Tag: computer security

Michael Kassner of TechRepublic reports on a new and effective DoS attack.

Security researchers Jack C. Louis and Robert E. Lee of Outpost 24 stumbled onto a relatively simple way to implement a Denial of Service (DoS) attack that does not require massive SYN floods. The researchers aren’t releasing many details about the attack, except for those provided in a very interesting interview with Brenno de Winter.

Steve Gibson as part of the Security Now series did a podcast about Sockstress and then talked to Jack & Robert off the record about their exploit and the issue of releasing the knowledge of it into the public domain where it may be used maliciously.

The Security Now show notes include further details and links to all the coverage of Sockstress.

Dan Kaminsky revealed his discovery of a DNS flaw that could be exploited to direct unwitting users to malicious web addresses,Now, practically on the heels of that announcement, a hacker team that presented at DEFCON has demonstrated how a fundamental design error in the Internet’s border gateway protocol can be used to invisibly eavesdrop.

read more | digg story

The Register exposes a neat hack using Google’s cache that enables access to password protected parts of websites.

The hack was posted on Hack Forums which ironically is itself password protected so using the Google cache hack here is a version you can read.

A big selling point for Apple Macs has been the much reduced risk from viruses compared with Windows, however this may not be true for very much longer.

Set aside for now that since Apple switched to Intel processors that increasing numbers of users are using Windows operating systems and are thus as vulnerable as their PC Windows brethren.

Apple’s advertising campaign has worked and their market share is rising globally and has increased to 8.5% in the US which is nearing the 10% point that ArsTechnica believes will be tipping point and will see the malware authors begin to target MacOS X in earnest.

The malware authors may in fact start before the magic 10% barrier is passed as in some sectors two-thirds of retail sales of computers in the $1000 dollars and above bracket are now Macs.

As malware authors are increasingly more motivated by money than the fame that script-kiddies in the past sought the MacOs is now a lucrative market that is currently underexploited. Also given the blasé attitude that many Mac users have towards the threat of viruses and malware due to Apple’s marketing – this spoof of their famous advert may become the norm.

Laptop Losers Hall of Shame: The 10 worst security breaches of all time from unencrypted data.

Slideshow of the ten worst incidents of a security breach caused by the loss or theft of a laptop computer.