News

Hackers and cybercrime prevention

• March 30, 2012 30 Mar'12

  SIEM deployment case study shows patience is required

  Williams Lea’s SIEM is already helping reduce manual log reviews. But there’s still a lot of work to be done before the SIEM can be fully deployed.

• March 19, 2012 19 Mar'12

  Study: Shnakule, four other malnets caused most 2011 attacks

  Huge global malnets, such as Shnakule, were responsible for most attacks in 2011, and Blue Coat predicts they will trigger 66% of all attacks in 2012.

• March 19, 2012 19 Mar'12

  UK hacktivist cases should spur business to action, says lawyer

  The last of four alleged UK members of hacktivist group LulzSec has appeared in Westminster magistrates court in London

• March 16, 2012 16 Mar'12

  SourceForge takes down Anonymous operating system

  The open-source collaboration website SourceForge has taken down an Ubuntu Linux OS project purportedly affiliated with online hactivist group Anonymous, after a review by security experts

• March 15, 2012 15 Mar'12

  BBC cyber attacks highlight difficulty of attribution

  The BBC has said it is was targeted by cyber attacks following a campaign by Iran against its Persian service, but stopped short of accusing Tehran of ordering the cyber attacks

• March 13, 2012 13 Mar'12

  Hackers expose weak security on Digital Playground porn site

  A hacking group claims to have stolen the details of more than 70,000 users of the Digital Playground porn site

• March 07, 2012 07 Mar'12

  FBI informer Hector Xavier Monsegur aids in arrest of LulzSec hackers

  Authorities in the US, UK and Republic of Ireland have arrested seven suspected members of hacktivist group LulzSec, including Hector Xavier Monsegur, who helped investigators

• March 01, 2012 01 Mar'12

  RSA 2012: IT security experts urge enterprises to ban smartphone BYOD schemes

  Enterprises should ban employees from using their own smartphones for work, a panel of IT security practitioners told the RSA Conference 2012

• February 29, 2012 29 Feb'12

  IT departments risk losing responsibility for IT security

  IT security professionals can no longer take it for granted that IT security will continue as part of the IT function

• February 23, 2012 23 Feb'12

  OSSIM update enables cyber threat intelligence sharing

  The latest update to the Open Source Security Information Management (OSSIM) base system includes a mechanism for sharing cyber threat intelligence.

• February 17, 2012 17 Feb'12

  UK regulator PhonepayPlus fines Dutch typosquatting companies

  UK phone regulator PhonepayPlus fines two Dutch firms £100,000 for exploiting well-known websites Wikipedia, Twitter and YouTube

• February 14, 2012 14 Feb'12

  President of European Parliament critical of Acta

  After a weekend of public protests against the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Agreement (Acta), the president of the European Parliament has added his voice to those of critcs.

• February 13, 2012 13 Feb'12

  IE update top priority for Patch Tuesday

  Microsoft releases nine bulletins addressing 21 vulnerabilities in its monthly Patch Tuesday security update on 14 February

• February 07, 2012 07 Feb'12

  UK to take part in weekend protests against Acta

  Protests against the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Agreement (Acta) have been organised across Europe, with most set to take place on 11 February.

• February 06, 2012 06 Feb'12

  FBI investigates Anonymous intercept of call with Scotland Yard

  The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is looking into how a conference call with Scotland Yard was intercepted by a member of the activist hacking group Anonymous.

• February 01, 2012 01 Feb'12

  Fewer than a third of UK organisations plan mobile security projects

  Despite the media hype around the adoption of mobile technologies and the need to secure them, relatively few UK organisations are planning mobile security projects, a survey has revealed

• January 16, 2012 16 Jan'12

  Google mortified after staff access competitor's database

  Google said it is mortified after people working on a project in Kenya were found to have stolen the details of a competitor’s customers and used them to sell its own products.

• January 16, 2012 16 Jan'12

  Rupert Murdoch attacks Barack Obama over online piracy legislation

  News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch has accused Barack Obama's administration of siding with "Silicon Valley paymasters" as two anti-piracy bills go through US Congress.

• January 06, 2012 06 Jan'12

  Ramnit worm steals 45,000 Facebook passwords

  A computer worm has begun targeting Facebook accounts and has stolen at least 45,000 login credentials from users, say security researchers.

• January 03, 2012 03 Jan'12

  Hacktivists plan to use satellites to by-pass internet censorship

  Hacker activists plan to launch communication satellites to overcome the threat of internet censorship.

• December 29, 2011 29 Dec'11

  Is it the end of the line for antivirus signatures?

  Traditional antimalware can't keep up with the threat landscape. Are antivirus signatures destined for the rubbish bin?

• December 29, 2011 29 Dec'11

  Emerging 2012 security trends demand information security policy changes

  2012 security trends involving cookies, fines, devices and threats will demand more skills -- and a little finesse -- from security professionals.

• December 12, 2011 12 Dec'11

  Cloud leaves many firewalls wanting – but could automation prove the silver bullet?

  Most companies rely on firewalls, but the IT landscape is changing and so must approaches to security. Is there a silver bullet?

• December 08, 2011 08 Dec'11

  Adobe to release out-of-cycle patch for latest vulnerability

  Adobe has issued a security advisory about a newly discovered and still unpatched vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat which is being used in "limited, targeted attacks in the wild".

• December 05, 2011 05 Dec'11

  One in four IT security staff abuse admin rights, survey shows

  At least one in four IT security staff use their privileged login rights to look at confidential information, a survey has revealed.

• November 30, 2011 30 Nov'11

  United Nations Development Programme investigates hacking claims

  The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is investigating claims from hacker group Team Poison that it extracted over 100 e-mail addresses and login details belonging to UN staff.

• November 17, 2011 17 Nov'11

  Forensics key to effective info security, says E&Y

  Intelligence-led security strategies are the most effective in eliminating vulnerabilities and preventing IP theft through enabling informed change, says consultancy firm Ernst & Young.

• November 17, 2011 17 Nov'11

  IT security not always part of cloud decision, says IDC

  Cloud adoption is outstripping security concerns, says Eric Domage, programme manager for IDC in Europe.

• November 11, 2011 11 Nov'11

  EDF fined £1.3m for hacking into Greenpeace computers

  A Paris court has fined French energy firm EDF £1.3m for hacking into Greenpeace computers to find out about the environmental group’s plans to block four planned nuclear power plants in the UK.

• November 07, 2011 07 Nov'11

  Analysis: Intelligence key to security business case

  Information security is becoming an increasingly important part of any business as the value of information assets continually grow, as do the threats from cyber crime and espionage.

• November 03, 2011 03 Nov'11

  US and EU hold first joint cybersecurity exercise

  The US and EU are holding their first joint cybersecurity exercise in Brussels on 3 November 2011, involving more than 20 EU member states and supported by the EU's cybersecurity agency Enisa and the US Department of Homeland Security.

• November 01, 2011 01 Nov'11

  MoD calls on academics, industry and inventors to pitch cyber security ideas

  The Ministry of Defence is calling for innovative solutions from academia and industry to protect and secure UK interests in cyberspace.

• November 01, 2011 01 Nov'11

  Hague calls for collaboration to realise full potential of cyberspace

  It is increasingly clear that countries with weak cyber defences and capabilities will find themselves at a serious strategic disadvantage given the rise of state-sponsored cyber attacks, according to foreign secretary William Hague.

• October 31, 2011 31 Oct'11

  Japan may be facing sustained cyber attack

  Japan's mapping agency is the latest in a series of government agencies to be targeted by hackers, raising fears that the breaches are part of a series of sustained attacks.

• October 31, 2011 31 Oct'11

  Facebook admits to 600,000 cyber attacks a day

  Facebook has revealed that every 24 hours it receives around 600,000 logins to the social networking website from impostors attempting to access users' messages, photos and other personal information.

• October 28, 2011 28 Oct'11

  UK security strategy draws on growing expertise across Whitehall

  The UK's soon-to-be-released cyber security strategy includes input from policy makers across government, says Nigel Harrison of the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance (OCSIA).

• October 12, 2011 12 Oct'11

  New batch of IDS, IPS evasion techniques are hitting their targets

  Stonesoft has discovered 163 new advanced evasion techniques (AET), claiming these AETs can pass below the radar of some IDS, IPS products.

• October 07, 2011 07 Oct'11

  Computer Weekly wins prestigious journalism award

  Computer Weekly has won a prestigious award for its journalism. Freelance contributor and Computer Weekly blogger Mark Ballard won the Best Cybercrime Feature of the Year prize at this year's BT Information Security Journalism Awards. ...

• October 06, 2011 06 Oct'11

  UBS systems detected $2bn rogue trader fraud, admits CEO Sergio Ermotti

  UBS interim CEO Sergio Ermotti has admitted systems in the banks IT infrastructure detected the unauthorised trading of the rogue trader who cost UBS over $2bn, but nothing was done about the warning signals.

• October 04, 2011 04 Oct'11

  GPU cracks six-character password in four seconds

  A £30 nVidia GeForce GT220 graphics card is capable of cracking strong passwords in a matter of hours.

• September 22, 2011 22 Sep'11

  Researchers claim to have broken SSL/TLS encryption

  Two security researchers claim to have found a way of breaking the SSL/TLS encryption that is widely used to guarantee the reliability and privacy of data exchanged between web browsers and servers.

• September 07, 2011 07 Sep'11

  DigiNotar certificate authority breach: Why it matters

  There has been much speculation around the identity and motive of the hacker who was able to breach DigiNotar and issue fraudulent digital certificates for hundreds of websites, but putting such speculation aside, what is the broader significance of...

• August 17, 2011 17 Aug'11

  UK business should educate internally to get the right IT security skills at lower cost

  UK businesses should look to internal training to meet future IT security needs rather than paying high prices by competing to recruit scarce skills externally, warn experts.

• August 09, 2011 09 Aug'11

  Ten-year-old hacker exposes exploitable flaws in Apple and Android games

  A 10-year-old Californian hacker has exposed a new type of security vulnerability in many mobile games at a hacker conference in Las Vegas.

• August 09, 2011 09 Aug'11

  Blackberry to co-operate with police after youths used BBM to organise riots

  Research in Motion has said that it will co-operate with the police after it was revealed that London rioters used Blackberry Messenger rather than Twitter to organise looting sprees across the capital, with violence later spreading to Birmingham, ...

• July 25, 2011 25 Jul'11

  Automated web application attacks are the top security threat, study reveals

  Websites are attacked about 27 times an hour or once every two minutes on average, peaking at 25,000 attacks a minute or seven a second, according to research...

• July 21, 2011 21 Jul'11

  Hacking group Anonymous claims to have hacked into NATO servers and stolen data

  Hacking group Anonymous has claimed to have hacked into NATO servers, according to the Blottr.com news service.

• July 19, 2011 19 Jul'11

  Microsoft offers bounty in hunt for Rustock spambot operators

  A $250,000 reward is being offered to anyone who provides new information that results in the identification, arrest and criminal conviction of the cybercriminals behind the Rustock botnet.

• July 11, 2011 11 Jul'11

  Microsoft packs a lot into July’s four Patch Tuesday security updates

  Microsoft is to release only four security updates in this month's Patch Tuesday security update, but these will cover 22 vulnerabilities in Windows and Office.

• July 01, 2011 01 Jul'11

  Cyber criminals deploy TDL-4 virus to create indestructible botnet of 4.5m computers

  Over 4.5 million computers around the world have been infected by the TDL-4 virus, creating an indestructible botnet.