Insider plot to take down Fannie Mae's (a mortgage lender) servers thwarted

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 ..

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 ..

Hack Turns Application Code Against Itself ... New attack uses application flaws to force good code to go rogue

Turns out you don't need malware to exploit a security flaw in an application: A pair of researchers has found a way to automatically make good code do bad things.

Researchers from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) have devised a technique that basically lets an attacker bypass built-in system defenses aimed at blocking malware, and then execute instructions from inside the application. The process uses an application's vulnerability to turn it against the system on which it runs.

An attacker could take advantage of a flaw in a Web browser, for instance, to force the browser to spam the user's address book using only the browser's own code, according to the researchers. .. More >>

Auditors rap IRS for weak information security

The Internal Revenue Service has failed to secure sensitive electronic taxpayer information properly, increasing the potential for identity theft, according to an audit report released on Thursday.

The inspector general review of three computer systems at the IRS Office of Research, Analysis and Statistics showed several weaknesses in control over access to applications containing sensitive information.

"Managers and system administrators had not placed sufficient emphasis on maintaining the security and privacy of the taxpayer data they are charged with protecting," the report stated. Furthermore, officials failed to provide guidance or monitor compliance with IRS information security policies, and did not supply software to scan for security weaknesses, the IG found. .. More >>

IRS finds unauthorized Web servers connected to its networks

The Internal Revenue Service found more than 1,000 unauthorized Web servers connected to its networks, leaving the agency's systems open to hackers, according to a report released on Thursday by the IRS inspector general.

In September 2007, the IRS Computer Security Incident Response Center scanned the agency's Web servers and identified 2,093 that had at least one security vulnerability. When the center matched those servers to the IRS database of registered Web sites and servers, an inventory of systems that the agency uses to perform security maintenance and apply patches, it found 1,811, or 87 percent, were not listed in the database.

Of the unregistered servers, the IRS identified 661 that were used for legitimate agency business, leaving 1,150 servers being used for potentially unauthorized activity, according to the report. .. More ..

Revealed: The Internet's Biggest Security Hole

Two security researchers have demonstrated a new technique to stealthily intercept internet traffic on a scale previously presumed to be unavailable to anyone outside of intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency.

The tactic exploits the internet routing protocol BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) to let an attacker surreptitiously monitor unencrypted internet traffic anywhere in the world, and even modify it before it reaches its destination.

The demonstration is only the latest attack to highlight fundamental security weaknesses in some of the internet's core protocols. Those protocols were largely developed in the 1970s with the assumption that every node on the then-nascent network would be trustworthy. The world was reminded of the quaintness of that assumption in July, when researcher Dan Kaminsky disclosed a serious vulnerability in the DNS system. Experts say the new demonstration targets a potentially larger weakness. .. More ..

European companies forced to own up to data losses

European companies will be forced to tell customers if their personal data has been lost or stolen, as part of a new EC directive.

The data breach notification provision is part of the ePrivacy Directive that is currently being debated by the EU. ... More ..

Hacked Texas National Guard site serves up malware

Attackers have hacked the Web site of the Texas National Guard and are using it to serve up offers of fake security software and plant rootkits on unpatched PCs. .. More..

GAO Report Slams US Cybersecurity, US-CERT, and DHS

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is finalizing its report on the country's capability to protect and defend itself from cyber-attack, and its words are not kind. The primary responsibility for monitoring and securing the country's networks and digital assets falls to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, a partnership organization between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and both the public and private sectors. Founded in September 2003, US-CERT was responsible for the 2004 Einstein initiative, meant to detect and collect information on attacks at government agencies, and is currently backing the expanded (and hopefully more widely deployed) Einstein 2 program. .. More..

Hacker Shuts Down Government Computers

AN EXPERT hacker allegedly shut down the Northern Territory Government computer system and deleted thousands of employees' identities, a Darwin court heard yesterday.

And the court heard the Government could still be at risk of another cyber attack.

David Anthony McIntosh, 27, allegedly hacked in and shut down several NT Government databases on May 5, including servers for the Health Department, Royal Darwin Hospital, Berrimah Prison and Supreme Court using his laptop at a Palmerston home. >> More ..

Homeland Security reveals threats and the plans to counter the threats and attacks

The US Department of Homeland Security had a security summit where the Assistant Secretary of Cybersecurity and Communications, Greg Garcia, provided some remarks about the current challenges and threats and the need for all critical infrastructure entities to work together to share information to face the threats that are not merely increasing but alos has gone to another level of sophistication. More details can be found here .. >> More ..

India Cites Ongoing Chinese Cyber Attacks

A year and a half of electronic warfare against public and private network resources in India has been traced back to a variety of attacks and antagonists in China.

Botnets, keyloggers, and network mapping all plague India on a regular basis, as its gigantic rival in Asia seeks weaknesses within the country's information infrastructure. >> More ..

CNN Site Hit by China Attack

In the recent unrest between China and Tibet, the CNN site has been attacked.

At its peak, the attack has sucked up 100MB/S in bandwidth, enough to slow the news Web site for some visitors. >> More ..

Hackers find a way to crack popular smartcard in minutes

People are starting to wake up to the fact that RFID-enabled smartcards now can be far more easily, and cheaply, cracked than ever before, as a trio of young computer experts recently showed.

These are a particular type of processor-embedded cards, and are different from credit cards. The actual decryption work by the researchers was done on the widely deployed Mifare Classic wireless smartcard, now manufactured by a Philips spinoff, NXP Semiconductors. Decrypted, the cards can be counterfeited, and users' personal and bank data is exposed. >> More ..

US Law makers voice concerns over cybersecurity plan

Members of the House of Representative sought details, on Thursday, of a $30 billion plan to secure federal government systems and upgrade network defenses to ward off attacks from foreign nations and online criminals.

Known as the Cyber Initiative, the Bush Administration project would dramatically reduce the number of interconnections between federal government networks and the Internet and put more advanced network security in place to monitor data traffic for signs of malicious attacks. While the 5- to 7-year project could dramatically improve the network defenses of government agencies, law makers questioned whether the initiative will be too little, too late, and whether the resulting network monitoring could undermine privacy.

"It's hard to believe that this Administration now believes it has the answers to secure our federal networks and critical infrastructure," Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in prepared remarks at the opening of the hearing on Thursday. "I believe cybersecurity is a serious problem -- maybe the most complicated national security issue in terms of threat and jurisdiction. This problem will be with us for decades to come." >> More ...

Trend Micro Hit by Massive Web Hack

Security vendor Trend Micro has fallen victim to a widespread Web attack that splashed malicious software onto hundreds of legitimate Web sites in recent days.

A Trend Micro spokesman confirmed that the company’s site had been hacked Thursday, saying that the attack took place earlier in the week. "A portion of our site -- some pages were attacked," said Mike Sweeny, a Trend Micro spokesman. "We took the pages down overnight Tuesday night -- and took corrective action." >> More ..