Posts Tagged ‘Hackers’
by FireHost Evangelist on October 30th, 2009
McAfee’s study, “The Security Paradox” examines how small and medium organizations that employ between 51-1,000 workers address IT security and growing cyber threats.
An overarching theme of the report reveals that SMBs around the world (and particularly in North America) believe they are too small and pose too little value to hackers to be worth their time, but recent trends in hacker and cybercrime activity reveal that’s just not the case.
In reality, SMBs’ limited resources, inadequate security, and lack of technical expertise make them more vulnerable to cyber attack, and hackers are taking notice.
Jeff Green, Senior VP of McAfee Avert Labs confirmed, “High profile attacks [on larger enterprises] are becoming less frequent because they are often detected quickly. Attackers are favoring stealth attacks that quietly infiltrate systems [of small and medium businesses].”
To change this trend, small and medium-sized organizations will need to make significant shifts in their fundamental values and budgetary allocations.
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Tags: cybercrime, Hackers, Secure Web Hosting, SMB security
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by FireHost Evangelist on September 15th, 2009
Programming errors on RideMatch.info allow hackers to access names, home addresses, phone numbers, commuting schedules, and employee ID numbers for the service’s users according to an article featured in The Register.
The RideMatch.info flaw provides inadequate scrutiny of user-generated text entered in search boxes and fields throughout the website. Hackers exploit the SQL injection vulnerability by passing commands directly into the back end database.
The vulnerability was identified and reported in August by Kristian Hermansen, a security researcher who was required by his employer to sign up for the service. His report to The Register stated, “The reason I am bringing this to your attention is that the issue is not being fixed by the admins and most companies don’t even know that their employee’s personal and corporate information may be been compromised.”
To date, the exploit has exposed hundreds of employees’ sensitive information across several organizations in S. California, including at least one military entity.
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Tags: Hackers, security bugs, SQL Injections, Website Vulnerabilities
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by FireHost Evangelist on September 1st, 2009
Overall, phishing attempts are down in the first half of 2009 as reported by IBM’s X-Force Team in the 2009 Mid-Year Trend & Risk Report.
The decrease is fueled by a decline in the number of traditional banks. Researchers speculate that this trend could be fueled by the financial crisis, or perhaps improved security measures when users login to “real” banks online is playing a role. Make no mistake however, hackers aren’t slowing down. They seem instead to be targeting Online Payment institutions instead as reflected in the rise of attacks over the last 18 months.
To further reinforce the movement toward Online Payment institutions, PayPal is mentioned in two of the top five subject lines from this year. (PayPal is included four times if you extend the list to the top ten slots.)
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Tags: Hackers, Phishing, Secure Web Hosting
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by FireHost Evangelist on August 25th, 2009
In a press release last week, Symantec revealed the top 100 dirtiest websites, but less than half of them (48%) were dirty in the way you’re thinking. The majority of the list’s subject matter features less scandalous content like catering, figure skating, legal services, and buying electronics.
Websites that made the list represent the “worst of the worst” based on the number of threats detected by Norton Safe Web. Without downloading or clicking on anything in particular, you risk exposing your computer to infection and revealing your personal and financial information into the hands of cyber criminals. Simply visiting one of these websites could infect your computer, so we don’t recommend you actually visit any of the websites that made the list.
So what makes these websites so dirty? Malware, security risks like phishing, and browser exploits top the list. In fact, the average number of threats found on the top dirtiest sites is… (ready for this?) 18,000, and 40 of the top 100 dirtiest websites have more than 20,000 unique threats each lurking in the shadows waiting to exploit unknowing visitors.
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Tags: dirtiest websites, Hackers, malware, Secure Web Hosting
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by FireHost Evangelist on August 7th, 2009
Panda Security‘s most recent report indicates that thirty percent of small and medium size businesses worldwide have been infected with malware, and businesses based in the US are even more susceptible. Close to half (44%) of US based SMBs have lost time and productivity due to some form of cybercrime.
A lack of threat awareness is not the problem. The study shows that almost all businesses in this category have installed anti-virus programs and kept security systems up to date, but a large number of SMBs still become victims of cyber crimes. When disaster strikes, viruses (41%) followed by spyware (26%) are most often the cause.
In a conversation with SC Magazine, Luis Corrons, PandaLabs technical director suggested, “these companies often lack the in-house staff and resources to fight off increasingly sophisticated and exponentially more targeted Internet attacks.” (more…)
Tags: cyber security, cybercrime, Hackers, Vulnerabilities, Website Security
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by FireHost Evangelist on July 17th, 2009
In an interview with SC Magazine, Symantec’s CEO and President Enrique Salem discussed the new security threats facing companies doing business on the internet. When asked about the top security threats, he responded with three.
“In 2009, we see three key trends that could impact IT security – a continued explosion of new malware variants, advanced web threats, and an uptick in threats related to social networking sites.” Mr. Salem reinforced that “cybercriminals are more sophisticated and driven than ever, and they operate in an increasingly profitable underground economy that makes it easy for them to not only buy and sell stolen information such as credit card data or even identities.”
Data from Symantec’s Global Intelligence Network indicates we have reached the point where there are more malicious programs created than legitimate programs every day, and that cyber attackers leverage vulnerabilities fueled by application code. Hackers compromise specific (often open source) websites, and then use them as a means for launching other attacks across the internet. (more…)
Tags: cybercrime, Hackers, protect open source applications, Secure Web Hosting, Security Threats, Website Vulnerabilities
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by FireHost Evangelist on June 16th, 2009
In less than one hour last Thursday, Internet security journalist Elinor Mills mastered the tools of the hacker trade at McAfee’s Malware Experience event.
It takes “as little as $300 to infect several Windows clients and take complete control of them in a test environment,” Mills reports. By using real samples of malicious code, she was able to infect PCs with a Sub Seven Trojan and gain remote access to the machines. Once inside the computers, she was exposed to some of the malicious tricks hackers can play on unsuspecting malware victims.
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Tags: Hackers, malware, Secure Web Hosting, Sub Seven Trojan
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by FireHost Evangelist on May 28th, 2009
Earlier this month, 21 year-old hacker, Philip Gabriel Pettersson (aka “Stakkato”), was named in a five-count indictment that includes one count of intrusion and two counts of trade secret misappropriation involving Cisco Systems, Inc. Read more at UPI.com
If an up and coming hacker/prodigy can penetrate the network of a publicly traded, global corporation with a security division, imagine how easily he could ruin your business.
Tags: Hackers, Website Security
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by on May 19th, 2009
On FireBlog, we’ve discussed several vulnerabilities found in open source applications, but it’s important to mention that vulnerabilities exist in even the most protected application code. Even Microsoft, which has a 1:1 ratio of programmers to quality control analysts, cannot always prevent their software from containing exploitable vulnerabilities.
In just the last few months, Microsoft has announced two vulnerabilities discovered in their popular Office application suite. Specifically, these vulnerabilities affect Excel and PowerPoint, and both flaws allow hackers to install malicious software or even hijack a computer completely. For more information about resolving these two vulnerabilities, read the full report by Computer World.
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Tags: Application Protection, Hackers, Microsoft, Vulnerability Exploitation
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