Many companies are afraid of ex-employees who got access to the internal security technologies, passwords or computers, a survey conducted by Citrix revealed. No less than 49 percent of the respondents considered that IT engineers or employees who worked in the security departments are a real threat for the Irish companies. In addition, 51 percent of them considered that hackers and malware represent a bigger threat than the angry employees while 52 percent voted for phishing attacks. 57 percent of the respondents said the DoS attacks are also a serious threat for the companies’ computers.
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Do you want to buy some medicines? Maybe a pill of Viagra at the lowest price on the market? Or maybe some Valium? All you need to do is to visit Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” film blog and you might find some unexpected goodies (not!). Robert McMillan of IDG News Service reported that the blog was hacked a few days ago, the attackers publishing tons of links to other websites selling Viagra, Xanax, Valium and some other drugs. Just like a spam method, the attackers tried to drive traffic to their website but what’s more important and dangerous in the same time â they may have managed to get a higher position in the search engine results. This would obviously bring more users searching for certain keywords, as it’s well known the fact that top search engines such as Google and Yahoo drive a huge traffic to webpages.
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VeriSign has announced plans to sell some of its business units and focus efforts on its internet infrastructure services. The Mountain View, Calif. company announced Wednesday at its annual Analyst Day that it will concentrate on its core business, compromised of domain naming services, SSL certificates and identity protection and authentication solutions. VeriSign will divest other parts of its portfolio, including communications, billing and commerce.
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A Swedish teenager who is suspected of hacking into the computer network of Cisco Systems Inc. in the U.S. was convicted Monday of intruding on the networks of three Swedish universities. Overturning an acquittal by a lower court, the Svea Court of Appeal gave the 19-year-old man a conditional sentence and ordered him to pay 160,000 kronor (US$25,000; euro17,000) in damages to the universities. The man, who could not be named under Swedish privacy rules, said he would appeal.
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Hacker bust for virtual theft. Dutch police arrested a 17-year-old who stole ÂŁ2 500 worth of virtual furniture from an online hotel. The teenager was arrested after playing Habbo Hotel, an international online community with an estimated seven million members and an annual turnover of ÂŁ3 million, states The Times. The game allows players to create virtual characters, or Habbos. These characters can take their own rooms in the hotel, which they can then decorate with their own furniture. The furniture is purchased with special Habbo credits, but the credits are paid for with real money.
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Legitimate sites and their users have been dealing with a rash of malware being spread by banner ads, from Monster to MLB (Major League Baseball) NHL (National Hockey League) and other sites that are delivering malware. While the Monster dot com exploit is well known news, the MLB and NHL sites are not well known, but used a similar way of purchasing advertising on a web site, and then using that advertising to deliver malware to customers as shown in the video below.
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A hacker faces 60 years in prison and a $1.75m fine after pleading guilty to infecting hundreds of thousands of computers with malware in order to steal money from Paypal accounts. John Schiefer, 26, admitted that he and some associates developed malware that allowed them to create botnet armies of as many as 250,000 computers. Schiefer was able to collect information sent from the infected computers, including usernames and passwords for Paypal accounts. He and his associates were then able to make purchases using the Paypal accounts. They also shared the password information with others.
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Antivirus specialist Symantec has joined a security organisation alongside Microsoft, despite having previously come to very public blows with the software giant over its willingness to share security information on Vista. Announced at the RSA Conference Europe 2007 on Tuesday, Symantec and Microsoft will join the Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code (SafeCode), which claims to be a not-for-profit organisation aimed at increasing trust around IT. Other members include EMC, SAP and Juniper Networks.
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A hacker has pleaded guilty to infecting hundreds of thousands of computers with malware in order to steal money from Paypal accounts. He could spend 60 years in prison and face a US$1.75 million fine. John Schiefer, 26, admitted that he and some associates developed malware that allowed them to create botnet armies of as many as 250,000 computers. Schiefer was able to collect information sent from the infected computers, including usernames and passwords for Paypal accounts. He and his associates were then able to make purchases using the Paypal accounts. They also shared the password information with others.
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It seems unlikely to think about a prowler trying to sneak into Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. But every day, people try to gain unseen entrance to the base by remotely probing its computer network, sometimes by accident and others times with nefarious intent. It happens 2.8 million times a day, the near equivalent of every Chicago resident trying once daily.
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