http://www.osnews.com/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2012, David Adams OSNews version 4 donotreply@osnews.com (Adam Scheinberg) donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:13:16 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com/ 120 http://www.osnews.com/story/25467/Printers_Open_to_Remote_Attacks_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25467/Printers_Open_to_Remote_Attacks_/ Columbia University researchers claim millions of HP printers could be open to remote attack via unsecured Remote Firmware Updates. Cybercriminals could steal personal information or attack otherwise secure networks. HP agrees there is a theoretical security problem but says no customer has ever reported unauthorized printer access. The company denies some of the claims and is still investigating others. Sat, 31 Dec 2011 07:57:31 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Howard Fosdick) Bugs & Viruses 20 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25439/AT_T_Says_Customers_Agreed_to_Carrier_IQ_Software/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25439/AT_T_Says_Customers_Agreed_to_Carrier_IQ_Software/ AT&T has told the U.S. Congress that its customers agreed to host Carrier IQ tracking software on their cellphones in their contracts. You might recall that, after the scandal over warrentless surveillance broke in 2006, AT&T quietly changed their contract for internet service to say that it -- not its customers -- owns all the customers' internet records. Those concerned about privacy might consider whether AT&T merits their trust. Sun, 18 Dec 2011 05:12:33 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Howard Fosdick) Bugs & Viruses 25 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25400/Download_com_Bundling_Adware_with_OSS_Downloads/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25400/Download_com_Bundling_Adware_with_OSS_Downloads/ In a recent site update, CNET Download.com listings have begun redirecting product download links for popular freeware and opensource applications to their own "downloader and installer" utility which bundles a number of adware components alongside the requested application and changes the users' homepage and default search engine to Microsoft Bing. Freeware authors are sending CNet cease and desist orders demanding virgin download links, something affected open source developers may or may not be able to do due to FOSS license terms. Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:36:33 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Bugs & Viruses 31 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News Anonymous Coward http://www.osnews.com/story/25348/Mobile_Malware_Skyrockets_Led_by_Android/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25348/Mobile_Malware_Skyrockets_Led_by_Android/ "What happens when anyone can develop and publish an application to the Android Market? A 472% increase in Android malware samples since July 2011." A study by The Global Threat Center over at Juniper Networks details mobile attacks that are increasing both in numbers and sophistication. This contrasts to the iPhone, more secure in part due to Apple's proprietary hold over the platform through its review process. Mon, 21 Nov 2011 07:28:20 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Howard Fosdick) Bugs & Viruses 14 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/23854/Microsoft_Marks_Anti-Malware_Anniversary_With_Stats/ http://www.osnews.com/story/23854/Microsoft_Marks_Anti-Malware_Anniversary_With_Stats/ "To mark the first anniversary of Microsoft Security Essentials, the company has released some sobering statistics it has gathered during the past year via the free anti-malware software. According to Microsoft, Security Essentials has been installed on 31 million computers worldwide. Out of that group, 27 million users reported malware infections during the year." Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:38:58 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Bugs & Viruses 29 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News fran http://www.osnews.com/story/23718/Malware_Implicated_in_Fatal_Spanair_Plane_Crash/ http://www.osnews.com/story/23718/Malware_Implicated_in_Fatal_Spanair_Plane_Crash/ Authorities investigating the 2008 crash of Spanair flight 5022 have discovered a central computer system used to monitor technical problems in the aircraft was infected with malware. Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:51:56 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Bugs & Viruses 11 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/23647/AV_Vendors_Detect_On_Average_19_Of_Malware_Attacks/ http://www.osnews.com/story/23647/AV_Vendors_Detect_On_Average_19_Of_Malware_Attacks/ Traditional AV vendors continue to lag behind online criminals when it comes to detecting and protecting against new and quickly evolving threats on the Internet, according to a report by Cyveillance. Testing shows that even the most popular AV signature-based solutions detect on average less than 19% of malware threats. That detection rate increases only to 61.7% after 30 days. Even after 30 days, many AV vendors cannot detect known attacks. Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:44:09 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Bugs & Viruses 18 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News HAL2001 http://www.osnews.com/story/23622/Tools_That_Find_Serious_Bugs_Automatically_Could_Lead_to_Safer_More_Stable_Software_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/23622/Tools_That_Find_Serious_Bugs_Automatically_Could_Lead_to_Safer_More_Stable_Software_/ Several talks at the Black Hat security conference this week in Las Vegas will focus on tools that could make software safer by automatically searching for bugs--and pinpointing the ones that could be most dangerous. Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:03:36 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Bugs & Viruses 0 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News fran http://www.osnews.com/story/23541/Microsoft_Patches_Critical_Hole/ http://www.osnews.com/story/23541/Microsoft_Patches_Critical_Hole/ Microsoft is patching the Windows Help Center vulnerability that we reported on a few weeks ago. Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:38:40 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Bugs & Viruses 3 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/23497/Market_Share_and_Malware_Attention/ http://www.osnews.com/story/23497/Market_Share_and_Malware_Attention/ AVG has launched free security software for Mac OS X, which includes tools for Safari and Firefox. AVG's CEO JR Smith, says, "Mac users have traditionally been less vulnerable to attacks because of their lower market share, but that is quickly changing." That's the age-old question of to what extent the scourge of malware on Windows is a symptom of Microsoft's sloppy security decisions vs. due to Windows' popularity and the fact that malware authors can get "more bang for their buck" targeting the most popular platform. Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:18:57 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Bugs & Viruses 27 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News fran http://www.osnews.com/story/23448/Linux_IRC_Server_Gets_Trojan_Press_Harps_On_Linux_Security/ http://www.osnews.com/story/23448/Linux_IRC_Server_Gets_Trojan_Press_Harps_On_Linux_Security/ Recently, the Linux version of UnrealIRCd was discovered to have had a Trojan worm its way into the source code. Even more embarrassing for the developers of Unreal is that the Trojan's been holding open the backdoor in the source code since November of 2009-- not very recently. And, of course, bloggers and press in general are taking the opportunity of another breach in Linux security to point out doomsday devices that don't really exist. Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:58:43 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jordan Spencer Cunningham) Bugs & Viruses 111 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/23267/New_Windows_Attacks_Outsmart_Anti-virus/ http://www.osnews.com/story/23267/New_Windows_Attacks_Outsmart_Anti-virus/ According to The Register, "Researchers say they've devised a way to bypass protections built in to dozens of the most popular desktop anti-virus products, including those offered by McAfee, Trend Micro, AVG, and BitDefender. The method, developed by software security researchers at matousec.com, works by exploiting the driver hooks the anti-virus programs bury deep inside the Windows operating system. In essence, it works by sending them a sample of benign code that passes their security checks and then, before it's executed, swaps it out with a malicious payload." Sun, 09 May 2010 03:54:01 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Bugs & Viruses 56 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/23196/McAfee_Identifies_Core_Windows_File_as_Malicious/ http://www.osnews.com/story/23196/McAfee_Identifies_Core_Windows_File_as_Malicious/ A version of the McAfee antivirus software used in the corporate and public sectors misidentified the svchost.exe file in Windows XP systems as malware, sending the affected machines into a loop of restarts. Only users of McAfee VirusScan Enterprise on Windows XP service pack 3 were affected, but the fallout was pretty severe, with hospital and police systems among those taken down. Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:58:39 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Bugs & Viruses 63 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/23119/MalaRIA_-_I_m_in_your_browser_surfin_your_webs/ http://www.osnews.com/story/23119/MalaRIA_-_I_m_in_your_browser_surfin_your_webs/ Via Ha.ckers.org, we get news of a cross-domain flaw using Flash or Silverlight content that allows the attacker to use the victim's browser as a proxy, including access to the user's session. Erlend Oftedal, the developer, explains how the system works and demonstrates the concept with a video. The flaw stems from developers lackadaisically allowing cross-domain requests from Flash across their whole domain (which obviously includes the user-account interactions); even Flickr and YouTube were culprits at one point. Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:19:45 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc Camen) Bugs & Viruses 8 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News http://www.osnews.com/story/22443/Lose_Lose_Art_or_a_Trojan_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/22443/Lose_Lose_Art_or_a_Trojan_/ Computers are taking on ever more important roles in our daily lives. They used to be simple tools to get simple things done - work-related, mostly, maybe a few simple games, and that was it. However, over time, they have become the central hubs for all sorts of data - including precious data. For his Master of Fine Arts thesis project, Zach Gage illustrated just how important our computer data has become. Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:29:08 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Bugs & Viruses 29 http://www.osnews.com/topics/35 News