Intel was also a victim of a cyberattack at the same time as the high-profile attack on Google, adding it to the list of companies allegedly targeted by Chinese hackers. The company revealed the information Tuesday in its annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, noting that the attack could harm Intel’s business operations if any intellectual property was stolen.
via Intel victim of cyberattacks at the same time as Google.
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. To quote a line from the Mozilla Firefox crash report helper, “Well, this is embarrassing.” Suffice it to say, security by obscurity not really security. It’s like putting something in a dark room then blindfolding a person and telling them to hit it with a stick. If they swing enough times, they will hit it. The only real surprise in this story is that it hasn’t happened sooner. And truth be told, these “insurgents” probably didn’t pay $26 for this SkyGrabber program; they probably got it from some P2P network.
–Kelly
Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
This is good news. I’ve always been annoyed that commercials were so much louder than the programs. I might actually watch them if they were the same volume as the program I was watching. As it stands now, I feel like I’m getting yelled at. A good next step would be to extend this bill to include radio ads as well.
– Kelly
“This problem has existed for more than 50 years, but no one has properly addressed it,” Eshoo said. “Under the CALM Act, consumers will no longer have to dive for the mute button.”
Irritated with loud commercials, the California Democrat found it was also a common complaint with the Federal Communications Commission. So she drafted a bill aimed at preventing TV ads from playing noticeably louder than the programs they sponsor.
This goes right along the lines of what I’ve posted here before. If some supposed antivirus scan pops up out of the blue and tells you there are 10,000 infected files on your machine, be very wary. Good, reputable antivirus and antimalware software won’t find you; you have to find it.
–Kelly
Scareware, fake anti-virus (AV) programs alarming users into thinking their machines are infected, is on the rise.
So says Sergey Golovanov, senior malware analyst, non-Intel research group manager at Kaspersky Lab, during an interview at the company's New Horizons media tour. “These programs are widespread and are being used by cyber criminals more and more. To date, the company has seen around 320 families of fake AV.”
Users who fear that the access credentials of their email accounts have appeared on the recently published list can now run a test to check. On Serversniff, Thomas Springer has set up a page that checks whether an email address appears on the known lists. To run the test, users simply enter the part of their email address before the “@” and the system will display any matching entries. However, only the first and last letter of the password will appear.
via Test for compromised email accounts – News – The H Security: News and features.
There is also a link to this page in the “Quick Links” section in the right column.
There have been a number of government inquiries into the security of electricity companies worldwide because of the fear that hackers, terrorists or cyber warriors for a rival country might take control of electric power grids. Now it would seem that such fears might have been realised.
However in Oz there could be some concern that notoriously insecure Windows machines were even being used for critical infrastructure systems. The Slashdot submission says that the power grid’s system control and data acquisition (SCADA) servers run Solaris Unix and the operator consoles only really need to run X-windows displays. The question is why the utility would choose to run X on Windows boxes merely to talk to the UNIX-based SCADA servers that control the electrical grid.
A good question indeed. Italics mine.