Blog posts with "computer security"

In a report that surfaced today, members of the Anonymous collective report to have obtained information regarding surveillance efforts by Bank of America against activists. Sources report that activists of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Anonymous collective, and other private citizens were targeted by efforts of Bank of America and at least one other IT contractor by the name of TEKSystems. One of the most interesting details of this story is that no servers were hacked to obtain this ...

A new and devious spin on an old con was recently uncovered by Israeli security firm Trusteer, makers of the Rapport financial anti-malware package. The con involves using a Trojan horse (such as SpyEye, Zeus, or Carberp) to take control of the victim’s computer in order to discover financial information and login credentials. This basic maneuver has been used for years by hackers to steal money from victims’ accounts, but this new tactic substantially delays the discovery of the fraud, ...

  "Preemptive counterattack" is taking on a whole new meaning. Though the US military has long maintained a policy of securing its networks and reserving a right to attack those who attack its networks, the issues of going on the offensive is now being discussed. This is not a new issue, but it has come to light recently due to increasing attacks on US networks and changes in the legal and political spheres. Critics are already pointing to the fact that these types of attacks often cause uni...

In an interesting New York Times article, the author examines the basic functions of Russian cyber criminal networks and why they often go unpunished. Here are a few quotes:  Law enforcement groups in Russia have been reluctant to pursue these talented authors of Internet fraud, for reasons, security experts say, of incompetence, corruption or national pride. Underscoring the nationalistic tone of much of Russian computer crime, one site [hacker site that exchanged credit card numbers to ai...

  In an order published this morning, available by clicking on the title of this post or the link posted at the end, the D.C. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lacked the power to mandate Comcast's network management practices, including the FCC's prohibition against Comcast's throttling of BitTorent traffic. The thirty-six page opinion was authored by Judge David S. Tatel who was joined by Judge A. Raymond Randolph and Chief Judge David B...

In a great article by Ben Bain at GCN, he stresses the need for an improved educational system to better prepare students for future cyber-security threats. Here is the article: "Strengthening education in science, technology, engineering and math is crucial to U.S. cybersecurity efforts, a senior Homeland Security Department official said today. Richard Marshall, director of global cybersecurity management in the Homeland Security Department’s National Cybersecurity Division, said improvi...

  The day after Google removed from China to Hong Kong, we already have confirmation that Hong Kong will not assist China in censoring Google's search results, even though the results will be available to Chinese users. Here is a synopsis from BusinessWeek:  "Hong Kong says it won’t help China censor Google Inc., after the search engine provider said it would route mainland users through its site in the city. Hong Kong respects freedom of information and its free flow, a spokesman for th...

Well Google is leaving China, sort of. Here's the story from Mercury News: "Google Inc. will shift its search engine for China off the mainland but won't shut it down altogether, and it will maintain other operations in the country. It's an attempt to balance its stance against censorship with its desire to profit from an explosively growing Internet market. On Monday afternoon, visitors to Google.cn were being redirected to Google's Chinese-language service based in Hong Kong. The page said...

In an interesting development to the Mariposa Botnet take-down I reported earlier on, a large batch of cell-phones were apparently shipped by Vodafone containing the trojan powering the Mariposa Botnet. Here is the story from the Register: "Vodafone Spain has accepted that 3,000 customers were potentially exposed to malware after Mariposa botnet agents strayed onto the HTC Magic smartphone. The admission to Spanish media on Thursday follows a meeting between the mobile phone giant's Iberian...

They may have been 99.9% certain they were going to pull out of China before, but now a date has been set for Google to leave China, at least according to one insider. This escalation has been in the works for the past few months (see my stories here, here, and here). The insider claims April 10th will be the day. Read this excerpt from CNET: "Google is expected to announce on Monday that it will withdraw from China on April 10, according to a report in a Beijing-based newspaper that cited ...