IT careers: Retire? How about never? Posted by l33tdawg on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 12:00 AM (Reads: 215)

Source: Computer World For as long as he could remember, Ben Richardson had big plans for an early retirement. Passionate about computers, but anxious to leave the confines of a desk job, Richardson, a technical adviser in database services for CVS/Caremark, had prepped for a host of post-tech alternatives even as he met the demands of his IT career. He took classes and labored on business plans, dreaming of the time when he would be able to retire from IT and pursue his love of what he calls "blue-collar hobbies." He thought he might teach school, start an HVAC business or even get into general contracting and welding. "I wanted to spend more time outside and get healthy," Richardson explains. "Sitting in a chair for 30 years takes its toll."

Hackers find a home in Amazon's EC2 cloud Posted by l33tdawg on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 12:00 AM (Reads: 211) Source: Computer World Security researchers have spotted the Zeus botnet running an unauthorized command and control center on Amazon's EC2 cloud computing infrastructure. This marks the first time Amazon Web Services' cloud infrastructure has been used for this type of illegal activity, according to Don DeBolt, director of threat research with HCL Technologies, a contractor that does security research for CA. The hackers didn't do this with Amazon's permission, however. They got onto Amazon's infrastructure by first hacking into a Web site that was hosted on Amazon's servers and then secretly installing their command and control infrastructure. DeBolt declined to say whose Web site was hacked to get onto Amazon's cloud, but the Zeus software has now been removed, he said. Zeus is a password-stealing botnet. Variants of this malware have been linked to more than US$100 million in bank fraud in the past year.

Facebook users unwittingly spread Koobface worm Posted by l33tdawg on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 03:54 AM (Reads: 237)

Source: USA Today Facebook users are being targeted by a nasty new version of the Koobface worm -- dubbed Koobface.GK -- that compels its victims to manually participate in creating a new Facebook account to help spread the worm. The attackers are posting malicious links on Facebook wall pages enticing folks to click on a cutesy Christmas video. Attempts to play the video turns over control of the PC to the attacker, says PandaLabs researcher Sean-Paul Correll. The victim next sees a Windows warning message requiring them to solve a CAPTCHA puzzle within three minutes. A timer ticks down. If the puzzle goes unsolved after three minutes, the PC freezes up. Rebooting won't help. The CAPTCHA puzzle will reappear. The only way to end the loop is to solve the CAPTCHA. The victim can then use his or her machine as normal. But the attacker still has control.

10 Email Security Lessons To Be Learned From Climategate Posted by l33tdawg on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 03:59 AM (Reads: 266)

Source: eWeek (Europe) As the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference, or COP 15, in Copenhagen, Denmark, gets under way this week, the summit has been muddied a bit by the details found in scientists' stolen emails. The emails contain information that has given those who believe global warming concerns are overblown a new lease on life. They are now supporting their opinions with those details. And all the while, the heated debate over global warming is becoming even more divided. But there are valuable lessons to be learned from the stolen emails. No, this won't be a discussion on global warming or climate change – that’s a debate for another day in another place. It will be a discussion on what can be learned from this incident to ensure that employees or consumers with sensitive information in their email won't fall victim to those planning to steal information. That said, it's important to note that no security plan will be absolutely effective. Sometimes, data is stolen. But the fact that scientists themselves didn't have proper security conditions in place to safeguard their email points to a dangerous trend: We just don't secure our email as well as we should. So let's take a look at some of the lessons learned from the stolen data and how we can protect our own email going forward.

Top 15 most common attacks in IT security Posted by l33tdawg on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 03:59 AM (Reads: 439)

Source: SC Magazine (UK) The 15 most common attacks in 2009 have been detailed by Verizon Business. In its ‘An Anatomy of a Data Breach' report, its authors have tapped the company's detailed investigative records to identify, rank and profile the most common attacks. In total, the report details nearly 150 ways to detect and combat security threats. It listed the top five most common security attacks as: keylogging and spyware; backdoor or command/control; SQL injection; abuse of system access/privileges; and unauthorised access via default credentials.

dont get a virus the suck

China warns of a new virus
Posted by l33tdawg on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - 12:00 AM (Reads: 199)
Source: The Inquirer

A PARTICULARLY NASTY computer virus has been discovered in China and the government there is warning that it could spread fast.

Although details of the Worm_Piloyd.B are fairly sketchy at the moment, it is unusual to get a virus warning from China before the rest of the world has caught it.

Surprisingly there have been no traditional messages of doom from the computer insecurity companies in Europe and the US, which normally are quick to play up the four horsemen of the apocalypse scenario about malware. The virus infects exe, html and asp files and if the user tries to restore the files they are blocked from doing so. Notification has come from the Tianjin-based National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre.

New Viruses

Text Here