Monthly Archive for April, 2009
Microsoft has begun pushing out Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of its Web browser, to Windows users who are signed up for automatic software updates. If your system has Automatic Updates turned on, you may have already been prompted to install the software. Whether you use IE on a regular basis or not, it's probably a good idea to accept this update, for a couple of reasons. One is speed, both in startup and in normal browsing. From my own, unscientific testing, IE8 simply runs quite a bit faster and smoother than IE7. Various Web sites and blogs have sought to pit IE8's speed against those of other browsers; I won't attempt that here. My take: If you must have any version of IE installed, this is the one you want. The other is improved security. IE8 ships with a feature called SmartScreen Filter, which is designed to block
A washingtonpost.com colleague today called my attention to a phishing scam targeting Facebook users that is apparently getting some digital ink from Twitter users and various blogs. I figured this was as good a time as any to note that Facebook is and has been for some time one of the brands most frequently targeted by scam artists, right up there with some of the world's largest banks. According to phishtank.com, a community-based site that tracks phishing Web sites, Facebook.com was the seventh most-phished brand in March -- even ahead of the Internal Revenue Service, and that was during tax month! In fact, Phishtank found at least 104 phishing Web sites targeting Facebook users, or an average of three different Facebook phishing campaigns each day. Why on Earth would cyber crooks want to hijack your Facebook profile? Why, to trick your friends into visiting sites that try to download malicious
A family member called last night, upset and embarrassed that his yahoo.com account was used to blast out spam to all of his contacts. A quick examination of the message headers indicated the spam was indeed sent through his yahoo.com account, and that someone had hijacked his Webmail account password. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that whoever had sent the message had also done the following: deleted the last 30 days worth of messages in the "Sent" folder; added the same message they had spammed out to his e-mail signature, so that the message would be tacked onto each subsequent e-mail he sent; and the perpetrators even signed his first name at the bottom of the message. An Internet search for the domain advertised in the spam -- easylifeing.com -- shows that spammers have advertised this site by hijacking accounts at other free Web mail providers as well, including Hotmail
If you've frozen your credit file as a protection against identity thieves, you may have to wait a while longer to get it thawed out. Equifax, one of the big three credit reporting bureaus, is still reeling from a system-wide computer outage that began this weekend. Equifax spokesman Tim Kline said the company experienced a power outage on Sunday as a result of an electric transformer failure, and that it is in the final steps of bringing its last remaining systems online. "We still have some platforms we're bringing up, including those that allow people to unfreeze and freeze their credit, and place fraud alerts," Kline said. "Service is operational for virtually all of our customers and this is last area we need to resolve." That is to say, the only systems still to be brought back online are ones that are required by law and do not earn the
Adobe Systems Inc. is warning about a potential new security flaw in the latest versions of its Adobe Reader products. Update, Apr. 29, 8:17 a.m. ET: Adobe has confirmed that this affects all currently supported, shipping versions of Adobe Reader (9.1, 8.1.4, and 7.1.1 and earlier versions) for Windows, Mac and Linux. Adobe recommends disabling Javascript in Reader until it can ship a patch. Original post: In its product security incident response team blog, Adobe issued a brief advisory on Monday, saying it is investigating reports of a security hole in Adobe Reader 9.1 and 8.1.4. The company says it will provide an update once it gets more information. The SecurityFocus submission on this vulnerability indicates that it is a Javascript flaw in Reader for versions designed to run on Linux operating systems, although that advisory suggests that other versions or operating systems may also be affected. This may turn
While cyber attacks have evolved dramatically since the beginning of this decade, the regulations governing how federal agencies defend against digital intruders haven't been updated since 2002. Legislation expected to be introduced Tuesday in the Senate would seek to correct that imbalance. The "U.S. Information and Communications Enhancement Act of 2009," which would update the Federal Information Security Management Act, or FISMA, calls for the creation of hacker squads to test the defenses of federal agency networks. In addition, agencies would be required to show that they can effectively detect and respond to the latest cyber attacks on their information systems. Critics of the current law say it merely requires agencies to show they have the proper cyber security policies in place, but not necessarily demonstrate that those policies are helping to block or mitigate real-world attacks. "Only about five federal agencies are testing to see whether they are actually
There's something vaguely diabolical about a form of unwanted communication named after a brand of canned, chopped pork that piggybacks on a public health scare involving a flu strain derived from swine. Yes, you guessed it: Spammers have seized upon public awareness around the Swine Flu epidemic to hawk knockoff prescription drugs. And we're not talking about flu vaccines, either. According to McAfee Avert Labs, over the weekend spammers began pumping out junk e-mail with various Swine Flu subject lines to trick people into opening the missives. McAfee says the first of those spam campaigns amounted to about 2 percent of global spam volume. Meanwhile, it appears that dozens of new Web site names with the term "swineflu" included in them were registered during the last few days. Researchers at security software maker F-Secure Corp. warn that if similar activity surrounding previous national emergencies is any indicator, scam artists may
On Thursday I shared a laugh with a source at the expense of a mutual acquaintance: a security expert who has for the most part eschewed social networking sites. We were howling because someone who obviously knew enough about this person to push his emotional buttons had registered a Twitter account in his name and was posting some amusing but slightly mocking Tweets. The impersonated person even had several "followers" from the security community. I mention this because it raises an interesting question for people who have embraced social media, but only to a certain point: That is, does it make sense to go ahead and plant your virtual flag at various social networking sites before someone else does it for you, and potentially uses it to make fun of you -- or worse -- abuse your good name to trick your acquaintances into doing something harms you both? Indeed,
Hackers hijacked a major Brazilian ISP this month in a sophisticated attack that silently served up malicious software and phishing scams to more than a million customers. According to Brazilian news outlet Globo.com, unknown attackers hijacked the domain name system (DNS) records for NET Virtua, a broadband provider that serves at least 1.4 million customers in the region. NET Virtua's DNS records reportedly were hijacked on April 11, so that customers who visited any site that ran Google Adsense content were redirected to a site that tried to install and run a Java applet that in turn installed a Trojan horse program. Globo.com said the attackers also took aim at Bradesco, one of Brazil's largest financial institutions. NET Virtua customers who tried to visit Bradesco.com.br during the four hours the DNS records were hijacked were redirected to a counterfeit version of the site designed to steal customer credentials, the story
Atlanta based Internet service provider Earthlink had an outage for several hours on Wednesday, temporarily interrupting e-mail service. It also knocked offline many of the 87,000 Web sites it hosts, including the company's own homepage. Several readers have written Security Fix asking what's up, and some have speculated that the fact that Earthlink was felled on Earth Day was just too perfect to be caused by anything but an attack on the company. The reality is far more ironic: A spokeswoman for Earthlink blamed the incident on a power outage in Pasadena, California.
