Security

It's not unusual these days for the computer systems of major banks to come under attack. But the latest high-profile attempted breach has gone a step further by targeting the International Monetary Fund (IMF), prompting speculation that a national ... government may be the offender. The Washington DC-based IMF is an organization that provides loans to governments in financial difficulties. It also helps coordinate the collection and publication of financial data by governments. Although the International Monetary Fund is releasing few details, it has confirmed there has been a "very major breach ... (view more)

The Pentagon has announced plans to issue a new strategy that would correlate computer attacks from a foreign nation to that of an act of war. In the event that a critical American computer system was ever compromised, the US President would reserve ... the right to consider a variety of responses, including retaliatory cyber-attacks, economic sanctions, and even a military strike. Defining a Major Computer Attack Naturally, a simple remote attack orchestrated by a single, independent hacker would not constitute a military response. However, a computer attack that could potentially result in ... (view more)

The United States government has offered help after defense contractor Lockheed-Martin suffered a "tenacious" cyber-attack. It appears to be linked to problems with a system used for authorizing access from external locations. Lockheed-Martin, which ... is the leading supplier of IT services to the government, says the attack was the latest in a line of frequent attempts to breach its security, which certainly makes sense given the confidential nature of some of the material it handles. But it has described the latest attack as "significant." As a result, the company has reset all user passwords ... (view more)

There's a new malware attack on Facebook and it's significant for multiple reasons. This attack in particular spreads through bogus links, and it appears to change form in line with news events. While there have been several similar scams in the ... past, they've usually involved tricking users into handing over personal data or outright hijacking accounts. Malicious Drive-by Downloads Initiated on Click The new Facebook attacks tricks users into clicking on a link to a supposed online video. Once the link has been clicked, a Trojan virus is automatically downloaded to the users' computer without ... (view more)

Australian police services are today sending out a warning to all Twitter and Facebook users. It seems that online scumbags are targeting social networks, using a local hot topic of debate in order to solicit a curious click, which in turn infects ... PCs with a nasty virus and an even nastier payload. The debate is in regard to a new mass-transit ticketing system that is currently under development in Australia. Users are lead to a fake survey page, where then infects PCs with a Trojan virus. Once infected, the virus automatically downloads and stores highly illegal and distasteful images of ... (view more)

A security firm reports that hackers have intercepted email messages from Hotmail user accounts after manipulating a bug found deeply rooted within Microsoft's website. While security officials admitted that victims needed to be logged into Hotmail ... for the attack to work, the virus was also found to affect those that had previewed the message for a short period of time before logging out. Attack Source: Cross-Site Scripting Flaw (XSS) The source of the attack was revealed to be a common web programming error called a cross-site scripting flaw . As security firm Trend Micro explained in a ... (view more)

Website LinkedIn.com has received some tough criticism as of late, after one security researcher revealed that the cookies used on the website leaves user accounts open to an online attack. In a recent blog, independent researcher Rishi Narang ... warned members of the business-oriented social network that the cookies found on the site may continue to remain active for up to one year. Extended Expiry Time Aids Hackers Once a user completes their login procedures, LinkedIn creates a file on their computer which the site uses for quicker access later on (similar to the cookies found on many other ... (view more)

German security technologies company Sirrix AG has recently released what some critics are calling the most secure web browser in existence: a sandboxed version of Mozilla firefox, known as BitBox. What makes this variation of Firefox most ... intriguing is that the web browser runs completely independent of Microsoft Windows. The program uses VirtualBox 4.04 (a software virtualization program by Sun Microsystems) and a securely locked-down ("hardened") implementation of Debian 6 Linux. The web browser (Firefox 4) then runs in a virtual machine with its own operating system (Debian 6 ... (view more)

A company that rents both furniture and PCs has been accused of spying on its customers. A lawsuit alleges Aaron's Inc remotely accessed a spy camera on a PC to take a shot of a customer using it. No Disclosure of Spy Software The claims arose in a ... case involving a customer who had taken a computer from Aaron's Inc on a rent-to-own agreement. That allows a customer to pay a monthly fee for a set period: after this period they own it outright, but before then they can also simply return it and stop paying. In the case of customer Brian Byrd, Aaron's believed he had stopped paying (which ... (view more)

Microsoft has revealed that the infection rate for Windows 7 computers has increased. But the Windows 7 operating system still remains considerably more secure than its predecessors. The most talked-about figure in the newly-published statistics is ... a 33 per cent hike in the proportion of Windows 7 computers suffering from a malware infection. That's a potentially misleading oversimplification, though. The actual rate increased during 2010 from three PCs per thousand to four per thousand, figures that could easily be distorted by rounding errors. Windows XP Still Riskiest for Malware ... (view more)