Month: July 2010

Details from 100 million Facebook profiles posted online Why it happened? 1.  The user did not lock/secure their info? Maybe. 2.  The user really allow sharing their info? Possible since it’s called sharing and they want it shared. Their choice. 3.  They know what is FB for and they know the catch? Maybe or No.  You know… not every user reads privacy agreements/terms/policies.  What’s the catch? Data mining.  Profilers/Scammers/Thieves has easy targets.  Yours is theirs.  Theirs is theirs.

From MSRC: Today we’re announcing plans to release a security update to address the vulnerability discussed in Security Advisory 2286198 on Monday, August 2, 2010 at or around 10 AM PDT. We are releasing the bulletin as we’ve completed the required testing and the update has achieved the appropriate quality bar for broad distribution to customers. Additionally, we’re able to confirm that, in the past few days, we’ve seen an increase in attempts to exploit the vulnerability. We firmly believe that releasing the update out of band is the best thing to do to help protect our customers. Our colleagues … Continue reading Microsoft to release Security Update on August 2 to address vulnerability in Windows Shell

Virus writers and botmasters increasingly are turning to new subscription services that test when and whether malicious links have been flagged by Web reputation programs like Google Safe Browsing and McAfee SiteAdvisor. Nothing puts a crimp in the traffic to booby-trapped Web sites like being listed on multiple Internet reputation services that collect and publish information on the location of nasty Web sites. People who maintain the bad sites can stay ahead of such services by moving their malware to new domains once the present hosts start showing up on too many blacklists. But constantly checking these lists can be … Continue reading Services Let Malware Purveyors Check Their Web Reputation

The free tool prevents malware that exploits Microsoft’s shortcut vulnerability from executing and also displays Windows icons correctly The German security company G Data released a tool on Tuesday that blocks attacks using Microsoft’s shortcut vulnerability but also preserves shortcut icons unlike the hotfix released recently by Microsoft. The tool, called the G Data LNK Checker, is a small piece of software that is independent of other security software. It monitors the creation of shortcuts and then will block the execution of code when a shortcut icon is displayed, according to G Data. The tool is free and can be … Continue reading G Data releases tool to block Windows shortcut attacks (G Data LNK Checker)

Guest editorial by Michal Zalewski at ZDNet’s Zero Day Blog: When explaining why it is not possible to meet a particular vulnerability response deadline, most software vendors inevitably fall back to a very simple and compelling argument: testing takes time. For what it’s worth, I have dealt with a fair number of vulnerabilities on both sides of the fence — and I tend to be skeptical of such claims: while exceptions do happen, many of the disappointing response times appeared to stem from trouble allocating resources to identify and fix the problem, and had very little to do with testing … Continue reading Indefinite vulnerability secrecy hurts us all

Sophos engineers have been busy developing and testing a free tool that protects users from malware exploiting the critical zero-day vulnerability known as the "Shortcut exploit". We have begun to see more hackers taking advantage of the exploit, spreading malware which takes advantage of Microsoft’s unpatched vulnerability. Sophos has been doing a good job of protecting its customers against this problem (we detect exploited files as Exp/Cplink). But what if you’re not a Sophos user and are worried about the attacks? Here are the details in a nutshell: 1. It intercepts LNK shortcut files that contain the exploit, telling you … Continue reading Shortcut exploit: protect against it with this free tool

Internet service provider TalkTalk has been monitoring its customers’ online activity, as it trials a new anti-malware system Broadband provider TalkTalk has been caught monitoring and recording its customers’ online activity without their consent. The situation first came to light when a TalkTalk customer noticed two “guest” IP addresses appearing in his web server logs, and brought the issue up on the ISPs discussion forum. Several other users discovered they were being tracked by the same IPs, prompting a fierce privacy debate among TalkTalk customers. TalkTalk has since admitted to the monitoring, but claims it was a necessary part of … Continue reading TalkTalk Snoops On Customers’ Web Activity

Version 3.6.8 of Firefox browser has been released.  What’s New in Firefox 3.6.8 Firefox 3.6.8 fixes the following issues found in previous versions of Firefox 3.6 This release fixes a stability problem that affected some pages with embedded plugins.

Hundreds of people in the information security, military and intelligence fields recently found themselves with egg on their faces after sharing personal information with a fictitious Navy cyberthreat analyst named "Robin Sage," whose profile on prominent social networking sites was created by a security researcher to illustrate the risks of social networking. In a conversation with Computerworld, Thomas Ryan, co-founder of Provide Security, said he used a few photos to portray the fictional Sage on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as an attractive, somewhat flirty cybergeek, with degrees from MIT and a prestigious prep school in New Hampshire. Then he established … Continue reading Fake femme fatale shows social network risks

‘Hole 196’ means malicious insiders could spoof WI-Fi packets, compromise WLAN Perhaps it was only a matter of time. But wireless security researchers say they have uncovered a vulnerability in the WPA2 security protocol, which is the strongest form of Wi-Fi encryption and authentication currently standardized and available. Malicious insiders can exploit the vulnerability, named "Hole 196" by the researcher who discovered it at wireless security company AirTight Networks. The moniker refers to the page of the IEEE 802.11 Standard (Revision, 2007) on which the vulnerability is buried. Hole 196 lends itself to man-in-the-middle-style exploits, whereby an internal, authorized Wi-Fi … Continue reading WPA2 vulnerability found