March 4, 2010 | 2 Comments
USA TODAY P. 1A 04Mar2010
SAN FRANCISCO — “Hey Alice, look at the pics I took of us last weekend at the picnic. Bob”
That Facebook message, sent last fall between co-workers at a large U.S. financial firm, rang true enough. Alice had, in fact, attended a picnic with Bob, who mentioned the outing on his …more
February 16, 2010 | Comment on this post
More bad buzz about Google Buzz seems certain to play out in coming weeks. That’s because privacy and security can’t be separated. And despite two rounds of privacy-setting revisions, the search giant’s new social network, in its current configuration, markedly lowers privacy and security.
Coming on the heels of Facebook’s controversial privacy-setting revamp, the launch of Buzz …more
February 5, 2010 | Comment on this post
Wanted: Inside sales rep to hawk online services to U.S. spy agencies.
Perks: Employer has search monopoly — and warm leads at top spy organizations.
That’s one takeaway of reports that Google has asked the secretive National Security Agency to help track down the cyberattackers who recently breached its network. More on this below.
Reporter Ellen Nakashima’s front …more
January 26, 2010 | Comment on this post
Talk has begun percolating that Google’s threat to pull out of China could precipitate a Cyber Cold War.
But while all the marbles seem to be rolling in the direction of castigating China, there is an equally plausible perpetrator: garden-variety, profit-motivated cyber thieves out to amass industrial secrets which they can sell to the highest bidder.
“It is certainly a possibility that someone is doing this …more
January 25, 2010 | Comment on this post
USA TODAY
25Jan2010
By Byron Acohido, Calum MacLeod and Kathy Chu
Original online posting here.
BEIJING — Zhang Nanting enjoys text messaging acquaintances while he’s at the Golden Fortune Internet café here. Lately, the 28-year-old insurance salesman has been meticulous about keeping his texts squeaky clean.
“I rarely send rude, short messages,” says Zhang, citing the government’s recent crackdown on pornographic texting. “I think it’s excessive management, …more
January 24, 2010 | Comment on this post
In this LastWatchdog guest blog post Phil Neray, vice president of database security vendor Guardium, which was acquired by IBM last November, focuses attention on SQL injection vulnerabilities and attacks — and why they remain a substantive threat.
by Phil Neray
VP of Security Strategy, Guardium, an IBM Company
We’ve recently seen a series of SQL injection cyber-attacks conducted by “gray-hats” — including the recent attack …more
January 19, 2010 | 1 Comment
The blowback from Google’s threat to leave China continues to escalate like a hyper-ventilated episode of Law & Order.
Microsoft has just announced that it will issue an emergency patch — something it rarely does – to staunch the Internet Explorer security hole implicated in recent data-stealing cyberattacks against Google, Adobe, Jupiter and dozens of other companies.
UPDATE: Microsoft has just announced that the patch will be …more
January 15, 2010 | 3 Comments
Google’s taking umbrage over Chinese cyberattacks has security experts talking about just how vast and rich the world of cyber espionage has quietly become.
“It isn’t just China,” says Matt Moynahan CEO of applications security firm Veracode. “They are the most aggressive. But all large governments are doing this, as are organized non-government actors.”
Indeed, China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Israel, France, the United States and the …more
January 11, 2010 | Comment on this post
A programmer who calls himself 09Droid has illuminated security concerns sure to come into sharper focus as the tech giants and the financial services industry make their move to extend Internet banking to mobile devices.
Antivirus supplier F-Secure says 09Droid offered more than 50 mobile banking applications for sale through the Android Marketplace. But Google on Monday pulled the apps. It seems several banks for whom 09Droid took …more
January 8, 2010 | 2 Comments
Email filtering company Red Condor has been intercepting an email phishing attack that’s spreading faked Outlook alerts at a phenomenal rate.
More on that below.
But first let’s take this to the 30,000 foot level. This Outlook ruse is most likely being conducted by attackers using a Do-It-Yourself malware kit that has amazing functionality, which anybody can buy right now for less than a grand.
Over the course of 2009, …more
