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Bank gives AV software away

This is a welcome and interesting development. You know we've seen lots of spear phishing attacks directed at banks, and the financial community is pretty paranoid anyway, well Barclay's is giving anti virus kits away free.

The bank will give you F-Secure software to protect you, and it.

May 30, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The threat from commercial software

Now this is interesting. Something called the Cyber Defense Agency is warning US military, government, security and critical infrastructure agencies against using commercial software. The threat comes from something known as a life-cycle attack, which occurs when one line of code buried deep in the program is rigged to open vulnerabilities within the software, thus exposing the software and the company to external threats.

It is suggested that software built by less expensive overseas labour is exposed to several threats, including said insertion of malicious code.

May 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Trojan gets early start

Warning from BlackSpider this morning that a 0 day trojan was on the loose in the UK between 6.20am and 9.20am when a patch was released. Around 275,000 of the little blighters are thought to have been emailed out to UK businesses in that time.

A case of the early bird gets a worm, apparently.

May 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Rogue browsers - hot new thing

With the emergence of a recent threat to Yahoo! Messenger, "rogue browsers" are the hot new thing in the world of malware.

Browser hijacking and a self propagating worm. Nasty.

May 21, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Blue Security beaten

It's a sad tale, but the controversial Blue Security has bowed out of the market after being attacked by a massive DDoS assault from the spam mafia.

Honorably, the company doesn't want any more collateral damage hanging over it.

May 21, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The chips (and pins) are down

Well, it's not often you hear of a government sponsored security initiative actually working, but chip and pin has. Apparently, all the fraud has gone overseas.

May 13, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

We're bulletproof

"Windows Vista will deliver a level of security that could bring an end to traditional virus and worm attacks," sweated Microsoft top dog Steve Ballmer this week. I wasn't there, but I can picture the scene, and I feel for those sitting in the front row.

But, future attack vectors are more likely to be insidious, Ballmer said, in the sense that instead of disrupting people they will try to steal your money and steal your identity.

May 13, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Under siege

Don't know if you've been tracking the developments around controversial security company Blue Security, but a whole host of stuff has been going down over the past few days. A pretty darn sizeable DDoS attack to name but one of the strange situations.

Apparently some of the DDoS backlash took out TypePad as well, where Blue Security had its own blog hosted.

May 7, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Well that explains it

Just the other day I noted that McAfee was claiming that Mac platform vulnerability discovery rates have rocketed in the past couple years.

Then coincidentally [straight afterwards] the company launches its antivirus software for the Mac platform.

May 7, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Cybercrooks get techy

Apparently, cybercrooks are also getting more techy. There's an increase in the type of malware used for financial gain, rather than that just designed to annoy.

So says Panda.

May 5, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Taking a bite out of Apple

According to McAfee, Mac platform vulnerability discovery rates have increased by 228 per cent in the past three years alone, from 45 found in 2003 to 143 in 2005.

This stacks up against Microsoft's products which only saw a 73 per cent increase in the same period.

May 5, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack