Advice

Adobe fixed the vulnerability in Flash Player in a record time again. Just one week after the 0-day became public and started to get exploited, an update is available to close the security hole. Even though Adobe Reader and Acrobat are affected (which are supposed to get an update in 2 weeks), until now we’ve only seen exploits against the Windows Flash Player. Users and administrators should update their Flash Player as soon as possible! The version 10.1.85.3 fixes the issue for Windows, Unix, Solaris and is available through Adobe’s download center. Android users can get the update to 10.1.95.1 on the Android Market Place. ...

One unique security feature of Android is the permission check when installing 3rd party apps. The system lists all permissions that an app requires and asks the user to check if that’s alright. Such permissions are the ability to receive your location, send or receive text messages, internet access, phone calls and many more. The user can be sure that the app is not doing any of such activities without the appropriate permission. In case the developer forgets to add a particular permission then the operating system will simply block the corresponding function which leads to a “Force Close”, which means the app will be terminated. ...

The Mozilla foundation just released the popular web browser Firefox in version 3.6.9. The new version fixes overall 14 security vulnerabilities of which 10 are rated critical by the developers. Additionally, they added a new feature called “X-FRAME-OPTIONS“-header which shall help mitigating clickjacking attacks as web site owners can ensure with this header that their content isn’t inserted into other sites via frames. The update is available through the automatic update mechanism ( via the “Help” – “Search for updates” menu). ...

A whole bunch of Windows applications is vulnerable to a so-called binary-planting attack which allows for remote code execution. Microsoft released a security advisory about this issue which isn’t easy to fix properly. This issue arises due to the (defined and well documented) behavior of Windows when loading libraries by an application. A .dll to load gets searched in a certain standard path list. This list also includes the current working directory, which is the place a document gets opened from for example. When a file with the name of a DLL which the corresponding application needs to load is placed into the working directory, it will get loaded – this can be a malicious DLL though. ...

The following internet advice which may have a subject title such as above could just get you killed. Like any other middle aged, balding, over-weight chap my mother still worries about me. So when her friend sent this to her and many other people, she forwarded it to me first:- Just in case!!! Let’s say it’s 6.15pm and you’re going home (alone of course), after an unusually hard day on the job. ...

One of the most common scenarios we observe on a daily basis are users coaxed into phishing campaigns and malicious applications on Facebook. As we interact with our friends and family on social networks, we tend to trust of any and all of the information that appears to be from our “trusted network.” However, Facebook is one of the most trolled social networks by cyber criminals. They are waiting for you to make a mistake and once you make it, they will be sure to hack you and exploit your friends trust through your newly hacked account. ...

It should go without saying that the best way to deal with malware is of course, not to get infected in the first place. Being aware of what products are being targeted by the bad guys may help you as well, so it may be useful to know that at the moment Adobe products are virtually the number one target across the world with millions of PCs being hit by infected Adobe PDFs. Others are being pwned via Adobe Flash ads via Facebook and other social media web sites. ...

You might avoid looking for photos of Miss USA Rima Fakih for a while. There is a controversy about a certain pole-dancing incident in her past that is stirring up the talk show circuits and the adolescent inside every male on the planet. It also has stirred up a massive number of SEO poisoned links to photos. In 2007, Fakih won a “Stripper 101” contest sponsored by a Detroit radio show “Mojo in the Morning.” And, of course, she was no sooner crowned Miss USA than somebody resurrected the “Stripper 101” video. And, of course, everybody is searching for “Rima Fakih pole dancing.” ...

A variety of sources are reporting that blog hosting sites with WordPress-created sites and php-based management systems such as Zen Care eCommerce are being infected with malicious scripts. Websites hosted by ISP DreamHost, GoDaddy, Bluehost and Media Temple have been found with the malcode, according to H-Online.com. The malicious scripts download malcode and block Google’s Safe Browsing API from alerting users. Story here: “Large-scale attack on WordPress” The Sucuri Security blog has offered clean-up instructions for those with infected pages here. ...

I had a look at my twitter page early this morning and read “Twitter is a rich source of insanity”, and thought “Wow, the twitter marketroids are really bold, but it’s a good line.” Upon re-reading, however, I realized that what it really said was “Twitter is a rich source of instantly updated information.” It might, however, have been a Freudian slip, because twitter got hacked yesterday, and bunches of celebs found they had been forced to follow the hacker. Even worse, as it struggled to right the ship, twitter temporarily removed their followers, and celebs found themselves in the traumatic position of being unpopular, at least for a while. ...