Security

Articles about Security on omid.dev — guides, topics, and notes from the field.

Anonymous hacks NATO servers

Published: July 22, 2011 Reading time: 2 min

Anonymous claims to have stolen around a gigabyte of classified NATO data The H-Online Security wrote: In a post on Twitter, the Anonymous hacker group said that it has managed to steal a number of secret documents from one of NATO‘s servers. As proof, Anonymous published two PDF documents from 2007 and 2008 that are allegedly from NATO. The classification “NATO Restricted” suggests that the documents are intended only for circulation within the organisation – if they are genuine. The hacktivists say they copied a gigabyte of data in total, but added that it would be “irresponsible” to publish most of the material. ...

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Using data to protect people from malware

Published: July 20, 2011 Reading time: 2 min

This is an article posted in Google Online Security Blog, it’s about unusual traffics being sent from infected computers during search or web surfing, if you think this story applies to you too, try to clean your computers from malwares by following my manual here in my website: Malware Removal (Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog) The Internet brings remarkable benefits to society. Unfortunately, some people use it for harm and their own gain at the expense of others. We believe in the power of the web and information, and we work every day to detect potential abuse of our services and ward off attacks. ...

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The top 10 passcodes you should never use on your iPhone

Published: June 14, 2011 Reading time: 3 min

Are you one of the many people who is using a dangerously easy-to-guess passcode on your iPhone? Maybe you should do something about it – sooner rather than later. The warning comes after new research suggested that 15% of all iPhone owners use one of just ten passwords on their lock screen: Apple iPhone app developer Daniel Amitay published the interesting research, looking at the four digit passcodes that users choose to secure their systems with. ...

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The old dogs are still in learning mode

Published: June 4, 2011 Reading time: 3 min

Norman Security Blog wrote a good article about Fake AVs and their new variants and how to protect ourselves, Credit to my friend, Pondus, for sharing this: Background Fake antimalware has become a profitable industry for the cybercriminals. New variants appear on a daily basis, and new techniques for tricking the users are fine-tuned. A few weeks ago we wrote in our security article – Cybercriminals focus on new targets – about fake antimalware for Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. In its security update 2011-003 for Mac OS X, available 31 May, Apple enhanced considerably its protection against malware. This includes the ability to automatically download new malware signatures, similar to the functionality found in standard antimalware tools. This signifies that Apple now regards its Mac OS X platform as a serious target for cybercriminals. ...

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Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper

Published: June 3, 2011 Reading time: 2 min

ghacks.net: Microsoft has just released a beta of a system recovery software. Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper has been designed to aid users in starting an infected PC and performing offline malware scans to remove viruses, trojans, rootkits and other forms of malware effectively. It is also used if malware is hindering the user to install or start an antivirus software on the infected system, or if the applications used to detect malware are not able to find the malware on the PC. ...

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Facebook: Keeping You Safe from Scams and Spam

Published: May 20, 2011 Reading time: 4 min

Facebook Security: Facebook is committed to bringing you a safe experience on the Internet, and today we are announcing several new features to help protect you while online. Partnership with Web of Trust First, we’re happy to announce a partnership with Web of Trust . Web of Trust is a free safe surfing tool that tells you which websites you can trust based on the ratings supplied by other Web of Trust community members. Facebook already has a system that automatically scans links to determine whether the websites associated with those links are spammy or contain malware. ...

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Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office and OpenOffice compared

Published: April 20, 2011 Reading time: 3 min

Since 2003, the number of exploitable vulnerabilities has fallen considerably in Microsoft’s Office suite. H-Online: Independently of each other, security specialists Dan Kaminsky and Will Dormann from Carnegie Mellon University’s CERT have found that, in the past few years, the number of flaws and exploitable vulnerabilities in individual versions of Microsoft Office has fallen dramatically, achieving results that are even below those ofOpenOffice. However, their findings should be treated with caution, as they are based on automatic evaluations and say little about the actual threat potential. ...

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The Update Wave is rolling: Apple, Adobe, Google

Published: April 15, 2011 Reading time: 1 min

Avira TechBlog: Today some updates need attention – they fix critical security issues and should be installed immediately! The update reign starts off with Apple. Critical security vulnerabilities are closed within the Safari web browser 5.0.5 – they allowed cyber criminals to smuggle in malware. For Mac users, additionally a security update is available for the Snow Leopard operating system. It fixes an issue with stolen certificates which arose a three weeks ago at Comodo and is amazingly tiny for an Apple security update, only 4 MByte. And then for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users the update to iOS 4.3.2 is available which basically closes the same security holes for the mobile devices as well. ...

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Facebook password changed? Malware attack poses as message from Facebook support

Published: April 14, 2011 Reading time: 2 min

Sophos Labs: Repeat after me: It’s “Facebook”, not “FaceBook”. Learn that lesson and it can be one of the tricks you can use to protect yourself against a spammed-out malware campaign, which tries to trick you into believing that Facebook support has changed your password. Computer users are receiving emails claiming that the popular social network has automatically changed their password to secure their account. Here’s a typical message: ...

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WordPress.com suffers hacker attack – how to change your password

Published: April 14, 2011 Reading time: 2 min

Sophos Labs: Millions of blog owners around the world are being advised to consider their password security, after WordPress.com was hacked. To its credit, Automattic – the company behind the WordPress.com blogging platform – didn’t mince its words or try to apply any spin to the incident, explaining it had suffered a “low-level (root) break-in to several of [its] servers, and potentially anything on those servers could have been revealed.” ...

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