computer virus called Koobface
A computer virus dubbed ‘Koobface’ is being spread through the messaging system of social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, posing to the users a threat similar to other malware attacks over the years. Users whose computers are infected may have their credit card numbers stolen or their searches on Google, Yahoo and MSN diverted to deceptive Web sites.
‘Unbreakable’ encryption unveiled
Perfect secrecy has come a step closer with the launch of the world’s first computer network protected by unbreakable quantum encryption at a scientific conference in Vienna.
The network connects six locations across Vienna and in the nearby town of St Poelten, using 200 km of standard commercial fibre optic cables.
Quantum cryptography is completely different from the kinds of security schemes used on computer networks today.
These are typically based on complex mathematical procedures which are extremely hard for outsiders to crack but not impossible given sufficient computing resources or time.
Bank turmoil fuels phishing boom
Hi-tech fraudsters are taking advantage of the global financial turmoil, say governments and security experts.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a warning saying phishing gangs were using the turmoil to extract valuable information from consumers.
A UK parliamentary group said it expected a move away from ID theft towards attacks on account holders.
The news comes as a UK banking group reveals that phishing attacks were up more than 180% in a year.
Adobe works to pre-empt a ‘clickjacking’ security nightmare
Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities remain the most difficult for Web browser and tool manufacturers to thwart, especially because legitimate sites may be hosted by multiple domains. Today, Adobe Flash finds itself in the crosshairs.
A relatively ancient technique for hijacking a Web page’s hyperlinks by overlapping them with different, invisible hyperlinks that lead the user someplace else, has reared its ugly head again, but this time outside the realm of HTML: Recently revealed proofs-of-concept show that invisible Flash elements can maliciously lead users to mock Web pages; and now it’s been revealed that Adobe was already working with security engineers to fix the problem before the latest proof-of-concept was leaked.