Security
New Zealand convicts 18-year-old botherder
18-year-old New Zealander, Owen Thor Walker, pleaded guilty earlier this week to six charges of using computers for illegal purposes. Walker, has been accused of playing a key role in a gang that infected 1.3 million computers around the world, installing revenue-generating adware and stealing information worth US $20 million.
Full story at Sophos.
Perfect Password Process
The problem that I’m trying to solve … using a different, strong password for each online account (or more precisely managing it, so that it doesn’t go belly-up when I want to log in to site X, Y or Z).
A quick audit of my (non-work related) online accounts (e.g. banking, DNS, email, FTP, ISP, [...]
FBI roasts more botherders
In a previous post I blogged about an FBI bot-roast. Well, now they’ve conducted the second phase, bot roast II, which has revealed more than $20 million in economic loss and more than one million victim computers. As a result, eight individuals have been indicted, pled guilty, or been sentenced for crimes related to botnet [...]
VPN for iPhone
HotSpotVPN is available for the iPhone.
Trojan infects Mac OS X, with users consent
A trojan horse has been identified that can affect (and infect) Mac OS X.
Intego has named this malware the OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan Horse (Intego’s press release).
It has been found on several pornography web sites, claiming to install a video codec necessary to view free pornographic videos on Macs. If installed, it changes the Mac’s [...]
Confidential data lost by the Revenue
Confidential data lost by the Revenue – Daily Telegraph, November 9, 2007.
HM Revenue & Customs has lost thousands of people’s confidential data on a computer disc that went missing on its way to Standard Life’s pensions department.
Names, National Insurance Contribution (NIC) numbers, dates of birth and pension policy details are included on the [...]
Worm targets Skype on Windows
Skype has learned that a computer virus called “w32/Ramex.A” is affecting users of Skype for Windows. Users whose computers are infected with this virus will send a chat message to other Skype users asking them to click on a web link that can infect the computer of the person who receives the message.
Full info [...]
How botherders make money
Security blog www.security-watchdog.co.uk has a great video showing the types of adware and spyware that botherders seek to install on your PC.
In the video David Marcus from McAffee shows how a system can be infected by half a dozen applications without the user’s knowledge or consent.
PayPal introduces OTP dongle in US, Germany and Australia
If you have a US, German or Australian PayPal account you can sign up for a PayPal Security Key. This additional layer of security means that you have to ‘know’ something (your password) and ‘have’ something (the dongle). The dongle displays a random number every 30 seconds which you need to enter along with your [...]
Macs better, ASA rules
I picked this up from issue 185 of MacFormat.
In a response to complaints about Apple’s ‘Get A Mac’ campaign, the Advertising Standards Agency stated …
We understood that Macs that did not run Microsoft Windows contracted fewer viruses than PCs that ran Microsoft Windows and as a result they were less likely to crash [...]
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