ParetoLogic

Yahoo!'s Instant Messenger Targeted by Phishers

Zdnet have an interesting article about the use of phishing techniques being used on Yahoo!'s Instant Messaging service, Yahoo! Messenger.  Yahoo! reported that it was being targeted by scammers last Thursday. It would seem that users are  being sent messages asking them to click on a link to a site that resembles the Yahoo! one,  once there they are asked to sign in using their username and password.

The worrying part of all this is that the requests look like they come from someone on the  Yahoo! friends' list.

How do they  get the friend's email? Well. once you've got into one yahoo! account you can tap into the email addresses that are held in the account.

A Yahoo! spokesman had this to say:

"Hackers have become very devious in their methods to obtain personal information. In this case, the hacker was able to trick the user into providing personal information by disguising their identity to make it appear that the message was coming from a trusted source."

In the past couple of months Microsoft's MSN Messenger service has been hit by various malware, including a Trojan horse and a virus. as recently as February MSN Messenger users were forced to update their client software to prevent one of the worms spreading around its network.

Security Special Report from Computerworld

Computerworld has got a very useful 'Security Special Report', packed full of tools and techniques designed to help you prevent security disasters. Here are some of the highlights of the report:

Proactive Security: How to build a security organization and select tools that can foil internal and external attacks.
Security on the Offensive: Tired of being under attack, companies are taking preventive steps to head off security breaches.
Baked-In Security: Catch flaws at the application development stage to avoid costly breaches.
Supersmart Security: Fresh from the lab, these intelligent security systems are designed to recognize new threats and limit damage.
Secure the People: Most companies are overlooking their biggest security hole -- their people, says Mark Hall.

Hackers Acquire Details of 59,000 California State University Affiliates

The California State University has discovered that the personal details of 59,000 "affiliates" of the university have been gained by hackers. The university discovered the attacks during routine monitoring of its networks. It would appear that victims' names, including Social Security numbers were accessed after the attackers had first placed software on the system. Joe Wills, a spokesman for the university, had this to say:

"We still have no indication that the information was used for anything other than somebody wanting to have illegal access to this server,'' Wills said. "Typically, on a college campus that can be to download files, music and games. There's still no indication they were looking to take personal information.''

This is not the first time that a university has been targeted - last year the University of California's (San Diego) computer system was compromised.

Via: SiliconValley.com

Antivirus Products Struggle to Cope with Spyware

Having thwarted attempts to rob the Japanese bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Bank, security experts are warning that anti-virus software products are struggling to cope with the increase of Spyware, especially those relating to keystroke logging. According to Wikipedia, keystroke logging is:

...  a diagnostic used in software development that captures the user's keystrokes. It can be useful to determine sources of error in computer systems.

Keystroke logging can be achieved by both hardware and software means. Commercially available systems include devices which are attached to the keyboard cable (and thus are instantly installable, but visible if the user makes a thorough inspection) and also devices which can be installed in keyboards (and are thus invisible, but require some basic knowledge of soldering to install). Writing software applications for keylogging is trivial, and like any computer program can be distributed as a trojan horse or as part of a virus or worm.

Keyword loggers are thought to have played a major part in the foiled robbery. They way it would have worked in the planned robbery heist is that the attackers would have used a "backdoor" that would allow them to read all the logins and passwords used. Here is the gloomy pictured painted by Paul Woods:

"The greatest threat is the false sense of security people get from using antivirus software. Antivirus software is not very effective against new forms of spyware, it can only protect against viruses it already knows about."

The New Scientist magazine has an interesting story, entitled Attempted cyber-heist raises keylogging fears, on its website.

Adobe Acrobat Announces Security Flaws

Adobe Acrobat has warned users of security flaws that can affect Mac OX, Microsoft Windows and Unix versions of its Acrobat solutions. According to PC Magazine:

The first flaw affects Version 6.0.2 of Acrobat Reader, according to security-research firm iDefense, which discovered both bugs. Earlier versions of Acrobat Reader 6 may also be vulnerable, and Adobe Acrobat may also be affected, iDefense said. Adobe has released Version 6.0.3 of both Acrobat and Reader for the Windows and Mac OS X platforms, which fixes the problem. (Version 7 should be available by the time you read this.)

T-Shirt Company Raises the Bar on Spyware - by Using a Shotgun!

Retro Duck is a Michigan-based company which sells vintage shirts on the web - think Gremlins, Taxi, Charlie's Angels, E.T. or Barabara Streisand. Having had numerous run-ins with Spyware they came up with a novel idea to finally get rid of it - use a shotgun and then sell it on to someone else through eBay! Here's their eBay listing:

Acer Laptop – Like Used – Slightly Shotguned - Spyware

RetroDuck.com has been experimenting with new ways to eliminate Spyware from our company computers. This endeavor has cost us hundreds of man hours, and a ridiculous number of computers. On this particular laptop, we researched a combination of verbal vulgarity and 12 gauge shotgun shells. The results of our research will be published in our forth coming book, “Spyware Go Bye Bye.” Own this piece of RD R & D history.

This laptop has: moderate virus protection, withstands drops and falls, and a sleek slim design. If the hard drives are still working, maybe you could identity theft us or something. We recommend that the winning bidder buy insurance, as we would hate to see this laptop get damaged in transit. Ground shipping will be $10.

As of today (March 16, 2004) the item had received 37 bids and had been viewed by many thousands of people. Bidding ends March 19.

Update: The winning bid was for $280.

Survey Reveals Extent of Wi-fi Security

A recent survey of wireless networks found that a third of users had their default security settings turned off. The RSA Security which was conducted in London, Frankfurt, New York and San Francisco revealed that this was even worse than last year's figure of 15%. Here are some observations from a BBC article - Warnings on woeful wi-fi security - on the results:

Although most firms do take steps to turn on the security functions built in to the wi-fi standard and protect themselves from attack, the survey found that a significant proportion were taking unnecessary risks.

On average 33% of the wireless networks found by RSA and NetSurity researchers in London, Frankfurt, New York and San Francisco had not used basic security systems.

Many firms were simply turning on their wireless net access points and use default settings that anyone familiar with wi-fi could easily find out.

The rapid rise of wireless hotspots has also seen an increase in "drive-by hacking", where criminals cruise city centers looking for wi-fi nets. Yet many users are failing to turn on "the encryption that scrambles data traffic between users and the access point helping them go online."

Latest Version of Firefox will Fix Security Vulnerabilities

If you don’t yet know it, Firefox is the latest rival to Internet Explorer and, boy, is it making inroads into its market share. To date there have been almost 27 million downloads – in just over 4 months! – and most users are raving about it.

Aside from the functionality of the product, one of its main claims to fame has been the fact that it is more stable and secure than Internet Explorer. However, even Firefox has its vulnerabilities and last month it released version 1.01 to fix a number of bugs. According to an article in CNET, entitled Firefox fix plugs security holes:

The open-source project released Firefox 1.0.1 to fix, among other bugs, a vulnerability in the Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), a standard for handling special character sets in domain names that lets companies register domain names that appear to be the same in different languages.

The IDN vulnerability allowed an attacker to create a fake Web site on a non-Microsoft browser in order to pull off a phishing scam. A spoofed link would seem to be a legitimate URL in the address bar of affected browsers. But instead of taking the victim to the trusted site, the link would lead to a phony Web site with a domain rendered as the same address under the IDN process.

You can download the latest version of Firefox from the Firefox web site.

Federal Trade Commission Targets Spyware Company

It looks like the US Federal Trade Commission has its sights on a spyware company which, it says is “fraudulently claiming to detect spyware infections and selling spyware removal software that failed to clean infections.” and whose marketing practices it describes as 'phony' and 'deceptive'. Apparently,  the company in question, MaxTheatre, also made extreme claims about the threat of Spyware, such as:

'You WILL eventually experience credit card and/identity theft and your computer will ultimately crash and cease working for good . . . It's not a matter of if, but truly a matter of when.'

It would seem that on visiting a company’s website a pop-up window would appear saying a remote scan of the user’s system had detected  spyware and that in order to do a full scan, it would be necessary to download the software and carry out a local scan. The FTC, however, found that this window popped up even on ‘clean’ machines and furthermore, the Spware Assassin tool “failed to remove 'substantially all' genuine spyware on an infected computer.” 

Via: Federal Trade Commission raps spyware company for false detection  (PC Pro)

Not Just Novices Get Hit by Malware

Lisa DiCarlo is a Senior Editor at Forbes.com and in a recent article,  entitled My Computer Meltdown, she relates the story of how she fell victim to malware:

Blam! Blam! Blam! I'm hit with dozens of weird-looking pop-up ads and dire-sounding messages all over the screen. I can't click them away fast enough. Out of the corner of my eye I see the words "deleting files" in the bottom right of my screen. What?! Deleting files? What files?

The fact that she has covered the tech industry for years, owned a myriad of different computers and is no technophobe, still gave her no immunity.  As she points out, "Malware is the reason that the $10 billion computer security industry continues to thrive. Millions of people are impacted by problems: At the very least it's an annoyance. At the very worst, computer users can have their identities stolen."

Like many people who have gone through this experience, she tries to work out what damage could have been caused and attempts to avert any future loss/pain through contacting her bank and ISP - though the latter results in huge time losses.  The two other issues are the inconvenience caused  - difficulty in  emails and finding out information like what's on in the cinema!  - and the cost: $289. It  makes for painful, yet necessary, reading!!