 Security
Port
A Security Port Blog
| One
Third of Teens Harassed Online |
07/01/2007 | |
|
Nearly a third of online teens say they
have been harassed on the Internet, with girls and
participants of social-networking sites more likely to
be targets, a study finds. |
| RIM
Promotes Security Concerns |
06/28/2007 | |
|
The manufacturer of BlackBerry smartphones
has assured the French government that their products
are not vulnerable to espionage.
Canadian phone
maker RIM said after Frances national defense agency
banned many government officials from using the devices
for sensitive government purposes that the
communications are protected by sophisticated encryption
codes that would take billions of years to crack, The
Times of London reported Wednesday.
|
| More
Funds for Security |
06/27/2007 | |
|
The US House of Representatives on Friday
approved significant increases in funds next year for
domestic security and veterans care in a challenge to
President George W Bush's more limited budget requests.
|
| Security at 2008 Olympics |
06/26/2007 | |
|
A deputy director of Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) of the United States on Wednesday
said the FBI is willing to offer its expertise to China
on security issues relating to the 2008 Beijing Olympic
Games. |
| One
Million Complaints |
06/22/2007 | |
|
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
says that it received its 1 millionth complaint earlier
this week.
Launched seven years ago as a clearing
house for reports of online fraud, the IC3 is jointly
run by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the
National White Collar Crime Center. It passes on
information to law enforcement agencies, and keeps track
of trends in cybercrime. |
| Financials on Web |
06/21/2007 | |
|
Want to know how much your boss earns? Or
whether your daughter's fiance is in debt? For Swedes,
it takes just a few clicks on the Internet to find
out.
|
| Sex
Offenders on MySpace |
06/20/2007 | |
|
Seven convicted sex offenders with
profiles on MySpace.com have been arrested in what Texas
officials said was the countries first large-scale
crackdown of registered offenders who use the social
networking Web site. |
| Privacy Ombudsman |
06/19/2007 | |
|
In the wake of the myriad privacy issues
swirling around search engine giant Google, a noted
privacy advocate is calling for the company to appoint
an ombudsman to help the company respond to privacy
questions. The suggestion was made on the personal blog
of Lauren Weinstein, a cofounder of People For Internet
Responsibility and founder of the Privacy Forum, which
he created in 1992. |
| PC
Version of Safari is Buggy |
06/19/2007 | |
|
Apple unveiled Safari 3 for the Mac and
Windows platforms Monday at the Worldwide Developers
Conference promising faster speeds than Microsofts
dominant Internet Explorer. Apple lovers can now take
their longing for a Mac-like experience to the average
PC. But researchers said that the security
vulnerabilities they found in the browser indicated that
serious flaws lay behind the chic façade of Apple
Safari. |
| CellChek Monitors Who Can Call and
Text Children |
06/18/2007 | |
|
Free Kiwi-made software promises to ease
parent worries about bullies and sexual predators
contacting children over their cellphones.
CellChek, created by Auckland software developer
Michael Ward, allows parents to control who their child
can call, and who can call and text them.
|
| Miss
America Advocates Internet Safety |
06/19/2007 | |
|
Having already helped police target sexual
predators online, Miss America Lauren Nelson now is
teaming with a security software company to help educate
parents and children about dangers on the Internet.
|
| Yahoo Sued Over Information
Disclosure |
06/14/2007 | |
|
China should not punish people for
expressing their political views on the Internet, Yahoo
Inc. said Monday, a day after the mother of a Chinese
reporter announced she was suing the U.S. company for
helping officials imprison her son.
|
| University of Iowa Computer Security
Breach |
06/13/2007 | |
|
The social security numbers of hundreds of
University of Iowa students may be at the scrutiny of a
hacker.
The university has sent letters to more
than a thousand people warning them of the security
breach. A staff member of one of the university's
programs discovered the breach on May 19th.
School officials say there's no evidence that
personal information is being misused. Students and
faculty are being advised to place fraud alerts with
three major credit bureaus.
|
| PHP
Scripts for RSS Management |
06/12/2007 | |
|
Use PHP Scripts to manage your RSS feeds and how they are
displayed. |
| Security Concerns Come with New
Technologies |
06/12/2007 | |
|
From smartphones to javascript to
virtualization, these are technologies you need to
consider. But know the risks.
Treat this list as
a security blanket, not a wet blanket. You must
aggressively explore emerging technologies such as
virtualization, enterprise search, and smartphones. The
following problems are no excuse to stick with the
status quo. Just be prepared--then charge
ahead.
Security Concerns
|
| Securing Web Forms |
06/12/2007 | |
|
Checklist for securing web forms.
I used to offer an email address on my site
until it started to get bombarded by junk mail. Even
converting the email address text into an image on my
contact page — so that humans could read it but simple
web spiders could not — didn't work for long. So I
replaced the email address with a feedback form that a
visitor could fill in with his name, email address,
rough location, and a comment.
All
seemed to be well until 6th February 2006. On that date,
a junk mailer hiding behind multiple fake IP addresses
managed to successfully send junk messages to hundreds
of email addresses by abusing my feedback form. The
messages either contained HTML content promoting an
online pharmacy selling diet pills, or ramping shares in
a Florida-based company called Strategic Growth Ventures
(who issued a press release stating they had nothing to
do with this junk mail campaign).
|
| Google Gets a Failing Grade on
Piracy |
06/11/2007 | |
|
While there may be a temptation to focus
criticism on Google's privacy performance, it is
important to note that not one of the ranked
organizations achieved a green status. Overall, the
privacy standard of the key Internet players is
appalling, with some companies demonstrating either
wilful or a mindless disregard for the privacy rights of
their customers. Even the better performing companies
create lapses of privacy that are avoidable. With
minimal effort most organizations can improve their
privacy performance by at least one grade.
Privacy Report
|
| Is
Google Big Brother? |
06/07/2007 | |
|
For a company that did not exist 10
years ago Google has come a long way. It is the most
pervasive entity on the Internet. If you have ever used
a computer, Google knows something about you. It has
even coined a phrase that everyone understands: To
google. If you want to find out something about a
particular topic, all you have to do is google it,
meaning of course to search for it online. Google is a
search engine, Google provides a host of services
including email, video sharing, book searching, mapping
and many business and consumer tools but most
importantly Google is an advertising company.
Advertising is how Google makes its money. Google has
perfected the art of delivering the right ads to the
right people at the right time. That is the power of
Google.
Is Google Big Brother?
Anti-Google sentiment is on the rise. Web
pundits have tossed around monopoly theories and privacy
advocates have warned of a day of reckoning. While
Google has made friends on Wallstreet, it has
disappointed the technical evangelists who were once its
fiercest followers. Google has grown into a big scary
company and web watchers are expressing their concerns
about the information Google gleans from their various
services.
Google Paranoia
|
| New
Laws Target Cyber Crime |
06/06/2007 | |
|
Federal lawmakers confronting a plague of
botnet infections, denial-of-service extortion schemes
and spyware are going on the counter-offensive with two
new bills that would make it easier for federal
prosecutors to charge cybercriminals, while bringing
computer intrusion under the ambit of the mob-busting
RICO Act.
Together, the Internet Spyware (I-SPY)
Prevention Act would represent one of the more
significant updates to federal computer-crime law in the
last two decades. |
| Bomb
Making on Google |
06/05/2007 | |
|
A shock for security experts policing New
Zealanders using the Internet. Google Trends has
revealed New Plymouth and Auckland have the highest
number of hits per capita when it comes to searching the
net for bomb-making. |
| Google Buys Into Security |
06/04/2007 | |
|
Internet search engine giant, Google Inc
made its first foray into online security business after
it confirmed the acquisition of Internet security
startup GreenBorder Technologies Inc.
|
| New
Marshal Release |
06/04/2007 | |
|
Secure e-mail and Internet gateway
security provider Marshal has announced Marshal EndPoint
Security, a policy-based enforcement solution that
allows only authorised removable media devices to
connect to corporate desktops, thereby preventing data
theft/leakage. |
| Cracking Internet Filters |
06/04/2007 | |
|
Thousands of schoolchildren have made it
their mission to break through internet filters in
schools meant to stop them surfing social network
websites such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook.
Head teachers are increasingly banning access to
the web pages, which allow pupils to post pictures,
share music and make new friends, amid fears that they
are being targeted by bullies and paedophiles. But
children, addicted to popular sites, are determined to
thwart their efforts and crack the security.
|
| Data
Security Thesis |
06/02/2007 | |
|
I buy a lot of used hard drives on eBay.
Originally, I bought these drives to demonstrate that
people throw away or sell computer equipment without
much regard for the so-called residue data. About
one-third of the hard drives that I bought had
confidential information on them, one-third of the
drives had been properly wiped, and one-third were
broken. I published and made a big splash with my
findings. The research was even part of my PhD
thesis.
Data Security Thesis
|
|
|
|
Biometrics are the rage today. You can use
your fingerprints to secure your data, to enter your
home and, of course, to access your computer. There are
fingerprint readers on mice, keyboards and you can buy
them as stand-alone devices too.
But fingerprint
scanners are just not in anymore. The trend is pointing
towards iris or retinal scanners.
|
| Banking on Biometrics |
05/31/2007 | |
|
Pictet Bank, one of the largest Swiss
banks, is using biometrics to identify its customers to
give more security. |
| Respect Copyrights and Use Royalty
Free Images |
05/30/2007 | |
|
Many webmasters do not realize that
photographs are copy written and in many cases illegal
to use a photograph or image that you find on the web
without properly licensing it.
Most webmasters
do not have time to go out and photograph all of the
subjects they wish to include in a website. Webmasters
are best off using royalty free photographs. Royalty
free photographs are generally purchased and there is no
recurring fee for the use of the photograph. The
purchaser may use the image(s) as often as required
within the license terms and conditions without paying
for the use of the image each time the image is used.
Fortunately there are a number of stock photography
websites where webmasters can purchase a single
photograph for a fixed fee, or they can purchase a stock
photo subscription, that allows for the subscriber to
download multiple photographs.
Respect Copyrights and Use Royalty Free
Images |
| Monitor Government Websites and
Announcements Using RSS |
05/30/2007 | |
|
Stay current on security issues reported
from government agencies using RSS feeds. Government Central makes it
easy to locate RSS feeds from a variety of government
agencies. |
| UK
Burglary Hot Spots |
05/30/2007 | |
|
People living in some UK cities face
almost double the chance of being burgled as those in
more secure areas, according to a new
report.
Researchers from insurer Endsleigh found
that residents in Nottingham are almost twice as likely
to make a claim than an average household.
Leeds
and Hull were also found to be among other cities where
the risk of being burgled is above average.
|
Current Blog
2007 Security Blog Archive
July Archive
June Archive
May Archive
April Archive
March Archive
February Archive
January Archive
2006 Security Blog Archive
December
Archive
November Archive
October Archive
September
Archive
August Archive
July Archive
June Archive
May Archive
April Archive
March Archive
February Archive
January Archive
| |
 |
Security Alerts
Locate security alerts, and security feeds via a security rss feed
directory.
|
Security
Port