Carberp + BlackHole = growing fraud incidents
This article examines the relationship between the Black Hole exploit kit and Win32/Carberp.
Vulnerability
Much Ado About Facebook, Part II
Since yesterday’s Much Ado About Facebook post in the ESET Threat Blog, we have written additional articles, received a few comments, and also received updated information on the “threat,” so it seems that now is a good time for a follow-up article. Reports continue to come in of pornographic and violent imagery on Facebook, and
DoS Apache killer
Amidst a lack of fanfare this past weekend on a mailing list, a memory exhaustion hack popped up for the Apache webserver that may result in a Denial-of-Service (DoS) style attack. Since the Apache application serves up north of 65% of the websites on the internet, a plausible attack becomes quite an issue, especially if
Facebook Facial Recognition – A picture is worth a thousand words
Facebook recently launched a facial recognition feature that allows you and others to “tag” photos with your name. As has been the norm for Facebook, this “feature” is turned on by default and users must take their own initiative to limit, or turn it off. The implications are wide-ranging, so if you or anyone in
MS10‑092 and Stuxnet
...among the 17 security bulletins just released by Microsoft on Patch Tuesday, MS10-092 addresses the Task Scheduler vulnerability prominently exploited by Win32/Stuxnet...
Facebook Competitor Faces Criticism – Is Diaspora DOA?
Really – should any Alpha version be fed through a chipper-shredder like Diaspora has? The basics are simple: The basic premise behind Diaspora is that it will allow users to have social networking functionality similar to that offered by Facebook, but with far greater control over personal data. Diaspora was born earlier this year largely
Java: Worse than Adobe and Microsoft for vulnerabilities?
Brian Krebs thinks so: Java is now among the most frequently-attacked programs, and appears to be fast replacing Adobe as the target of choice for automated exploit tools used by criminals. Of the systems which I personally administrate as the ‘Chief Family Technology Officer’, the Java updates constantly annoy and confuse my mom who uses
Operation Cyber ShockWave
While serving in the Marine Corps, one activity that I felt was effective in preparing both myself and my unit to be able to handle real-world scenarios, was getting as much experience as possible from military training exercises. In most cases multiple branches worked together or, as in the case with NATO exercises, multiple countries
Adobe, Javascript, and the CVE‑2009‑4324 Exploit
There has been quite a lot of traffic in the last few weeks about the doc.media.newPlayer vulnerability referenced in the CVE database as CVE-2009-4324. The following Adobe articles refer: http://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa09-07.html http://blogs.adobe.com/psirt/2009/12/new_adobe_reader_and_acrobat_v.html http://blogs.adobe.com/psirt/2009/12/security_advisory_apsa09-07_up.html Today’s article at the Internet Storm Center by Bojan Zdrnja (http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=7867) gives a lot of detail on a particularly inventive exploit of the
The Blame Game
I recently learned a new acronym: SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It). What this refers to is the defense that criminals routinely use (plausible deniability) – and even more so when it comes to illicit activities on the Internet. On Sunday, November 8th 2009 the Associated Press published an article regarding an individual that was
Cybersecurity Awareness Month – Awareness for the Next Generation
“Now may I suggest some of the things we must do if we are to make the American dream a reality. First, I think all of us must develop a world perspective if we are to survive. The American dream will not become a reality devoid of the larger dream of brotherhood and peace and
CARO and AMTSO
In previous blogs, I mentioned that some of the presentations from the CARO workshop a couple of weeks ago were likely to be made available publicly. Unfortunately for non-attendees, most of the presentations are only available to people who were there: however, some can be downloaded by the public from here. In case I didn’t
Vulnerability Musings and Reflexive Thinking
Some of us are currently enjoying some excellent presentations at a CARO workshop in Budapest on exploits and vulnerabilities. Hopefully, some of them will eventually be made public, so that we’ll be able to include pointers to specific resources. While there’s been a great deal of technical detail made available that has passed me by
Adobe: Wake Up & Smell the Javascript
Ever since Adobe’s recent updates to Acrobat and Reader, I’ve been irritated by the fact that every time I open a PDF, I’m prompted to re-enable JavaScript, which I disabled while we were all waiting patiently for those patches to the last round of vulnerabilities. “This document contains JavaScripts. Do you want to enable JavaScripts
Excel Exploit
There was a comment posted today on an article on the SC Magazine site from someone who seemed to think we were talking up an obsolete exploit. He seems to have been thinking about this one: “Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-014 – Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution (949029)”. (Which fixes this issue,
Excel Exasperation, Acrobat Aggro
As The Register has pointed out, the Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for March 2009 doesn’t mention a forthcoming patch for the Excel vulnerability we’ve already flagged in this blog here and here and here. Since, as John Leyden remarks, the exploit is being actively exploited, it may seem that Microsoft are not taking the issue seriously
MS09‑002 Exploits: Old Dogs, New Tricks?
A few days ago, I promised (threatened) to make some general points about biasing test results, but travel and other obligations have been getting in the way. I’ll get back to that very shortly, but in the meantime, I want to look at an issue with the latest round of Microsoft patches that I was
Confused about Conficker?
CNN reported that there a new sleeper virus out there. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/ptech/01/16/virus.downadup/index.html There is nothing sleepy about the Conficker worm, it is wide awake and looking for people who are asleep at the security wheel. CNN reports that Conficker could allow hackers to steal personal and financial data, and they also report that it “it is
Top 25 Programming Errors
Not one of our Top X lists, this time, but one featured in an article on the SANS site. SANS have been banging the drum for safer coding for quite a while – in fact, they do quite a few courses on safe coding in various development contexts. Admittedly, that gives them a financial incentive to fly
Twitter Security: Tweetie Pie Panic
[Update info moved to new blog post on 6th January] In deference to all those old enough to get a panic attack when reminded of how bad pop music was capable of being in the 1970s, I’ll try to overcome by the urge to mention “Chirpy Chirpy Tweet Tweet”. Anyway, to business. Having all the