Security
Thursday, August 7th, 2008 |
Social networking has traveled a long way to reach the present stage but nobody could have ever thought that it will come along with a clever & unfriendly tag of social engineering.
Myspace, orkut & facebook are the sites who initially brought up the idea of social networking into limelight,which later on grew & is still, growing continuously with the increasing participation of more & more new agencies who are trying to build their web presence through this solid & revolutionary media of global communication.
But the pity is that such sites are becoming regular victims of Black-hat coders & hackers who unfortunately, are sometimes more clever than the big brains working behind internet security agencies.
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Thursday, June 14th, 2007 |
FBI have disclosed on Wednesday that an ongoing cybercrime initiative, called Operation Bot Roast, has identified more than a million PCs infected with bot software and that has resulted into charges against three people for violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The U.S. Department of Justice, along with its partners at the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University and the Botnet Task Force, aim to disrupt the operations of bot masters, or bot herders, that compromise their victims machines to use for sending spam or attacking other computers. As per the report at securityfocus.
These cases under Operation Bot Roast. The FBI’s Chicago office charged James C. Brewer of Arlington, Texas, on Wednesday with allegedly operating a bot net that infected Chicago-area hospitals.
Agents in Detroit investigated and charged Jason M. Downey of Covington, Kentucky, with allegedly using bot-infected machines to level a denial-of-service attack against specific targets. The FBI’s Seattle office charged Robert A. Soloway with using a botnet to spam tens of millions of unsolicited e-mail messages.
The FBI referred citizens that may be concerned about their computer’s security to the Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Posted in Internet, Security | No Comments »
Friday, June 1st, 2007 |
One of the Apple’s new patent involves the detection of wireless interference on a handheld device. According to the application, accessories can effect wireless signal of a device, particularly if the accessories are placed near the antenna or are of the unapproved aftermarket variety.
Actually this patent makes no direct reference to the iPhone and may not have been incorporated into the product shipping in late June, the patent is specifically meant to address concerns regarding cellphones with media abilities as well as more generic wireless mobile devices, ensuring that Apple can use the patent both for the iPhone as well as other hardware types in the near future as reported on Electronista.
This interference isn’t a good thing if you want a strong signal (or any signal in some cases) while using an accessory, so Apple with this patent is implying that your accessory might be harmful to the signal of the main device.
The warning would occur by way of a detector chip that is attached to the connector, which would be able to recognize types of accessories.
It would let you know with either a message or some type of audio tone that your accessories might cause problems. Despite of the fact if a particular accessory isn’t on the list, your handheld could still let you know that it might be harmful to your signal.
Posted in Mobile, Security | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 |
Cisco Systems may take over another video surveillance vendor BroadWare. BroadWare develops and distributes video surveillance systems that run over standard IP networks for government organisations and private companies. The camera networks can be accessed and managed over the web.
BroadWare represents Cisco’s second purchase of a video surveillance vendor in as many years. Last year the company purchased SyPixx which made software for viewing analogue surveillance video over IP.
Such purchases by cisco are in a direction to create combined packages, that will allow it to offer security products for analogue and digital surveillance systems.
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Monday, March 19th, 2007 |
Two unknown hackers have announced a plan last week to make April a month of daily MySpace vulnerability disclosure. They use the online names as “Mondo Armando” and “Müstaschio” have announced a plan to release daily flaws in MySpace’s online social networking software on their Web site, while poking fun at the whole Month of Bugs phenomenon. Calling the effort MOMBY for “Month of MySpace Bugs, Yuss,” the two hackers stated that the effort is less motivated by security concerns and more designed to head off thoughts of any future Month of Bugs projects.As reported on securityfocus.com If it ends up being just as lame as the Month of Apple Bugs, then we haven’t really missed the mark,” wrote “Mondo Armando” on the site. “If it’s funnier, then great. If it kills this Month of Whatever fad, then hurray for everyone, it’s over.
The effort, if indeed it happens, will be the fifth Month of Bugs in the last year. In July, security researcher HD Moore started the trend with a Month of Browser Bugs, in November came the Month of Kernel Bugs, followed by the Month of Apple Bugs in January and the Month of PHP Bugs in March.
Posted in Blogging, Internet, Security | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 |
This update is for the commanly used media software comes a week after a security researcher took Apple to task for its handling of security flaws. Last month reported by secuirty focus, two researchers also targeted Apple with a month dedicated to disclosing bugs in the company’s products on a daily basis. The Month of Apple Bugs reported a number of QuickTime issues.
Apple has released an update on last Monday for QuickTime that patches eight flaws in the Windows version of the program, including seven flaws that also affect QuickTime for the Mac OS X. The security vulnerabilities existed on the program that handles a variety of different media formats, including movie files, third-generation partnership project (3GPP) files, QuickTime image files (QTIF), and Picture (PICT) files. Exploiting any of the eight flaws could allow an attacker to run code on the target’s PC or Mac, the company stated in the advisory. Media files have increasingly become a vector for attacks.
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Posted in Apple, Internet, Security | No Comments »
Friday, January 19th, 2007 |
MySpace has announced on Wednesday that they are developing a parent notification tool and age verification software. The software, codenamed Zephyr, will be a desktop application.
The current MySpace age verification software online does not allow children under the age of 14 to gain access to register for an account, it is unknown on how it works
There have been a number of reported cases of minors who have been violated, removed from their underage MySpace accounts, and MySpace along with parent company News Corp intend to stamp out the chances of minors gaining access to the site and so they will improve this facet so that minors are not harmed from their service.
Posted in Blogging, Internet, Security, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Thursday, December 28th, 2006 |
The copy protection seems to be ruined on the latest Blu-Ray and HD DVD technology has been broken, according to a code writer’s post at the Doom9 video enthusiast forums.
Someone on this forum has claimed to have written software, named BackupHDDVD, that bypasses the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) protection found on the new storage formats and allows users to copy data from the otherwise restricted discs to a PC.
Maybe this news is still in its rough form and maybe it is just limited to a handful of HD DVD titles, the program appears to confirm early fears that AACS is too similar to CSS, the encryption scheme used by standard DVDs and famously bypassed by Jon Lech Johansen in 2002.
If validated, this could force a radical revision of copy protection on future discs.
Posted in Computers, Hacking, Hardware, Security, Software | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 27th, 2006 |
Just after a month that the Windows Vista operating system shipped to businesses, Microsoft has confirmed that a flaw in the software appears to allow attackers to mount a privilege escalation attack.
This flaw is labelled a double-free vulnerability caused by the way the Windows operating system handles error messages to be displayed. The vulnerability in the Client Server Run-Time Subsystem affects Windows 2000 SP4, Windows Server 2003 SP1, Windows XP SP1, Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista, according to Microsoft. (more…)
Posted in Microsoft, Security, Software | No Comments »
Thursday, December 21st, 2006 |
Skype has revealed that it will be including an innovative and optional lie detector feature to its popular internet telephony service.
It is termed ‘KishKish’, this software attempts to figure out whether the caller is telling a Lie by analysing the audio stream and checking for voice stress levels.
Lying causes a ‘fight or flight’ response in humans, which makes mouth muscles tense up, which alters the pitch and tone of the voice. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Security, Software, VoIP | No Comments »
