Apple his shipped a software update that fixes at least a dozen security vulnerabilities in Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard systems. The update applies to OS X 10.5 and 10.6 desktop and server machines, is available through Software Update or from Apple Downloads. More than half of the fixes are to update the Mac version of Adobe’s Flash Player plugin. Check out this link for more nitty gritty on the individual flaws fixed in this update.
Revisiting the Internet Explorer Security Bug
I had just finished opening an account at the local bank late last week when I happened to catch a glimpse of the bank manager’s computer screen: He had about 20 Web browser windows open, and it was hard to ignore the fact that he was using Internet Explorer 6 to surf the Web. 
For more than a second I paused, and considered asking for my deposit back.
“Whoa,” I said. “Are you really still using IE6?”
“Yeah,” the guy grinned sheepishly, shaking his head. “We’re supposed to get new computers soon, but I dunno, that’s been a long time coming.”
“Wow. That’s nuts,” I said. “You’ve heard about this latest attack on IE, right?”
I might as well have asked him about the airspeed velocity of an African Swallow. Dude just shook his head, and so did I.
Well, you can’t really blame the poor guy for not knowing. Just hours before, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer looked a bit like a deer in headlights when, standing in front of the White House in a planned CNBC interview on how the Obama administration is looking to use technology to streamline its operations, he was suddenly asked about a report just released from McAfee effectively blaming a slew of recent cyber break-ins at Google, Adobe and more than 30 top other Silicon Valley firms on a previously unknown flaw in IE.
“Cyber attacks and occasional vulnerabilities are a way of life,” Ballmer said. “If the issue is with us, we’ll work through it with all of the important parties. We have a whole team of people that responds very real time to any report that it may have something to do with our software, which we don’t know yet.”
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What Keeps You Up At Night?
The other day I had a chance to chat with Steve Santorelli, director of global outreach at Team Cymru (pronounced kum-ree), a security research and investigation firm that is often privy to some fascinating, granular data on network attacks, as well as fairly unique holistic views about large scale Internet threats.
Santorelli wanted to interview me as part of their ongoing Who and Why Show, and gave me a few minutes to answer the question, “What keeps you up at night?” My answer was basically that I worry what will happen to the Internet as we know it when people start to die in a measurable way because of computer and Internet security vulnerabilities and attacks.
Click the embedded video image below to listen to the short interview.
By the way, the title of this post is an open-ended question: Are there Internet/computer security threats that keep you — the reader — up at night? If so, sound off in the comments.
Tough Talk from Those Who Hide
It is said that you can judge the mettle of a man by the quality of his enemies. So I guess it should be flattering when a group of individuals who appear dedicated to making misery for countless Internet users express glee at what they perceive as my misfortune.
Since my final posting on The Washington Post‘s Security Fix blog last year, I’ve been made aware of several discussions among different shadowy online groups who were apparently celebrating the end of that blog.
Some of those conversations I am not at liberty to point to here, but at least one of them is public: A thread on crutop.nu, a 8,000 member Russian language forum dedicated to Webmasters who specialize in high-risk Web sites, including rogue anti-virus software sales, pharmacy sites, and all manner of extreme porn (including beastiality and rape).
Exploit in the Wild for New Internet Explorer Flaw
Less than 24 hours after Microsoft acknowledged the existence of an unpatched, critical flaw in all versions of its Internet Explorer Web browser, computer code that can be used to exploit the flaw has been posted online.
This was bound to happen, as dozens of researchers were poring over malicious code samples that exploited the flaw, which has generated more interest and buzz than perhaps any other vulnerability in recent memory. The reason? Anti-virus makers and security experts say this was the same flaw and exploit that was used in a series of sophisticated, targeted attacks against Google, Adobe and a slew of other major corporations, in what is being called a massive campaign by Chinese hacking groups to hoover up source code and other proprietary information from these companies.
Microsoft said it will continue monitoring this situation and take appropriate action to protect its customers, including releasing an out-of-band patch to address the threat. Typically, Microsoft issues patches on the second Tuesday of the month (a.k.a. “Patch Tuesday), but due to the seriousness of this threat and the sheer number of companies that have apparently already been hacked because of it, Microsoft is likely to push out an update before the end of the month. In fact, I would not be surprised to see a fix for this within the next 7 to 10 days.
In the meantime, Redmond is urging IE users to upgrade to the latest version, IE8, which the company touts as its most secure version of the browser. Still, even IE is still vulnerable, and this is a browse-to-a-nasty-site-and-get-owned kind of vulnerability. As such, Internet users will be far more secure surfing the Web with an alternative browser (at least until Microsoft fixes this problem), such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or Apple‘s Safari for Windows.
Would You Have Spotted the Fraud?
Pictured below is what’s known as a skimmer, or a device made to be affixed to the mouth of an ATM and secretly swipe credit and debit card information when bank customers slip their cards into the machines to pull out money. Skimmers have been around for years, of course, but thieves are constantly improving them, and the device pictured below is a perfect example of that evolution.
This particular skimmer was found Dec. 6, 2009, attached to the front of a Citibank ATM in Woodland Hills, Calif. Would you have been able to spot this?
McAfee: Internet Explorer 0day Fueled Attacks on Google, Adobe
The recent targeted cyber attacks against Google, Adobe and other major companies were fueled in part by a previously unknown — and currently unpatched — security flaw in Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer Web browser, anti-virus vendor McAfee said today.
McAfee said its investigation revealed that one of the malicous software samples used in the attacks exploited a new, not publicly known vulnerability in IE that is present in all of Microsoft’s most recent operating system releases, including Windows 7.
The Wire: Google Security Edition
Google has reportedly stopped censoring Chinese search results for its Google.cn property, in response to what it said earlier this week were targeted attacks against its corporate infrastructure aimed at Chinese dissident groups. But a security research firm claims the attack that hit Google was part of a larger, unusually sophisticated assault aimed at stealing source code from Google and at least 30 other Silicon Valley firms, banks and defense contractors.
Also, Google switches to “always on” encryption for all Gmail users. And some pundits see ulterior motives in Google’s Chinese hacking disclosure. More after the jump.
FBI: Beware Haitian Quake Relief Scams
The earthquakes that have wrought so much devastation and death in Haiti this week are moving many to donate to various relief efforts. But security experts and the FBI are warning people to be on the lookout for ghoulish criminals scams that invariably spring up in the wake of such natural disasters in a bid to siphon funds from charitable organizations.
Money Mules Helped to Rob W. Va. Bank
I have written a great deal about how organized cyber gangs in Eastern Europe drained tens of millions of dollars from the bank accounts of small- to mid-sized businesses last year. But new evidence indicates one of the gangs chiefly responsible for these attacks managed to hack directly into a U.S. bank last year and siphon off tens of thousands of dollars.
On July 30, 2009, at least five individuals across the United States each received an electronic transfer of funds for roughly $9,000, along with instructions to pull the cash out of their account and wire the funds in chunks of less than $3,000 via Western Union and Moneygram to three different individuals in Ukraine and Moldova.
The recipients had all been hired through work-at-home job offers via popular job search Web sites, and were told they would be acting as agents for an international finance company. The recruits were told that their job was to help their employers expedite money transfers for international customers that were — for some overly complicated reason or another — not otherwise able to move payments overseas in a timely enough manner.
The money was sent to these five U.S. recruits by an organized ring of computer thieves in Eastern Europe that specializes in hacking into business bank accounts. The attackers likely infiltrated the bank the same way they broke into the accounts of dozens of small businesses last year: By spamming out e-mails that spoofed a variety of trusted entities, from the IRS, to the Social Security Administration and UPS, urging recipients to download an attached password-stealing virus disguised as a tax form, benefits claim or a shipping label, for example. Recipients who opened the poisoned attachments infected their PCs, and the thieves struck gold whenever they managed to infect a PC belonging to someone with access to the company’s bank accounts online.
