Sixty percent of virtual servers are less secure than the physical servers they replace, the analyst firm Gartner said in new research Monday. This state of affairs will remain true until 2012, but security should improve substantially after that point, Gartner said. Gartner predicted that by 2015, only 30% of virtualized servers will be less [...]
Archive for the ‘Security’ Category
Federal Government builds secret database to fight cyber-terrorism
Australia’s biggest banks, telcos, and utilities have handed sensitive data to government for the protection of critical infrastructure (CI) against terrorism and natural disasters. The rare move, which began in 2009, makes the country one of a few in the world with a centralised national critical infrastructure protection model. The Critical Infrastructure Protection Modeling and [...]
School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home
According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to [...]
Pro-porn hackers target government websites
An internet protest group has launched an attack on Government websites in a protest against the proposed internet filter and censorship of some pornography. The attack, dubbed Operation Titstorm by the group known as Anonymous, briefly brought down a number of Government websites this morning. Anonymous claimed the attack was to highlight moves by the [...]
TOR issues updated software after server breach
The TOR Project is advising users to upgrade to a new version of the software following a hack that compromised three of its servers. TOR, short for “The Onion Router,” is a worldwide network of servers that are used to help anonymize people’s Web surfing. Web traffic is randomly routed through many servers, masking critical [...]
The Danger of Hackers Getting Into Airplanes’ Flight Computers
As if we didn’t have enough with crotchbombs and the TSA, the FAA is now saying that “[passenger networking] may result in security vulnerabilities” exposing flight systems to hackers. But, how serious is this danger? The FAA says that their airworthiness tests “do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for these design features.” So [...]
OAuth and OAuth WRAP: defeating the password anti-pattern
The developers behind the OAuth protocol have developed a new variant called OAuth WRAP that is simpler and easier to implement. It’s a stop-gap solution that will enable broader OAuth adoption while OAuth 2.0, the next generation of the specification, is devised by a working group that is collaborating through the Internet Engineering Task Force [...]
Windows plagued by 17-year-old privilege escalation bug
A security researcher at Google is recommending computer users make several configuration changes to protect themselves against a previously unknown vulnerability that allows untrusted users to take complete control of systems running most versions of Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability resides in a feature known as the Virtual DOS Machine, which Microsoft introduced in 1993 with [...]
Security researcher IDs China link in Google hack
The malicious software used to steal information from companies such as Google contains code that links it to China, a security researcher said Tuesday After examining the back-door Hydraq Trojan used in the hack, SecureWorks researcher Joe Stewart found that it used an unusual algorithm to check for data corruption when it transmits information. The [...]
Google Hack Attack Was Ultra Sophisticated, New Details Show
Hackers seeking source code from Google, Adobe and dozens of other high-profile companies used unprecedented tactics that combined encryption, stealth programming and an unknown hole in Internet Explorer, according to new details released by the anti-virus firm McAfee. “We have never ever, outside of the defense industry, seen commercial industrial companies come under that level [...]