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Internet Security News
Breaking news and updates in Internet security
Last Updated: March 15th, 2010 13:37:18 CDT -0500
McAfee: Intellectual Property Poorly Guarded In Aurora Attacks
Google and the other companies that were affected by Operation Aurora had some commendable security measures in place, according to a new report from McAfee; you might consider them the virtual equivalents of steel doors with reinforced hinges. However, it turned out that the companies might have left their internal safe doors unlocked.
 | | McAfee: Intellectual Property Poorly Guarded In Aurora Attacks |  |
George Kurtz, McAfee's CTO, explained late yesterday on the McAfee Security Insights Blog that he discovered some problems with respect to the companies' source code configuration management systems (SCMs). Enough problems to call them "inherently insecure," in fact, as he found that attackers were able to "siphon out source code or, worse, modify and add code."
Kurtz then continued, "SCMs are used by software engineers to manage their projects and are used to store source code, the crown jewels of any tech company."
And as you might suppose, leaving one's intellectual property exposed isn't the best way to run a business.
In response, McAfee is taking a closer look at how SCMs should be secured, and Perforce, which is a popular management system, has been scrutinized in what's supposed to be the first in a series of white papers.
These lessons should benefit a wide range of individuals and companies, considering that many organizations have probably modeled their security systems after what Google, Adobe, Rackspace, and other corporations hit by Operation Aurora have in place. Hopefully an Operation Aurora 2 will become impossible as a result. Or at the least, perhaps some less organized and skilled hackers will be repelled.
Meanwhile, efforts to identify the people behind Operation Aurora haven't progressed much since the last time we discussed them. A security company called Damballa did issue a statement earlier this week alleging that the hackers used a "garden variety botnet" and were "more amateur than average," but Google has disputed this claim.
Open Identity Exchange Launches
Online identity theft might become less of a problem in the future thanks to the efforts of Google, PayPal, Equifax, VeriSign, Verizon, CA, and Booz Allen Hamilton. Today, these organizations announced the formation of the Open Identity Exchange (OIX).
OIX is a nonprofit entity meant to make exchanging online identity credentials a more secure process. It's gotten off to a good start, too, having already been approved as a trust framework provider by the U.S. government.
This means that OIX solutions should at some point allow American citizens to access all sorts of vital information on the Web. Drummond Reed, Acting Executive Director of OIX, explained in a statement, "As we roll out progressively stronger levels of certification, this will empower U.S. citizens to access and manage their tax records, Social Security records, veteran's benefits, and many other government services online."
Also, "OIX is currently working on development of trust frameworks for public media, telecommunications, library services . . . and professional associations."
You may not have to wait long to see these possibilities brought to (figurative) life. In addition to being backed by so many important partners, OIX has received grants from the OpenID Foundation and Information Card Foundation, meaning it's probably in good financial shape.
M86 Security Finds URL Filters, Anti-Virus Scanners Ineffective
New data from M86 Security corroborates the widely held idea that anti-virus scanners and URL filters won't save careless Web users. Indeed, the security company estimates that more than half of all threats can evade these two means of detection, leaving people at risk from lots of nasty stuff.
 | | M86 Security Finds URL Filters, Anti-Virus Scanners Ineffective | |
M86 Security's new report, "Closing the Vulnerability Window in Today's Web Environment," indicates that anti-virus scanning correctly identifies just 39 percent of Web threats, which isn't exactly impressive. But the practice of URL filtering fares even worse, detecting just 3 percent of threats.
Assuming these figures are accurate, something obviously needs to be done, and it seems that adding a third layer of security may be the trick.
Bradley Anstis, the vice president technical strategy at M86 Security, explained in a statement, "To counter the specific cases that we analyzed in this report, and to ensure maximum efficiency, we believe a three-pronged approach of combining URL filtering, anti-virus scanning and real-time code analysis should be best practice."
This practice achieved a 100 percent success rate in M86 Security's testing. Although people should of course exhibit caution online no matter how well-protected their computers seem to be.
Qualys Introduces Malware Scanner For Sites
The beta version of a free service has become available to help website owners keep their properties safer. QualysGuard Malware Detection is designed to scan sites for malware infections and other threats, regardless of sites' size or the site owners' physical location.
 | | Qualys Introduces Malware Scanner For Sites | |
This service is supposed to do everything shy of solve a problem. The process starts with it conducting daily scans. Then, it'll alert sites' owners to any issues it uncovers. Finally, it should point out vulnerable snippets of code, making the removal of malware easier. All without delivering false positives.
Philippe Courtot, the chairman and CEO of Qualys, explained his company's motivation for introducing this service by stating, "We created QualysGuard Malware Detection as a way to fight against cybercrime and to make the Web a safer place for everyone."
He then continued, "This is a comprehensive free solution that arms businesses of all sizes to monitor malware threats on their web sites and take steps to remediate vulnerabilities."
Hopefully QualysGuard Malware Detection will live up to its billing. A free way of keeping sites and their visitors safe certainly sounds good, and is bound to become quite popular if it works well.
Nigeria Announces Early Results Of Anti-Scammer Initiative
No one's sure how many there are to go, but according to a Nigerian official, there are about 800 scam email addresses and 18 criminals that can be considered "down." Mrs. Farida Waziri, the chairperson of a government agency, announced that some shutdowns and arrests occurred thanks to an initiative called Project Eagle Claw.
 | | Nigeria Announces Early Results Of Anti-Scammer Initiative | |
Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is the force behind Project Eagle Claw, and with Microsoft's help, has just started ramping it up. Waziri explained in a statement, "We expect that Eagle Claw as conceived will be 100% operational within six months and at full capacity, it will take Nigeria out of the top 10 list of countries with the highest incidence of fraudulent e-mails."
She then gave some very interesting details, continuing, "[U]pon full deployment, the capacity to take down fraudulent e-mails will increase to 5,000 monthly. Further it is projected that advisory mails to be sent to victims and potential victims will be about 230,000 monthly."
Anything Nigeria can do to address the problem of scammers operating from within its borders will of course be good for the country's image. More than that, it might help honest Nigerians become part of the online world (since some entities have just taken to blocking troubled regions as a whole).
Then there will be the benefit to the rest of the world, with maybe millions of dollars not getting lost. For that reason, Project Eagle Claw is likely to gain a lot of fans.
MessageLabs Names Most- (And Least-) Spammed States
When considering where to live, it's wise to look up stats about an area's climate, the cost of living, and its proximity to other important stuff in your life. Symantec's MessageLabs recently supplied some information about your odds of getting spammed, too.
 | | MessageLabs Names Most- (And Least-) Spammed States | |
Somewhat surprisingly, the states you might imagine as being the "most wired" - California, New York, Washington - weren't at the top of the list. Instead, the state in which spam represents the highest percentage of all emails received is Idaho, with 93.8 percent.
In an email to SecurityProNews, a Symantec/MessageLabs representative then listed the other top states (in order) as Kentucky, New Jersey, Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Maryland.
The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico wound up on the opposite end of the list, followed by Montana, Alaska, Kansas, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Florida.
We're not quite sure what to make of these findings; the states don't appear to be ordered according to Internet penetration rates, GDP per capita, overall population, physical size, or anything else. Still, if you're looking to move, now you have a better idea of how to decrease the odds of getting bombarded with spam at your new home.
Enormous Malware Archive Creates Stir
A Dutch company known as the Frame4 Group has created what's almost the computing equivalent of a Center for Disease Control lab. The Malware Distribution Project is, according to its own site, the "world's biggest private malware archive."
 | | Enormous Malware Archive Creates Stir | |
Don't jump to the conclusion that the project's run by a bunch of supervillains; the malware samples are supposed to be "offered for the purposes of analysis, testing and malware research."
Also, customers are screened, and a monthly access fee of about $1,235 should act to keep out some of the riffraff.
It actually seems possible that the Malware Distribution Project could be of great help to the security community. When you consider that medical researchers don't have to wander from house to house, asking people if they have cancer, every time they want to start a new experiment, certain practices start to seem a little outdated.
There is a potential for problems, though. One nightmare scenario relates to the Malware Distribution Project's figurative walls failing and everything getting out. Having all of that malware run amuck at once - particularly if security researchers' computers were the first things it'd come across - would be bad.
Then there's the possibility that some unpleasant person would gain access to the Malware Distribution Project's archive and just sort of go on a shopping spree. This way, some relatively stupid hacker might be able to get his (or her) hands on the most sophisticated viruses in existence.
As you might imagine, the Malware Distribution Project is definitely proving divisive.
Anyway, at last count, the repository contained a whopping 3,336,503 files.
UPDATE (10-13-09): Anthony Aykut, the Managing Director of Frame4 Security Services, got in touch with SecurityProNews this morning to pass along some information. In an email, he wrote, "[T]he malware is neither downloadable via the web site or accessible in any other way via the www; in fact, the (secure) servers where the malware is stored (or analyzed/processed) is not even connected to the outside world."
Aykut also stressed that nothing is sold to the public, and added, "Largely due to the security measure(s) mentioned above, and also based on to the fact that the storage media are protected by biometric devices, getting access to the MD:Pro archive is, well, pretty impossible."
Avsim Hacker (Maybe) Brought Before Cops
Perhaps people who like to spend their spare time in the cockpits of imaginary F-16s should be left alone. The man in charge of a flight simulator site that was attacked claims to have identified the hacker and forwarded information to the authorities.
 | | Avsim Hacker (Maybe) Brought Before Cops | |
Avsim is one of the best-known flight sim communities in existence. It's been around for a long time, too. Unfortunately, a hacker managed to wipe about a decade's worth of modification info and forum posts from the site's servers back in May.
Now, though, Tom Allensworth, the publisher and CEO of Avsim, has told the BBC, "We . . . have incontrovertible evidence of the individual that performed the hack. We have protected the forensic evidence and provided that evidence to the London police. We are committed to bringing justice to bear on this case."
Allensworth is confident in the outcome, too, adding, "We fully expect that the criminal complaint . . . will result in the perpetrator spending some time behind bars - under UK law." (Since Avsim's located in the US, this means he's not pushing for extradition or anything of that sort.)
Neither London's Metropolitan Police Service nor the accused individual (who hasn't been publicly named) has made any comment yet.
Email Password Hackers Present Real Threat
The next time you have something really important to tell someone, consider whether a drive over to his or her house wouldn't be a nice way of spending a few minutes. One reporter has found that it's quite easy (and perhaps all too common) for people to buy email accounts' passwords from hackers.
 | | Email Password Hackers Present Real Threat | |
Tom Jackman wrote in an article for the Washington Post, "[S]ervices as YourHackerz.com are still active and plentiful, with clever names like 'piratecrackers.com' and 'hackmail.net.' They boast of having little trouble hacking into such Web-based e-mail systems as AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook and Hotmail, and they advertise openly."
Jackman found that prices for passwords range from around $30 to $100, which means that even the average ten-year-old can probably afford these hackers' services.
Plus, unless someone important is involved or things get rather serious, law enforcement isn't terribly likely to look into (or at least resolve) the matter, because accessing a computer without authorization is just a misdemeanor in most areas and tracking down a perpetrator can be difficult.
And it doesn't help, of course, that all of these facts have now been publicized in a widely-read newspaper.
So if you've got some nasty business rivals or psycho exes, at least try to play it safe by changing your password often for as long as you're in the person's sights. Then there's always the option of putting a few more miles on the odometer, too.
Laptops, CDs Alarm Governors, Credit Unions
Today's lesson - that stuff in the physical world can pose a security threat - is a simple one. It seems to be an important one, too, as governors and credit unions are receiving unsolicited and suspicious laptops and CDs.
 | | Laptops, CDs Alarm Governors, Credit Unions | |
The laptops may represent the more interesting development. Robert McMillan reports, "The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to figure out who is sending laptop computers to state governors across the U.S., including West Virginia Governor Joe Mahchin and Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal. . . . According to sources familiar with the investigation, other states have been targeted too . . ."
New HP laptops are apparently just showing up, unsought but ready for use, at government offices. That's fine if some Bill Gates-like figure has decided to give small gifts to our country's political leaders, of course. It's less fine if someone's trying to steal all of their passwords and whatever sort of public and private info they'd use the laptops to view.
As for the CDs, the problem appears to be smaller. Indeed, the discs probably just exposed some lapses in judgment. Malware infected CDs that were sent to credit unions were "part of an authorized pen[etration] test," according to Johannes Ulrich, who spoke with a Microsolved representative.
It doesn't look like any damage has been done, then. Just try to keep in mind the old warnings about knowing where stuff's been and gifts being too good to be true.
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