The Last Watchdog

on Internet security by Byron Acohido

Imminent threats

How and why DDoS attacks continue to disrupt U.S. financial sector
April 26, 2013

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SEATTLE – The Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, campaigns that disrupted Charles Schwab & Co.’s consumer website on Tuesday and Wednesday appears to be part of the same campaign that commenced last fall to systematically harass U.S. financial institutions.

Schwab capers appear to …More

How the AP Twitter hack highlights pitfalls of social media
April 24, 2013

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SEATTLE – The hack of AP’s Twitter account amplified the power of a single Tweet, especially one the leverages the reputation of a trusted source to exploit society’s propensity to consider much of what moves on social media sites as gospel. It also highlighted how trivial it has become to leverage the Internet’s baked-in anonymity with malicious intent.

“The hack of AP’s twitter account was remarkable for the …More

Spammers exploit bombing video to infect PCs
April 17, 2013

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It should surprise no one that cybercriminals after fast cash today blasted out a wave of viral e-mail with subject lines related to the Boston Marathon bombings.

Messaging security firm AppRiver has been intercepting and blocking malicious e-mails with subject lines like “Video of Explosions at the Boston Marathon 2013″ and “Runner captures explosions at Boston Marathon.”

The messages contained only a link. Anyone enticed into clicking on the …More

Q&A: Why target attacks are hitting small businesses
April 16, 2013

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Cybercriminals are taking greater pains to infect the computers of certain employees at specific companies, and are increasingly targeting smaller organizations for sophisticated cyber espionage campaigns.

Those …More

Why faked IRS e-mail doesn’t have to clog the Internet
April 15, 2013

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SEATTLE — Part of the reason bogus IRS e-mail continues to swamp the Internet this time of year is because the agency has not yet adopted a year-old technical standard called DMARC, an acronym for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance.

DMARC standardizes how major …More

The upsides and security downsides of web apps
April 3, 2013

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Results a of a survey taken last month of nearly 300 global IT professionals and developers worldwide, conducted by mobile platform company Kaazing, found that web apps are red hot.

Some 86% respondents consider real-time web and data communication to be a priority for them in 2013, with 81% saying they will apply that priority to their mobile strategy.

Within the next 12 months respondents plan to enable two-way, …More

How infected PCs, web servers and DNS enable DDos attacks
March 29, 2013

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SEATTLE – A distributed denial-of-service, or DDos,  attack has long been a way to make a political statement or commit extortion against the owners and operators of a public-facing website.

Such an attack makes a website inaccessible to the intended users, usually by inundating the targeted websites with nuisance data exchanges.

That’s the simple explanation.

The DDos attacks that have recently disrupted South Korean media companies, SpamHaus, Wells Fargo …More

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