Week in review: Mafia-like cyber crime syndicates, Pwn2Own contest and cloud computing risks
Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news, articles, interviews and videos:
Law firms are the new banks
The new favorite targets of cyber criminals are law firms. Why?
Seattle is US riskiest online city
Symantec exposes the top 10 US cities most vulnerable to cybercrime.
Q&A: Cisco Secure Borderless Networks
Shalabh Mohan is the Director, Product Management, Cisco STBU. In this interview he discusses the Cisco Secure Borderless Networks architecture and mobile workforce security.
Fake AV “blocks” popular sites
Instead of just bombarding the user with the usual fake virus alerts, it also prevents your browser from opening specific sites – usually the most visited ones (facebook.com, youtube.com, myspace.com, etc.).
Cloud computing: Risks outweigh the benefits
Research conducted across Europe, the Middle East and Africa has found that a quarter of enterprises that already use cloud computing believe that the risks outweigh the benefits, yet still carry on regardless.
Baby steps for Russian online security
In a move that mirrors China’s from last year, Russia’s Coordination Center will insist that anybody who applies for a .ru domain – be it an individual or a business – has to hand over a copy of a passport or legal registration papers.
Pushdo Trojan bypasses audio catpchas
Webroot came across a variant of the Pushdo bot that makes it possible for the computer to bypass audio captchas used by Microsoft’s webmail services Hotmail and Live.com.
Free website malware detection service
In this video, the Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek discusses this free service which provides businesses with automated alerts and in-depth reporting for effective remediation of identified malware.
US legislation to quash cybercrime havens
A bill was introduced to the US Senate yesterday that – if passes – will penalize economically foreign countries that choose not to or fail to put a stop to cyber criminal activity originating from within their borders.
A closer look at Kaspersky Password Manager
Kaspersky Password Manager is designed to safeguard and automatically submit the passwords we use every day to access Web sites and online applications.
The rise of Mafia-like cyber crime syndicates
The hacking business has been taken over by money-hungry, Mafia-like cyber crime syndicates in which every person has a specific role.
Checklist to accelerate your software security efforts
A handy checklist of all the things you have to think about when negotiating terms with a SaaS vendor.
Google vs China, China vs Google
After a lengthy standstill, the situation between Google and China started developing pretty fast.
Pwn2Own 2010: IE8, Firefox, Safari and iPhone go down
IE8, Firefox, Safari and iPhone went down in mere minutes at this year’s Pwn2Own contest held at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver.
Is it safe to file your taxes online?
What are the advantages of filing electronically – and, most importantly, is it safe?
Lawsuit-threatening spam campaign links to malware
A bevy of emails purportedly coming from New York-based law firms Crosby & Higgins, and Marcus Law Center has been hitting inboxes around the world.
Q&A: Web application security testing
As the CTO and VP of Engineering at Cenzic, Lars Ewe has a broad background in (web) application development and security. In this interview he discusses issues related to web application security testing.