Take That: A Million Botnets Later…
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Security on
Although the word from security specialists MessageLabs that cyber-criminals are getting ready for a Christmas phishing frenzy is not exactly unexpected, the scale of the darknet activity certainly is. Apparently the botnet being put together in order to enable the web high street phishing expedition is already getting very close to one million PCs in size, the largest botnet reported for more than two years. What
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The Da Vinci Code connection
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in BT on
BT has continued to beef up its global professional services and security solutions presence by acquiring network security specialists Counterpane. Founded by Bruce Schneier, one of the best known, most vocal, and highly respected security and cryptography experts, the company provides outsourced security for large corporate networks, monitoring in excess of 500 networks for Fortune 100 business and multinationals around the world. Covering Microsoft and Oracle databases, SAP ERP applications and IBM mainframes, and with three data centres in the US and Europe it is a clever and prudent buy for BT who will, I am informed, integrate it into its Professional Services arm from April next year.
I first heard rumours that the takeover was on the radar a couple of months ago when I was the guest speaker at a BT
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It’s the PC soap: Dell vs HP
By Davey Winder in Editorial
So, it is official then: Dell is no longer the world
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Botnet spam tricks are bad for business
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Spam on
Look out folks, the SpamThru Trojan which has been out in the wild for some months has just got even more dangerous, or so my security vendor research lab insiders tell me, and it was already one mean mother. The latest version of the thing has all the trappings of being backed by one of the better funded criminal gangs, it is no script kit concoction that is for sure, despite it being based on an already existing exploit.
Indeed, it uses pirated copies of Kaspersky Lab AV software to clean the bots that it infects and so get rid of competing infections that would otherwise use CPU resources that it wants total ownership of. One really cannot help but to have just the slightest tinge of admiration for the pond-life that come up with these things, purely from the devious use of technology perspective of course. These guys figured out that by using the same API as embedded within the WinGate proxy software they could get Kaspersky software to do their dirty work for them. The code being developed now is not your typical back bedroom spotty oink stuff of a few years back, but of a quality right up there with games developers, application software developers and the like. Indeed, one has to suspect that talented coders are making the conscious decision to take the dark-development route, most likely spurred on by a hefty financial incentive.
Indeed, SpamThru is so clever that it actually encrypts all the spam message templates that it distributes to the bot network, and even uses a fully custom P2P protocol for inter-bot machine communication. This allows it to avoid the problem that some spam botnets encounter when a central control server is knocked out of play. SpamThru can simply and quickly update all bots with new control server details using the P2P network.
So should you be worried? You betcha. Ignore the small size of the botnet as it stands currently, which I am led to believe is between 2000 and 3000 bots, it is the technology being used that concerns me and should concern you. This, plus the fact that some researchers are pointing to links between these small botnets and a much larger controlling botnet in the background. Spam is big business that is bad for your business, that is the bottom line. But it is likely to be the smaller business that is infected, as enterprise level protection should kick SpamThru out of the field before it could do any damage. By forcing host based firewalls to click through
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IE7 and Opera hit by security scares
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Uncategorized on
So Microsoft finally make the release version of Internet Explorer 7 available for download and within hours the vulnerabilities are reported. Secunia have reported a problem with the handling of redirections using the mhtml URI handler which could be used to in phishing attacks.
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AV(Sophos) + AS(Webroot) = A Security Partnership Worth Watching
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Uncategorized on
Most of the press releases that float across my radar are, to be brutal, nothing more than fishing exercises. A little bit of bait dangled out across the cyber-ether in the, usually highly over-optimistic, hope of catching a bored journalist off guard. Sometimes the hook has a juicy enough worm to catch my attention, as was the case with the news that one of my favourite providers of enterprise Anti-Spyware software had jumped into bed with one of my favourite providers of enterprise Anti-Virus protection. The only mystery was why the affair had taken so long to get going.
Webroot has announced that it is to license Sophos’s AV technology for use in
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The war against spam goes global (US stylee)
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Spam on
In a statement entitled
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Managed insecurity
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Uncategorized on
A long time ago, in another life, I was a hacker. Back then it involved actually having some understanding of the networks you wanted to explore, an ability to think on your feet and to learn as you went. It also involved an acoustic coupler and a modem the size of a shoebox (and about as speedy) but what it didn
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Beyond Email: BlackBerry Takes Aim at Applications
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Uncategorized on
I spent Tuesday morning at The Hospital, but I wasn
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Get the message: IM is not secure
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Security on
A new report by the Aberdeen Group admittedly sponsored by a number of security vendors, has revealed that 91% of companies see virus and malware as either medium or high on the threat rating list, and 86% put spam at the same level, but this drops to just 72% when the external interception of confidential data is in the risk frame. Well, I say
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