Blog Archive: March 2010

  According to recent research, anti-virus programs are not giving us full protection against hackers, such as the Chinese hackers who targeted Google recently. Take a look at this story from Prweb.com: "NSS Labs, Inc., the leading independent security testing organization, today announced the results of its evaluation of seven popular consumer endpoint security products in protecting the vulnerability exploited in the recent 'Operation Aurora' attack conducted against Google and at least 3...

  Just ran across this story about criminals replacing the credit card key pads at the cash registers at some Hancock Fabrics stores with fraudulent ones that stole pin numbers and other personal details of users. Here are some quotes from the Register:  "Crooks planted bogus payment card processing terminals at multiple locations operated by the Hancock Fabrics chain store that allowed for the theft of sensitive financial data from customers, the company warned. The personal identificatio...

Just was sent this article from cnet.com, hard to say if this was Microsoft's work or not, but appears to be counter-hacker hackers. Here is a quote: "The world's largest botnet, Zeus, has had its traffic disrupted by repeated disconnections of a Kazakhstani ISP, but a series of reconnections has revived its banking Trojan activity, according to security researchers. The botnet mainly pushes out the Zeus banking Trojan, an information-stealing keylogger that relays sensitive data back to its...

More news on the Google / China feud, here are some excerpts from ft.com: "Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now '99.9 per cent' certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking. In a hardening of positions on both sides, the Chinese government also on Friday threw down a direct public challenge to the US search company, ...

The Miami Herald just ran a story about the questionable use of a fund intended to support environmentally green activities that the Division Chief used for all manner of other things including sun glasses and GPS units. "Among Miami-Dade police, it was known simply as 'Vecin's trust fund.' That fund, earmarked to fight environmental crime with a $5 million infusion of public money over the past decade, is the focus of widening investigations into whether the bounty evolved into an unchecked...

I've obtained a copy of the temporary restraining order that Microsoft obtained to shut down the Waledac botnet (which I reported on earlier here). The temporary restraining order is viewable here. If there has been no further legal action, the temporary restraining order expired yesterday. I am working on obtaining access to the court file to confirm whether or not Microsoft has gotten an extension to the order or if there have been any changes, but the court file is behind the PACER paywall...

  Spanish authorities, with the help of private cyber security companies, have identified and arrested three individuals, whose online names are "jonyloleante," aged 30, "netkairo," 31, and "ostiator," 25. The three were identified as the ring-leaders of a massive botnet know as "mariposa." The network was started in 2008 and infected nearly 13 million computers. Over half the Fortune 1000 companies were infiltrated by the botnet, including over 40 major banks. The botnet was present in near...