Webremixed Articles for tags: computer-security

Twitter Link-Shortening Raises Privacy Concerns

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:16:40 GMT

Amid a wider rollout of new security and third-party app authentication enhancements, one feature has some Twitter users worried.

Intel Shares Its Own Virtualization Success Story

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:01:40 GMT

The world's largest chipmaker uses a lot of servers. But it says it's having to spend money on fewer now thanks to VMware -- and offers a few lessons to CIOs also looking to trim costs.

Windows Phone 7 Heads to Manufacturers

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:46:40 GMT

Announcing that Windows Phone 7 has been "released to manufacturing," Microsoft marks a major milestone in the development of its new mobile operating system.

HP Emerges Victor in 3PAR Bidding War

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:31:40 GMT

Dell drops out after HP offers a whopping $2.4 billion for the enterprise and cloud storage technology player.

CIOs Look to Cautious IT Hiring Plans

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:16:40 GMT

According to a new survey by Robert Half International, IT executives are only planning modest increases in hiring, citing budget constraints and a shortage of qualified workers.

Understanding Current Trends in the Fake Anti-Virus/Scareware Ecosystem

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:35:50 GMT

The cyber-criminal groups behind fake anti-virus (scareware/rogueware) infections have run into some significant roadblocks over the last few years, but there is much more to the overall story.

VMworld: In the Cloud, It's Storage's Time to Shine

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:13:49 GMT

Your infrastructure might be going into the cloud... but it'll still need to be stored somewhere. A storage-centric look of VMworld's happenings.

Western Digital Dives Into Pure-Play Networking

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:22:39 GMT

Longstanding leader in the hard-drive sector continues efforts to diversity portfolio, now launching a networking kit that could port video content to the TV.

Microsoft Claims Android 'Gotchas' Raise Its Cost

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:07:39 GMT

Google makes its Android software freely available, but Microsoft argues there are other costs related to making the open source software available on mobile devices.

PC Demand Will Cool Off a Bit in Second Half

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:52:39 GMT

Gartner's latest forecast predicts continued strong growth for PC makers in the next two quarters -- just not as robust as they enjoyed in the first half of 2010.

Jobs Shows Off $99 Apple TV, iOS Revamp, iPods and iTunes Social

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:37:39 GMT

Apple's CEO highlights new ways Apple plans to build on its dominance in mobile devices with new social, movie rental and performance enhancements.

Sloppy Data Costs Fortune 1000 Firms Billions

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:22:39 GMT

New research from Sybase concludes that a median Fortune 1000 firm would stand to gain more than $2 billion with better, more accurate and more usable data.

HP Delves Into Cloud's Potential, Uncertainties

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:07:39 GMT

HP panelists used the VMworld conference as a platform to posit their expertise in cloud computing as it emerges from its infancy.

FCC Defers on Net Neutrality Amid Industry Talks

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:52:39 GMT

Federal Communications Commission issues a notice asking for comments on two of the most contentious aspects of the net neutrality debate, while industry negotiations advance.

IBM Talks Up Enterprise Cloud Plans, Benefits

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:37:39 GMT

Big Blue drops details on its efforts to build and buy cloud products and services tailored for for uses like compliance, collaboration and communications across an array of industries.

Microsoft Releases Bing App for Android Device

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:22:39 GMT

Acknowledging the power of the platform, software giant begins shipping Bing app on rival Android devices from Verizon, with plans to reach new handsets in the coming months.

The Winlock case - I'm taking bets!

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 02:25:00 GMT

Interesting news on Trojan SMS Blockers (Winlock etc). These programs block Windows and demand a ransom in the form of a text message which is sent to short number for a fee. It's a very popular type of racket at the moment, both in Russia and a few other countries.

The whole affair has now reached the General Prosecutor’s office of Russia – the criminals have been identified and detained (or so it seems) and will be prosecuted in Moscow soon.

Altogether the criminals have earned an estimated 790,000 roubles, or $25K. Moreover, they have caused other damages by blocking or crashing a yet to be determined number of personal and company PCs. Very often people have needed to re-install the OS and all software and then restore data from backups - even after paying the ransom.

But I wanted to focus on the outcome – or the possible outcome of this incident, not on the investigation, arrests and so forth.

Digg Dinged for Site Redesign

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:24:20 GMT

Users express outrage at Digg's site redesign.

VMworld: Maritz Outlines VMware's Future in the Cloud

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:09:20 GMT

VMware's chief looks past the hypervisor wars to focus on data center automation and what he sees as the coming of IT as a strategic (cost-saving, security-improving, value-enhancing) service.

Microsoft Slaps e-Commerce Site With Piracy Suit

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:54:20 GMT

Microsoft hits online software reseller Jigantic.com with a lawsuit alleging the outfit traded in pirated copies of SQL Server 2008 and passing off Software Assurance contracts as legitimate licenses.

Viewsonic's Dual-Boot Tablet Runs Android and Windows

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:39:20 GMT

Coming soon: ViewSonic's ViewPad 7 and Samsung's Galaxy Tab.

VMware Ramps Virtualization Acquisitions

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:24:20 GMT

Virtualization giant VMware announced two purchases targeting security and analytics -- TriCipher and Integrien -- as it looks ahead to offering "IT as a service."

IT Security Pros Fall for 'Friendly' Ruse

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:09:20 GMT

A unique study by security software vendor BitDefender discovered that IT professionals, particularly security folks, are the most likely to share secrets on social networks.

Motorola Brings More Android Phones to China

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:54:20 GMT

Handset maker hopes the trio of new releases with Android mobile OS will catapult it back to the top in a market it dominated for years.

VMware Wants Its vFabric Cloud Tech Everywhere

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:39:20 GMT

If you're building an enterprise cloud or managing hybrid or public cloud apps, VMware wants to be there.

Google Snaps Up SocialDeck

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:24:20 GMT

Search giant continues to vacuum up companies dabbling in the social arena as it is seen moving toward the launch of its own social network, dubbed Google Me.

Microsoft Appeals Patent Case to Supreme Court

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:09:20 GMT

Software giant plays out its hand in effort to reverse the USPTO's ruling that upheld the patent of Toronto-based i4i relating to a custom XML technology.

HP Promoting Private Clouds With CloudStart

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:54:20 GMT

Computing giant Hewlett-Packard looks to ease the transition for businesses to the cloud with the introduction of CloudStart, a suite of products and services geared for easy migration to the private cloud.

Google Adds Auto-Filtering Feature to Gmail

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:39:20 GMT

Google's new Priority Inbox looks to simplify our lives by using technology to predict what messages are most important to us and make them readily available.

Virginia Lands Next-Gen Microsoft Data Center

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:24:20 GMT

Governor says the new cloud-computing data center will create roughly 50 new jobs and provide a shot an arm to local and state tax coffers.

Twitter goes OAuth-only (Yay for security!)

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:42:15 GMT

In a long overdue move, Twitter turned off basic authentication for third-party applications, while enforcing OAuth for all apps. This is a move that should be applauded by anyone concerned about the security of their Twitter account.

This latest move covers a potential vulnerability in the process of giving read/write access to third-party applications, which could lead to a Twitter account being compromised. Well, not anymore. You don't need to give your username and password to third-party developers anymore if you want to use their application on your Twitter account.

Being always concerned about security, I salute Twitter's move to enforce OAuth. This lets me use an application without having to share my Twitter username and password with an unknown entity. Also, hats off to all developers that updated their applications in time and made this change as seamless as possible for the majority of users.

However, keep in mind that OAuth doesn't protect against local attacks - stealing passwords straight from the users' machines. Make sure you use a clean computer when you log-in to Twitter. Also, for more tips on staying safe, I invite you to read my quick How to Avoid Getting Your Twitter Account Hacked guide on Threatpost.

Skype Looks to 'Connect' With Enterprises

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:20:25 GMT

The VoIP player rolls out a new service for enhancing companies' existing investments in PBX telephony and unified communications.

Gumblagra and a piano

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:01:00 GMT

Since the beginning of August, our Japan office has seen 900+ mails of a certain kind in their spam traps.

We noticed two common patterns in all of the mail. First, the links in these spammed messages all point to compromised servers. Also, the file names of the redirectors are all dictionary words followed by two digits. The files redirect the users to online pharmacy sites and fake watch stores. Here is a screen capture of a directory hosted on one of these online sites:

You might wonder why this caught our attention. The answer is simple: about half of these files contained links to 'gumblar.x' servers.

The upper red link points to a pharmacy site, the lower one is a gumblar.x URL.

So basically an unsuspecting (and unprotected) user who will click these links in their mail will experience a typical 'gumblar-attack' while browsing a pill catalog. The recent peak of such hybrid attacks may be a sign that the cybercriminal(s) who’ve been slowly but surely growing the Gumblar botnet worldwide, and who up until now have been keen to fly under the radar, are now starting to monetize it. The first test runs of mixed pharmacy/gumblar pages were actually identified by our experts as early as April 2010, when we noticed a few mails of this kind, with subjects like "Twitter 61-213".

On further investigation of the involved servers, it turned out that plenty of them have additional malicious code injected directly into their www root. We counted mostly gumblar.x but also some 'pegel.*' and other obfuscated code containing iframers or other redirectors.

Additionally, almost ALL of these domains contained a link to 'hxxp://nuttypiano.com/*.js' at the end of the file.

There are more than 300 different .js files in circulation on such servers, the content of these is obfuscated and similar to known 'pegel' threats. To make our researchers' task more difficult, the malicious code will only be sent once to the same IP address. However, we have managed to download several samples from the same locations and identified polymorphic-like structures.

These are redirecting to other :8080 locations, which in turn try to push more malware onto the victim's machine.

Here is a quick summary of such injected sites, sorted by country: #1 is the US, followed by FR, DE, TR and JP. Affected webmasters should consider changing their compromised ftp credentials, clean the machines which led to the leak, and investigate their server logs for more details.

Microsoft to Spend Lavishly on Windows Phone 7

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:11:23 GMT

Financial analyst relays plans detailed by Microsoft executives to spend heavily, potentially in the billions, to support the upcoming launch of Windows Phone 7.

Galaxy S Smartphones Top 1M Units Shipped

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:56:23 GMT

Samsung said it has shipped more than 1 million Galaxy S smartphones, roughly six weeks after they were released to carriers and consumers.

RIM Staves Off BlackBerry Ban in India

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:41:23 GMT

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion appears to have worked out a deal with the Indian government that will keep the smartphones operational in the world's second-most populous country.

Why Microsoft Co-Founder Is Suing Tech Industry

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:26:23 GMT

In a major patent-infringement lawsuit, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen levels a broadside against Google and many other leading lights of Silicon Valley.

AMD Bids Adieu to ATI Brand

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:11:23 GMT

The chipmaker will consolidate its chip brands and discontinue using the ATI brand ahead the release of its upcoming Fusion line.

Google Snags Angstro, DoJ Still Mulling ITA Buy

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:56:23 GMT

Search giant continues to extend social offerings with the purchase of startup app incubator Angstro, while another, much larger acquisition in the online travel sector has drawn more scrutiny from the Department of Justice.

CA Adds ID Management Firm Arcot Systems

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:41:23 GMT

The business software developer continues its massive cloud-computing shopping spree with $200 million cash purchase of Arcot Systems.

Financial Services Focus on Security: Survey

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:26:23 GMT

After years of slashing IT budgets in a down economy, most financial services firms are now investing in identity management and other security applications.

When Will Vendors End Support for Your OS?

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:11:23 GMT

How long will your installed versions of Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux or HP-UX still be receiving support from their makers? It's a more complex issue than you might think.

Uncertainty Clouds Novell as Earnings Slump

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:56:23 GMT

Enterprise software vendor admits that it's operating in a precarious business environment amid an unsolicited bid from a hedge fund looking to take the company private.

Intel Snags Infineon Wireless Unit in $1.4B Deal

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:41:23 GMT

Chip giant signals its ambitious designs on the mobile sector with the purchase of Infineon's Wireless Solutions division for $1.4 billion in an all-cash deal.

Older Americans Flock to Social Networking

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:26:23 GMT

New report from Pew Internet Project finds that older Americans are gravitating to social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn at a staggering rate, much faster than the young.

Researcher Warns of New 64-Bit Windows Rootkit

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:15:53 GMT

Security research firm Prevx warns that a new iteration of a familiar rootkit, TDL3, is now in the wild and threatens to compromise 64-bit Windows systems.