Week in review: Android clickjacking rootkit, EU Parliament rejects ACTA, and Facebook’s contact-deleting API bug
Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news, videos and articles:
Firewall management, IPv6 and you
While the IPv6 protocol has been around for along time, forklift upgrades to IPv6 were (rightly) seen as expensive and time consuming without much practical benefit. However, with the pool of IPv4 addresses completely exhausted, IPv6 is a trend whose time has come.
Blackhole exploit kit got upgraded
Blackhole’s authors have been very productive lately as they not only added the still unpatched XML Core Services vulnerability to the pack, but also changed the JavaScript code that initiates the exploitation sequence so that it can dynamically generate new domain domains.
Malicious emails target Uyghur activists, deliver backdoors
Highly targeted emails carrying a backdoor Trojan are currently directed at Uyghur activists, both those using Windows and those using OS X.
Microsoft names alleged Zeus bot herders
The have also discovered that these men were currently serving jail time in the UK for other Zeus malware related charges, to which they pleaded guilty and were sentenced for last year.
Monitoring the quality of SSL support
Ivan Ristic, Director of Engineering at Qualys, talks about SSL Pulse – a continuous and global dashboard for monitoring the quality of SSL support across the top one million web sites.
Half of enterprise networks will be obsolete within five years
Technology trends such as BYOD, video and virtualization are rapidly consuming network capacity and capabilities, and 45 percent of the enterprise networks assessed during 2011 will be obsolete within five years.
Malicious “Windows Live alert” email targets users
Windows Live account owners are currently being targeted with an email purportedly coming from the Hotmail Security Team, threatening them with an account suspension due to having exceeded their sending and receiving limit.
Facebook API bug deletes contact info on users’ phones
The company says they are working hard at fixing the problem, but in the meantime, a lot of users have effectively lost some of the information stored on their devices.
Utility bill scam steals personal information
The President of the United States is not going to pay your utility bill.
Security tips to stay safe this summer
During the summer, people (especially children) have more spare time on their hands for using computers and connecting to the Internet more frequently, thus increasing the risk of falling victim to malicious code.
Cisco backpedals on forced use of its Connect Cloud
With a move that angered many of its customers, Cisco has pushed out an automatic firmware update for its EA4500, EA3500 and EA2700 Linksys routers and has effectively forced their owners to sign up to the Cisco Connect Cloud in order to access many of its features.
European Parliament rejects ACTA
With 478 members of the parliament voting against the agreement, 39 in favor and 165 abstaining from the vote, ACTA has sustained a serious blow – in this form, at least.
Citadel crimeware kit to be pulled off the open market
The developers of the Citadel malware – a banking Trojan that is based on Zeus Trojan’s source code and whose creators have adopted a Software-as-a-Service approach when it comes to the modifications of the crimeware kit that produces its variants – have announced that they will soon stop offering the malicious software on open underground markets.
Researchers develop Android clickjacking rootkit
A group of researchers from North Carolina State University have managed to create a proof-of-concept rootkit for the Android OS that is able to hijack the clicks made by the phone owners and use them to launch malicious applications without the users being aware of it.
Phonebook-slurping, spam-sending app found in App Store
A malicious app that slurps mobile users’ phonebooks and uploads them to a remote server has been spotted being offered both on Google Play and Apple’s App Store.
New ransomware threatens with police report
A new strain of ransomware demands 3000 Euros for not sending a report to the police about the users’ alleged predilection for child pornography.
Getting ahead of the security poverty line
In this video from Hack in The Box 2012 Amsterdam, Akamai CSO Andy Ellis shares a behind-the-scenes look at how Akamai’s security program evolved through the collapse of the dot-com bubble, avoided being trapped below the security poverty line, and developed into one of the most trusted cloud platforms today.
Fake Amex warning leads to exploit kit
A fake American Express email trying to lure users into following a malicious link by making them think that someone has reset their password for their online account has recently been spotted by NSS Labs researchers.