San Francisco - The latest information on phishing indicates that fraudsters are increasingly using malicious software to direct users to their deceptive sites.
The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) said in a new report Thursday that it saw a sharp rise in November in malware that directs users to DNS servers controlled by phishers.
DNS servers play a crucial role in locating Web sites. The servers translate a domain name into an IP address, enabling a Web site to be located and accessed through a browser.
What can be done to increase DNS security? With how visible DNS servers are and how important they are to the internet can we ever fully protect them from miss use?
Source: Network World - Posted by Eckie Silapaswang
The theory is now a reality. Symantec reported Tuesday that drive-by pharming, in which a hacker changes the DNS settings on a customer’s broadband router or wireless access point and directs the link to a fraudulent Web site, has been observed in the wild.
This type of attack goes to another level of "sneakiness" by aiming at your actual broadband router. The good news is that it takes advantage of default usernames and passwords - you did change these settings, didn't you?
San Francisco - In the first column of this year, I discussed computer security outlook and hopes for 2008. I forecast more of the same that we saw in 2007: more spam, more malware, more bad guys basically owning the Internet and our connected computers. I don't see any trends or new leaders with significant power to change the status quo.
what do you see for Internet security in 2008? One thing is true computer security is more important then ever.
Unicornscan is a new information gathering and correlation engine built for and by members of the security research and testing communities. It was designed to provide an engine that is Scalable, Accurate, Flexible, and Efficient. It is released for the community to use under the terms of the GPL license.
Have you heard about the port scanning tool called Unicormscan? There are so many port scanning tools out there but do you think Unicornscan has any advantages of the others?
A serious flaw in how Firefox handles log-ons could be used by identity thieves to dupe users into disclosing passwords, a noted security researcher said Wednesday.
Aviv Raff, an Israeli researcher best known for ferreting out browser flaws, revealed the Firefox spoofing vulnerability on his personal blog, and posted a demonstration video there. He did not go public with any proof-of-concept code or working exploit, however.
Have you heard about the latest FireFox vulnerability? When do you think the developers will release a patch fixing the bug?
Joomla! is a well-known content management system, mature enough to be used by thousands of amateur and professional Web portals. Installation is a breeze and consists of six click-next steps. However, a default Joomla! installation is not necessarily a secure one, so let's see how we can protect our portal from potential attackers.
The first rule of security when it comes to Joomla! is "update frequently," because whenever a new version comes out, it usually comprises several user-reported bug and security fixes.
This is a pretty neat tool for those using Squid Cache and looking for a pro-active tool for securing web acccess in their company (or house if you have a devious sibling).
The goal of Whitetrash is to provide a user-friendly and sysadmin-friendly proxy that makes it significantly harder for malware to use HTTP and SSL for:
Have you heard this about tool? If so do you feel it's worth implementing to help secure web access.
Whowatch is an console, interactive users and process monitoring tool.It displays information about the users currently logged on to the machine, in real-time. Besides standard informations (login name, tty,host, userâs process), the type of the connection (ie. telnet or ssh) is shown. Display of users command line can be switch to tty idle time. Certain user can be selected and his processes tree may be viewed as well as tree of all system processes.
Knowing who is logging into our machines is a good security practice. Many times attackers are able to gain access to one of your users accounts. Whowatch can show you which processes are running for any user on your machine, so you can tell if someone else is using your user accounts.
Applications made specifically for web can be tricky and insecure. In fact, based on the array of projects available, it can be a surprise that new web applications get the due security they require. In comes OWASP, a collaborative, security-based organization made for helping improve the security of web-focused applications.
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) comes to the rescue of Web application architects with tools, frameworks, and guidelines to improve security in applications.
Security expert Mark Curphey founded OWASP in 2000. The project is supported by the not-for-profit OWASP Foundation and has five non-paid board members and about 130 project and chapter leaders.
Source: EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet - Posted by Bill Keys
What's on your network and how vulnerable is it to a hacker attack? Having a clear picture of this is a vital part of effective network administration, and one way to build up such a picture is by network mapping using a port scanner.
Nmap is a powerful tool for helping identify areas in your network which needs to be tighten up. This articles talks about how you can identify these weaknesses by using Nmap.
