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Archive for the ‘security’ Category
A Look At the Safety of Google Public DNS
Friday, December 4th, 2009
darthcamaro writes "Yesterday we discussed Google's launch of its new Public DNS service. Now Metasploit founder and CSO at Rapid7, H D Moore, investigates how well-protected Google's service is against the Kaminsky DNS flaw. Moore has put together a mapping of Google's source port distribution on the Public DNS service. In his view, it looks like the source ports are sufficiently random, even though they are limited to a small range of ports. The InternetNews report on Moore's research concludes: 'What Moore's preliminary research clearly demonstrates to me is that Google really does need to live up to its promise here. Unlike a regular ISP, Google will be subject to more scrutiny (and research) than other DNS providers.'"
Malware Could Grab Data From Stock iPhones
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Ardisson writes "Swiss iPhone developer Nicolas Seriot presented last night a talk on iPhone Privacy in Geneva. He showed how a malicious application could harvest personal data on a non-jailbroken iPhone (PDF) and without using private APIs. It turns out that the email accounts, the keyboard cache content and the WiFi connection logs are fully accessible. The talk puts up several recommendations. There is also a demo project on github."
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Cameroon the New Hotbed of Malware
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
garg0yle writes "According to McAfee, more than a third of Cameroon domains (TLD of .cm) are infested with viruses or other not-so-fun party treats. Given that it's very easy to mis-type .com as .cm, this puts the computers of a lot of fat-fingered typists in peril. Second place on the most-infested domains list goes to China (.cn), while Hong Kong (last year's 'winner') is now comfortably middle-of-the-pack."
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Somali Pirates Open Up a “Stock Exchange”
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
reginaldo writes to clue us that pirates in Somalia have opened up a cooperative in Haradheere, where investors can pay money or guns to help their favorite pirate crew for a share of the piracy profits. "'Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 "maritime companies" and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,' Mohammed [a wealthy former pirate who took a Reuters reporter to the facility] said. ... Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out after one of the gangs freed a Spanish tuna fishing vessel. 'I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation,' she said, adding that she got the weapon from her ex-husband in alimony. 'I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the "company."'"
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SarBox Lawsuit Could Rewrite IT Compliance Rules
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
dasButcher notes that the Supreme Court will hear arguments next week brought by a Nevada accounting firm that asserts the oversight board for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is unconstitutional. If the plaintiffs are successful, it could force Congress to rewrite or abandon the law used by many companies to validate tech investments for security and compliance. "Many auditing firms have used [Sarbanes-Oxley Section] 404 as a lever for imposing stringent security technology requirements on publicly traded companies regulated by SOX and their business partners. SOX security compliance has proven effective for vendors and solution providers, as it forces regulated enterprises to spend billions of dollars on technology that, many times, doesn’t prevent security incidents but does make them compliant with the law."
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