Security

Windows Vista & Windows 7 Kernel Bug Can Bypass UAC

Published: November 30, 2010 Reading Time: 4 min

Now this is not the first time Windows UAC has hit the news for being flawed, back in February 2009 it was discovered that Windows 7 UAC Vulnerable – User Mode Program Can Disable User Access Control and after that in November 2009 it was demonstrated that Windows 7 UAC (User Access Control) Ineffective Against Malware. A zero-day for Windows 7 back in July of this year also bypassed Windows UAC. ...

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WikiLeaks Hit By Another DDoS Attack

Published: November 30, 2010 Reading Time: 2 min

Controversial whistleblower website WikiLeaks was hit by another massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack earlier this morning. On Sunday, the site was taken down for several hours via a sustained DDoS attack, just hours before the release of thousands of secret U.S. documents. Responsibility for Sunday’s attack was claimed by a single hacker, the Jester, though many are skeptical that it was the work of just one person. Today’s attack, which was initially focused on http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/, has been much more intense. At 9:00 a.m. ET, WikiLeaks tweeted, “DDOS attack now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second.” ...

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Hacker Takes Responsibility for Wikileaks Takedown

Published: November 30, 2010 Reading Time: 2 min

Mashable: The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that took down WikiLeaks as the site published secret U.S. embassy cables over the weekend could be the work of a single hacker, working for his own agenda. The hacker, called the Jester (or th3j35t3r), describes himself as a “hacktivist for good” and posts the message “TANGO DOWN” after a successful attack, together with a link of the sites he takes down. The focus of his attacks, the Jester claims in his Twitter Bio, is “obstructing the lines of communication for terrorists, sympathizers, fixers, facilitators, oppressive regimes and other general bad guys.” ...

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Politics and malware make strange bedfellows

Published: November 30, 2010 Reading Time: 3 min

Sophos Labs: There are two stories that have been the focus of much speculation that have come to some closure today. New information confirming many peoples suspicions about Aurora and Stuxnet have been reported by Wikileaks.org and Reuters. As has been widely reported Wikileaks began releasing over 250,000 previously secret diplomatic cables that it is assumed they received from PFC. Bradley Manning. Most of the cables are as uninteresting as reading your friends Yahoo! mail. ...

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Fake Trojan Removal Kit serves up ThinkPoint Rogue

Published: November 30, 2010 Reading Time: 1 min

You might want to steer clear of the following fake security program, being promoted as a “Windows Trojan Removal Kit” but actually hijacking your PC in the form of the ThinkPoint rogue with a mixed (24/43) detection rate. The file is currently being offered up by your typical “fake security scan” pages, such as microsoftwindowssecurity152(dot)com. Those familiar with this particular rogue will be aware that it tends to stick with domains similar to the one above. ...

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Can you really see who viewed your Facebook profile? Rogue application spreads virally

Published: November 28, 2010 Reading Time: 3 min

SophosLab: Once again, a rogue application is spreading virally between Facebook users pretending to offer you a way of seeing who has viewed your profile. As we’ve described a couple of times before, plenty of Facebook users would *love* to know who has been checking them out online.. but unfortunately scammers are aware of this, and use the lure of such functionality as a way to trick you into making bad decisions. ...

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Comment on Stuxnet and more Windows 0-days

Published: November 28, 2010 Reading Time: 2 min

Over the last few days, some news organizations have been saying that Stuxnet source code is available on the black market, and that clearly therefor there is an impending Internet Armageddon. This is patently silly, on a number of levels, but silly none-the-less. First thing is that I flat-out don’t believe Stuxnet source is available for sale on the black market or anywhere. Remember how often I say that if something sounds too good to be true, it’s not true? Well, the opposite applies too. If something sounds too bad to be true, it’s not true either. We really don’t know who built Stuxnet, or who the intended target was, be we may rest assured that whoever put that much work into it, isn’t selling it, at any price. It’s actually more probable that some no-honor-among-thieves bad guy is scamming fellow bad guys. “Sure, this is Stuxnet source code. Prove otherwise.” ...

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Closer look at W32/Ramnit.C

Published: November 28, 2010 Reading Time: 3 min

Thomas Wegele, Virus Researcher from Avira wrote: In this month’s ITW malware set from the Wildlist organization two new variants of W32/Ramnit appeared. W32/Ramnit is a Worm spreading via infected executable files and infected HTML Files. It is a quite widespread malware – which is why we decided to dig deeper into it. Upon execution the malware creates a new file in the directory where it was started. This file is named “mgr.exe”. It then gets executed and creates a copy of itself in “C:%ProgramDir%\Microsoft\WaterMark.exe” which also gets executed after creation and in turn infects the EXE, DLL and HTML files found on the system and tries to connect to a server. ...

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Beware the Justin Bieber erection Facebook scam

Published: November 24, 2010 Reading Time: 3 min

That’s possibly the most unlikely headline I’ve ever had to write in my computer security career, but never mind.. My guess is that regular readers of the Naked Security site might not be ardent fans of Justin Bieber – but chances are that some of you have young daughters or nieces who can’t get enough of the pint-sized pop hamster. If that’s the case then they might be intrigued by a message that is spreading virally across the Facebook social network claiming to be footage of… and how can I put this delicately? I don’t think I can.. Justin Bieber with an erection. ...

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Christmas Tree app virus hoax spreads on Facebook

Published: November 24, 2010 Reading Time: 2 min

Thousands of Facebook users are warning each other about a Christmas Tree virus said to be spreading in the form of a rogue application on the social network. The only problem with this warning? It’s utterly bogus. Here’s a typical message being shared widely on Facebook: WARNING!!!!!!…..DO NOT USE THE Christmas tree app. on Facebookplease be advised it will crash your computer. Geek squad says its oneof the WORST trojan-viruses there is and it is spreading quickly.Re-post and let your friends know. THANKS PLEASE REPOST! ...

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