03.22.06

The True Nature of Cyber Crime

Posted in security, privacy, fraud, hacking at 5:44 pm by HowardG

Cyber-attacks, hacks, and acts of online vandalism perpetrated by loners in attempts to direct attention to themselves were at one time the biggest threat companies had to worry about. For those individuals, breaking into a company’s network produced no direct gain. Instead, they did it for the glory of becoming a cyberspace anti-hero, or at least to relieve the boredom of their humdrum lives. But today, those misguided fools are the least of a company’s network security worries. Malicious attacks are increasingly being carried out for very specific reasons. Cyber criminals are using bot-nets, denial-of-service extortion attacks, and sophisticated identity theft techniques for financial gain. Read the rest of this entry »

01.30.06

VoIP Security Threats

Posted in security, hacking at 11:09 am by HowardG

Cisco Systems recently published a security alert and a fix for its Cisco CallManager product, a piece of call-processing software that works with Cisco’s IP telephony solution. According to the alert, all versions of CallManager are vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks, which could result in interrupted VoIP services or servers rebooting. The Cisco report says that versions of CallManager “do not manage TCP connections and Windows messages aggressively,” and leave known ports vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks. The vulnerability could also allow a user with read-only privileges to gain full administrative access to the system.

In addition to deploying the free software fix available from Cisco, users should also secure the CallManager through standard best practices to minimize the possibility of a successful attack. Read the rest of this entry »

01.03.06

“Zero-Day-Attack” Exploits Windows OS

Posted in security, spyware, microsoft, hacking at 11:15 am by HowardG

Security experts discovered a serious vulnerability in late December, through which hackers can attack a fully patched Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system. The vulnerability involves the OS handling a corrupted Windows Metafile (.WMF) graphic file.

Microsoft has not released a fix for the vulnerability, which has already caused significant damage. Read the rest of this entry »

08.22.05

Businesses & Governments face more computer security attacks

Posted in security, identitytheft, hacking at 10:41 am by DarrenS

According to a research done by IBM’s Global service division different companies and government organizations are becoming the target of computer security attacks at a very increasing rate. Read the rest of this entry »