Did I really just read that?

By abigail_lovell | May 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

abigail_lovell

GF8K7512Every now and again a story crops up which causes you to do a double-take. Such an incident occurred this week when the FT (no less) reported that a scientist from the University of Reading had ‘infected’ himself’ with a computer virus. The study suggested that this had important implications for devices such as heart pacemakers and cochlear implants which could be attacked by computer viruses.

The scientist in question used an RFID chip (which he knew to be contaminated) and studied its affect on equipment it interacted with, such as door entry systems. The newsworthy angle came from the fact the chip was embedded in his hand and not its usual environment such as in a smart card.

Whilst it’s theoretically possible for RFID chips and readers to become infected, medicine is a closed environment which makes it more difficult and there would be many hoops to jump. You would also have to ask why anyone would want to do it (and invest the huge volumes of dirty cash to do so)? There are far more lucrative environments elsewhere for scammers. That’s not to say it definitely won’t happen, just unlikely and there’s no need for us to panic just yet.

Abigail Lovell

Another Award for View from The Bunker

By admin | May 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

admin

Earlier this week at the highly prestigious Sabre Awards run by the Holmes Report (http://www.holmesreport.com/index.cfm), Symantec came away with an award for best blog of 2009 for www.viewfromthebunker.com.  Naturally we are all rather chuffed, so we’d like to take the opportunity to thank all the contributors to the site and followers of the blog who make it a multi-award winning site.  Thank you!

£6 Per Hour…

By Guy Bunker | May 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

Guy Bunker

No, this isn’t a comment on minimum wage… £6 ($8.94) is the cost of a botnet for an hour! The average cost is further reduced if you rent it for 24 hours. Just what can you do with a botnet, well they come with a number of services – most of which are aimed at taking down a legitimate site with various attacks, including ICMP, SYN and HTTP.

So, how many machines are in a botnet? Mariposa had 12.7 million PCs… which is a lot of computing power, no matter how you measure it. Many of them were company machines.

The problems with botnets have not diminished – vigilence is needed across the IT estate, and if you are allowing home/personal PCs to be used to access corporate networks (consumerization of IT) then a strategy should be in place to ensure that none contribute to a botnet and the problems they create.

Guy Bunker

Set A Password Or Face A Fine…

By Guy Bunker | May 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

Guy Bunker

In Germany this week, a court ruled that wireless routers need to have a password – failure to do so can result in a fine of 100 Euros. In essence, if your wireless network is unprotected, then someone could use it to download and abuse copyrighted materials – and that is your fault for not protecting your network.

The password strength is not defined… and if you really wanted to download stuff using someone else’s wireless network, then a trip to a coffee shop would be much quicker than war-driving down a street.

While I keep my home wireless network secure, Bruce Schneierhas an interesting perspective on keeping it open. The choice in the UK is still up to you…

Guy Bunker

Phish and chips: Fast food junkies and British students targeted by scammers

By dominic_cook | May 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

dominic_cook

Spam-PhishingSymantec’s May State of Spam and Phishing report has identified an overall increase of 33% in phishing attacks in April compared to March. This included attacks on a major fast food brand, in which spam mails requested customer answers for a counterfeit satisfaction survey.

UK students came under attack with scammers phishing a UK government website and asking students for verification in order to process student loans, which involved the submission of bank details and account passwords.

Also this month, Symantec has noted a continued trend in dotted quad spam, which directs targets to a numbered IP address rather than a text URL. The volume more than tripled in April, compared to March. Spammers also appear to be increasing their delivery rate by combining this tactic with redirects, in order to bypass filters.

Other trends highlighted in the May 2010 report are:

• The top Subject line of the month, “Amazon.com Deal of the Day”, was used in an online pharmacy attack utilizing dotted quad URLs
• The EMEA region continues to expand its spam market share as the region sent 45.2 percent of worldwide spam in April. EMEA has grown its spam share over the last six months.

Dominic Cook

Overheard…

By Guy Bunker | May 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

Guy Bunker

I was on a train yesterday and couldn’t help but overhear a conversation that went something like this…

“Hi Steve”

“He’s sent me the mortgage details on email… could you get them for me and tell me what it says?”

“Sure, I use XXX, my username is YYY and my password is ZZZ.”

Good grief… I thought everyone knew that you were supposed to keep usernames and passwords ‘secret’. Evidently not. Of course this is the basic problem… people are trying to do something important to them - and are not thinking about security.

There are instances where sharing confidential information is required, and when in ‘work’ mode, people (sometimes) think twice about who can overhear but move into a non-work mindset and common sense disappears. In this instance, it would have been better to have waited until they could check their email themselves, or wait until they could find somewhere more private to speak, or even to have SMS’d the details (ideally in more than one text). In fact anything would have been better than shouting the details on a crowded train.

Oh well… it serves as a good reminder to us all that you should think twice when dealing with confidential information, especially when in public places. Cyber-criminals are not fussy how they obtain the information they need… the easier, the better.

Guy Bunker

PS A quiet word to the person on the train as I left suggesting that changing their password would be a good idea as everyone in the whole carriage now knew it – seemed a reasonable thing to do. Of course whether they do it or not… time will tell.

Becks victim of Twitter spam

By admin | May 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

admin

Football star David Beckham is the latest victim of a worrying scam by online fraudsters using the popular social networking phenomenon, Twitter, as a vehicle for spam advertising.

According to Candid Wueest, senior threat researcher at Symantec, the fraudsters create a fake Twitter account, often in the name of a celebrity, and then attempt to become followers of legitimate Twitter account holders.

“In this case, the false David – an online Chinese retailer – followed over a thousand accounts with a single common link – the account name contains the word ‘candid’.

“The credibility of the fake account is bolstered by other fraudulent accounts linking back to it and by cross-following legitimate Twitter accounts, which have been hacked,” he says.

Wueest confirms that this type of malicious activity is fast becoming common practice and adds that the rogue tweets often include short links pointing to infected websites.

“This proves that spammers are keeping abreast of new technologies. Twitter users are advised to carefully check out the details of all prospective followers and never to respond to ‘suspicious’ direct messages,” he says.

To read more about this threat, check out Becks loves me, or learn more about malicious online activity at 2010Netthreat.com.

Peter G Rae