Washington (DC) - On October 29, 2008, a vigilant senior Unix engineer happened across a "logic bomb" that was allegedly planted by a contractor, Rajendrasinh Babubhai Makwana, who had worked in their Urbana, MD facility until October 24, 2008 when his contract was terminated. The script was set to activate on January 31, 2009 and would completely wipe all of Fannie Mae's 4,000 servers. According to engineers, had it done so it would've caused "millions of dollars in damage, and possibly shut down operations for a week." ..>> More ..
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Israel hacks Arab TV station - Cyberspace becomes battleground in Gaza conflict
Israeli military forces have reportedly hacked into a Hamas-run TV station to broadcast propaganda. >> More ..
2008: A year of cowboys in IT security
Security pundits are fond are characterising personalties in information security with reference to Westerns - hence hackers wear either a "black hat" or a "white hat" like their cowboy counterparts.
Probably the biggest security story of the year was the take-down of infamous cybercrime hosting outfit McColo. The rogue ISP hosted the command and control systems for three botnets - Srizbi, Rustock and Mega-D. Junk mail levels temporarily fell to a third their normal level following the takedown of McColo in November. >> More ..US cybersecurity defences fail to thwart mock cyberattack
Critical US electronic systems have failed to withstand a simulated cyberattack.
Participants in a recent cyber-warfare exercise told Reuters that the exercise highlighted problems in leadership, communications and readiness. The two-day exercise brought together 230 government agencies, private firms and other participants. Participants were split into two groups - attackers and defenders - before each developed tactics for attacking and defending critical infrastructure systems, such as those controlling banking, telecommunications and utilities. >> More ..
London Hospital back online after computer virus shutdown
Computer systems at three major London hospitals are largely back online on Friday morning, three days after a major computer virus outbreak forced staff to disconnect the network.
IT systems at St Bartholomew's (Barts), the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel and the London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green were taken down on Tuesday following infection by the Mytob worm. The three hospitals make up the Barts and the London NHS Trust. >> More ..
DDoS attack floors Georgia prez website
A denial of service attack hit government websites in the former Soviet republic of Georgia over the weekend amid growing diplomatic tensions between the country and Russia.
The DDoS assault on the website of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili rendered it unavailable over the weekend. The attack was run via botnet networks of compromised PCs. Shadowserver charts the command and control servers used in the attack, in an analysis here. >> More ..
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