Microsoft updated a security advisory that addressed a broad flaw in Windows and said it is working around the clock to fix the bug. But it may be too late for many. Security researchers said hackers had amped up attacks using malicious PDF files that exploit the vulnerability.. Finland-based F-Secure called the surge in spam carrying the rigged PDF documents “massive” and said the run is ongoing. Ken Dunham, director of response at iSight Partners, confirmed that the number of messages hitting mailboxes with rogue PDFs soared just before the weekend. “PDF exploits are ramping up just in time for the weekend,” he said in.
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YOU’VE got ten minutes until you need to leave for the airport, but you just have to send out that e-mail containing this month’s sales figures. Dashing up the street in search of a taxi, you spot the magic words “wireless hotspot” in a cafĂŠ window. The figures are sensitive, but the cafĂŠ is almost empty. You sit down, facing your laptop screen away from the few others in the room and log on.
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Perhaps more important than the bricking of unlocked iPhones is the fact that the firmware update blocked third-party application development. Apple has refused to open the iPhone platform to third-party developers, saying programmers should write Ajax-based applications that users can access through the Safari Web browser.
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If you’ve had enough spam (unsolicited electronic commercial marketing messages sent in bulk using services such as email messaging as described in New Zealand’s anti-spam laws) you’re not alone. This is a big subject, so we’ll give you a few ideas to minimise spam in your life. Spam costs us all big time.
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A team of computer security consultants say they have found a flaw in Appleâs wildly popular iPhone that allows them to take control of the device. The researchers, working for Independent Security Evaluators, a company that tests its clientsâ computer security by hacking it, said that they could take control of iPhones through a WiFi connection or by tricking users into going to a Web site that contains malicious code. The hack, the first reported, allowed them to tap the wealth of personal information the phones contain.
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There’s a great variety of attacks and hacks that black hats can perpetrate on your network. Fortunately, you can prevent most of them using an assortment of security measures.
However, a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) is an entirely different story. You can’t thwart a DDoS attack â they attack an IP address or service that’s available to the internet.
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Iâve touched on the topic of mobile keyloggers in the past, but as they are quickly growing in popularity I find it important to raise the issue again. Mobile keyloggers for anyone unfamiliar with the topic is cell phone software that records every keystroke one types into their mobile keypad. Much like its computer related predecessor, mobile keyloggers are used as a tracking/recording device.
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Concerns over the latest hi-tech security vulnerabilities have been highlighted at a conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. There seems to be an unspoken understanding among hackers that dressing in black is cool. Hack in the Box, Asia’s leading hacking and security gathering, is full of geeks in black. And their cloak and dagger looks add a certain frisson to the occasion.
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IT SHOULD have been the entertainment industry’s best-kept secret. However, in February a hacker known only as Arnezami found a key to the encryption system protecting the latest high-definition DVDs against pirates and published it online just three months or so after the new players went on sale. Attempts to have the key removed from websites backfired and it quickly spread, even appearing in artwork and songs and on T-shirts. To make matters worse, other hackers soon discovered that, in some DVD players, by disconnecting a chip inside the machines they could circumvent their encryption system entirely.
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So here it is, iPhone month. At last. It’s been on the mind of many a gadget geek ever since Steve Jobs announced it in January. That’s a long time to make us wait, by the way, Steve. But will it be worthy of our expectations? Of course I’m referring here to our security expectations. Weâve all heard more than enough about the iPhoneâs features, revolutionary user interface, and so on, right? Perhaps my optical grep isnât what it used to be, but I sure donât recall even seeing the word security in that myriad of coverage about this new must-have gadget. Are we all being drawn into the functional specification trap that so many software developers fall for also? Are we paying too much attention to what this thing does and not enough about what can go wrong? Seems likely to me.
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