News

Hackers and cybercrime prevention

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.
June 17, 2011 17 Jun'11
Chinese software flaw makes infrastructure vulnerable, warns report

China's public infrastructure is vulnerable to cyber attack because of vulnerabilities in software used to run weapons systems, utilities and chemical plants, according to Reuters.
June 07, 2011 07 Jun'11
Adobe patches Flash to fix zero-day XSS vulnerability

‘Important’ cross-site scripting vulnerability in Flash Player on all platforms mitigated to combat zero-day attacks in the wild.
June 03, 2011 03 Jun'11
Hacker group Anonymous steals 10,000 Iranian government e-mails

Hacking group Anonymous has hacked into Iranian government servers and stolen more than 10,000 e-mail messages from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, say US reports.
June 02, 2011 02 Jun'11
E-mail accounts of senior US officials targeted in Chinese hack attack

Chinese hackers have accessed the accounts of hundreds of Gmail users, including senior US officials, Chinese political activists, military personnel, journalists and officials in several Asian countries, Google has said.
May 17, 2011 17 May'11
Government vigilance steps up after George Osborne reveals extent of cyber attacks

Security experts have called for UK government departments to be vigilant after chancellor George Osborne revealed that 20,000 e-mails are sent by hostile intelligence agencies to the UK government each month.
April 29, 2011 29 Apr'11
Store dealing with dishonest employees uses internal theft prevention software

A London-based sushi chain expects to save almost £1 million this year with the help of new fraud-detection software.
April 20, 2011 20 Apr'11
Infosec 2011: APT attacks a real threat to business, says security panel

Advanced Persistent Threats are a reality and cannot be dismissed as a myth or media hype, according to a panel of experts debating the top threats at Infosecurity Europe 2011 in London.
April 07, 2011 07 Apr'11
Sophisticated cyber thieves behind Epsilon data breach, says parent company

US marketing firm Epsilon was hit by one of the biggest data thefts to date, the work of highly sophisticated cyber thieves, says parent company Alliance...
March 28, 2011 28 Mar'11
Spotify hit by malicious ads

Spotify, the popular streaming music service, has been displaying malicious advertisements to users of its Free version.
March 25, 2011 25 Mar'11
Hackers steal member email details from TripAdvisor site

A number of TripAdvisor members may receive spam after hackers stole email details from the travel website.
March 18, 2011 18 Mar'11
RSA hit by advanced persistent threat attacks

RSA, the security division of EMC, has revealed that attackers have stolen information from the company's IT systems
March 15, 2011 15 Mar'11
Adobe warns of zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Flash

Adobe has published a security advisory for a critical vulnerability in Adobe Flash that can be used to take control of an attacked machine.
March 10, 2011 10 Mar'11
Advanced persistent threats - are businesses prepared?

Businesses usually attain adequate levels of IT defences at the point that it becomes more cost effective for cyber criminals to target someone else.
March 07, 2011 07 Mar'11
France's G20 files target of cyber attack

France's files on the G20 meetings were the target of a cyber attack, the country's finance minister has confirmed.
March 07, 2011 07 Mar'11
HSBC uses token to secure smartphone banking

HSBC is sending four million online banking customers a security token which will enable them to log in to their online bank account wherever they are, without using a card reader.
March 07, 2011 07 Mar'11
Malvertising, pop-up ad virus problems demand more user protection

A recent pop-up ad infection on the London Stock Exchange's website highlights the growing scourge of malicious advertising, or malvertising.
February 25, 2011 25 Feb'11
nullcon 2011 Day Zero: Photo feature

Botnet detection, fuzzing intricacies, Zeus MitMo, VoIP attacks, and more. nullcon Day Zero saw considerable action worth the capture.
February 24, 2011 24 Feb'11
ISC releases security fix for Bind DoS vulnerability

The Internet Systems Consortium has published an advisory and an update for the Bind domain name system software versions 9.7.1 to 9.7.2-P3.
February 24, 2011 24 Feb'11
Exxon, Shell, BP hacked in Night Dragon attacks

Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP were among the oil companies targeted by hackers working through internet servers in China, say US reports.
February 24, 2011 24 Feb'11
Microsoft fixes security flaw in malware protection engine

Microsoft has patched a flaw in its malware protection engine that could be exploited to gain control of victim's computer.
February 17, 2011 17 Feb'11
New SMB vulnerability identified in Windows XP and Server 2003

A new SMB vulnerability discovered in Windows could open systems to DoS attacks and remote access. The vulnerability, tagged as CVE-2011-0654, has been rated "critical" and confirmed on Windows Server 2003 SP2 and Microsoft Windows XP SP3.
February 17, 2011 17 Feb'11
RSA 2011: RSA, EMC and VMWare advise on defending against advanced persistent threats

Security leaders have outlined ways organisations can better defend against advanced persistent threats (APTs) in a paper published by RSA, the security division of EMC.
February 15, 2011 15 Feb'11
RSA 2011: Cybersecurity leads conference with cloud security keynote

Cybersecurity is one of the key topics at the RSA Conference 2011 taking place this week in San Francisco.
February 10, 2011 10 Feb'11
IT departments are unable to support employee devices

Security concerns are holding companies back from allowing staff to use their own technology at work.
February 09, 2011 09 Feb'11
Microsoft's February Patch Tuesday outlines five critical vulnerabilities

Microsoft has released 12 security bulletins addressing 22 vulnerabilities in its monthly security update for February
February 08, 2011 08 Feb'11
Post Office faces legal action over alleged accounting system failures

More than 50 postmasters are planning legal action against the Post Office to reclaim money they paid to the Post Office after being accused of theft and false accounting.
February 08, 2011 08 Feb'11
Businesses must learn how to defend against cyberattack, says McAfee

Cybercrime has thrived over the past decade according to recent reports from security firm McAfee, but business can expect even more dramatic change in the next ten years, researchers say.
January 25, 2011 25 Jan'11
Spam level dips

The recent decline in global spam was the result of a halt in the spam-sending activities of three botnets and unrest among pharmaceutical spam-sending gangs, Symantec's latest MessageLabs Intelligence Report has revealed.
January 19, 2011 19 Jan'11
2010 IT security threats point to priorities for 2011, says Sophos

Cyber threats of 2010 highlight the top risks to business for 2011, including social media sites, whistleblowers, and hacktivists, warns security firm Sophos.
January 12, 2011 12 Jan'11
Microsoft January Patch Tuesday misses open security issues

Microsoft's January 2011 Patch Tuesday security update contains only two bulletins, but misses several open security issues.
January 07, 2011 07 Jan'11
Microsoft to patch critical IE vulnerability to block ongoing attacks

Microsoft will issue two security bulletins, addressing a critical vulnerability affecting all versions of WIndows.
December 04, 2008 04 Dec'08
How the Mytob virus caused havoc in the NHS

The Mytob virus has been removed from 5,000 PCs at