Security

The H-Online: According to a report, hackers, allegedly from China, had access to telecoms equipment manufacturer Nortel‘s IT systems over a period of several years – access that they took full advantage of. Citing an internal investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that, using seven passwords stolen from senior managers, intruders had access to almost all confidential information within Nortel from 2000 onwards. Brian Shields, the manager who led the Nortel investigation, is quoted as saying that the hackers “had access to everything”. Huge volumes of technical documents, research and development (R&D) reports, business plans and emails were downloaded over the course of several years. “They had plenty of time,” said Shields, “All they had to do was figure out what they wanted.” The seven stolen passwords included the password belonging to the company’s then CEO. The attackers have not been identified, but the WSJ notes that they appear to have been working from China. ...

SophosLabs: Scammers don’t just lure you into visiting their websites via email, Facebook and Twitter – you can be targeted on your mobile phone too. For instance, there have been numerous people on the internet who have reported receiving messages like the following: Apple needs iPhone5 testers! The first 1000 users who visit [LINK] and enter code 4444 will get to test & keep the new iPhone5. Of course, the promotion has nothing to do with Apple (who do not do public tests of their upcoming products), and – as the iPhone 5 hasn’t even been announced yet – you have close to zero chance of receiving a free smartphone. ...

The H-Online: As expected, Microsoft has released nine bulletins to close a total of 21 holes in its products. Four of the bulletins close critical vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, .NET and Silverlight, including an issue in the Windows kernel-mode drivers that became publicly known in December of last year. The company advises those responsible for prioritizing update deployment to focus on the critical patches for Internet Explorer and the C Runtime Library in Windows, as these could be exploited by an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code on a victim’s system. For an attack to be successful, a user must first visit a malicious web page or open a specially crafted file. The other critical bulletins fix issues in .NET and Silverlight, as well as the Windows kernel. Microsoft notes that it has yet to see any active attacks exploiting these issues in the wild. ...

The H-Online: Adobe has updated Shockwave Player on Windows and Mac OS X to version 11.6.4.634 after identifying nine critical vulnerabilities. The problems affect Shockwave Player 11.6.3.633 and all earlier versions on Windows and Mac OS X – Adobe recommend updating to the new release by downloading it from get.adobe.com/shockwave. To identify whether Shockwave Player is installed on a system, users should visit the test page on Adobe’s site. The majority of the problems are in the Shockwave 3D Asset where seven memory corruption vulnerabilities could lead to code execution; these were all reported by Hongnang Ren of FortiGuard Labs. An eighth memory corruption issue and a heap overflow vulnerability, both of which could also lead to code execution, were reported by “instruder” of vulnhunt.com and bring the flaw tally up to nine.

SophosLabs: A hacker, identified as a 17-year-old based in Morocco, claims to have stolen the personal information of 350,000 users from hardcore porn mavens Brazzers. The point, claims the hacker, was to highlight a security vulnerability on the adult site. According to reports, the teen uploaded a small small of the stolen data to the internet, displaying customer emails, usernames and passwords. Presumably to offer up proof that he was behind the breach. ...

SophosLabs: It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow and the spammers are out in force to make the most of unwitting shoppers on the international day of love. Looking to buy a present for someone this Valentine’s Day? Ooh look what popped into my inbox, an email inviting me to buy my Valentine an *ahem* “romantic” gift. Valentine's Day, the 14th February, is the day we celebrate our feelings of affection for our boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wives. It is traditional to do this with a special romantic gift. Looking for a Valentine's Day Gift for him or the perfect token of love for her? Look no further than here! ...

Sorin Mustaca wrote at Avira TechBlog: In case you’ve seen this on Facebook, try to not click on it even if you understand French (it appears to be only in Franch) because it will take you on a road where you don’t want to be. But, we like to live dangerous, so we analyzed this for you. Continue Reading at Avira TechBlog: http://techblog.avira.com/2012/02/13/new-captcha-method-or-just-another-likejacking-scam/en/

SophosLabs: ComputerWorld today reports that the UK’s Metropolitan Police has warned Windows users of a malware attack that poses as a message from the computer crime-fighting cops themselves. The ransomware attack attempts to lock the computer, and posing as an unofficial notice from a law enforcement agency, claims that the victim’s PC has been determined to have visited illegal websites. Only payment for a fine, claims the message, will restore the computer’s functionality. ...

The H-Online: Mozilla has released Firefox 10.0.1, Firefox ESR 10.0.1, Thunderbird 10.0.1, Thunderbird ESR 10.0.1 and SeaMonkey 2.7.1 to fix a single critical security hole in the browsers and mail clients which appeared in version 10. The security advisory says that versions previous to Firefox 10, Thunderbird 10 and SeaMonkey 2.7 are unaffected by the use after free problem. The problem was discovered by Mozilla developers and causes a “potentially exploitable” crash in nsXBLDocumentInfo::ReadPrototypeBindings. Updates are available through Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey’s automatic update system and can be made to install by bringing up the “About” dialogue for the relevant application and selecting the “Apply Upgrade” button when it appears. Firefox and Thunderbird 10 were released at the end of January. ...

The Hacker News: Hackers from Team r00tw0rm again hit NASA. According to Latest tweet by Hackers, They claim to hack the one of the Sudomain of Nasa (Link is not exposed by hackers and claimed to be reported for Fix). Hackers claim to hack GB’s of database and they Leaked sample of database include Users names, emails and Passwords , Contact as shown: ...