Security
Port
A Security Port Blog
China Jails Software Pirates |
08/29/2009
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A
Chinese court sentenced four people to prison and imposed about $1.6
million in fines for distributing pirated versions of Windows XP and
other software.
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Illegal EBay Software Seller Charged |
08/28/2009
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A
U.S. judge has ordered a Delaware man who sold copies of software
packages on an Internet auction site to pay US$210,563 in damages and
court costs, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) announced Monday.
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Radisson Secuirty Breach |
08/27/2009
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Radisson
Hotels & Resorts said Wednesday its computer systems were accessed
without authorization, affecting an unknown number of people between
last November and May. Radisson said in a statement it has informed
customers of the situation and that guest information may have been
accessed, including credit card numbers. Social Security numbers were
not included.
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Subsidized Housing for Sex Offenders |
08/27/2009
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Investigators
projected that the Housing and Urban Development Department subsidizes
roughly 2,100 to 3,000 households that include a serious sex offender.
The HUD inspector generals office conducted the review.
Congress banned subsidized housing for the most serious sex offenders
after a 1997 case when a convicted sex offender was charged with
assaulting and molesting a 9-year-old neighbor girl who lived in the
same public housing building. The legislation said that housing
authorities must not admit any household that includes a person subject
to the lifetime registration requirement, typically reserved for the
most serious offenders.
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CIA Hired Blackwater |
08/26/2009
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The
Central Intelligence Agency hired the private security firm Blackwater
USA in 2004 to work on a covert program aimed at targeting and
potentially killing top al Qaeda leaders, according to a source
familiar with the program.
The existence of the program, which began in 2001, came to light
earlier this year when CIA Director Leon Panetta canceled the effort,
but it is only now that Blackwaters involvement has become known.
That development was first reported Thursday in The New York Times.
The program was part of a broader effort inside the CIA to develop the
capacity to conduct training, surveillance and possible covert
operations overseas, according to the source. The program was
outsourced to contractors to put some distance between the effort and the U.S. government.
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Trawling for Extremists |
08/26/2009
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Azlin
Mohamed Yasin spends several hours a day trawling the Internet, but she
is not your typical young surfer, descending into a world of
bomb-making, militancy and extremism.
From her computer, she enters a world where young Muslims openly
volunteer to fight against US-led coalition troops in Afghanistan or
learn how to make explosives out of everyday materials.
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Missing Children |
08/25/2009
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New
cellphone software would allow families in New York to instantly send
police vital information when a child is missing, tenants groups said.
Thirty thousand families in the city are to be picked by lottery this
fall to receive the software, funded with $1.5 million from tenants'
groups representing poor families, the New York Daily News reported
Saturday.
It is about time that in the 21st century that everybody that has a
(cell phone) can transmit their childrens information to the police
department, tenant spokesman Reginald Bowman said. Just like we text, just like we tweet.
When children disappear, the so-called AMBER Ready
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Social Victims |
08/24/2009
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Twitter
fell down hard Thursday morning under the force of a malicious flood of
fake packets, stranding millions of users looking for their daily fix
of 140 character bon mots. Facebook users faced smaller difficulites,
such as slow loading pages, also due to an apparent attack.
But security experts say the attacks on Twitter and Facebook are
nothing new under the sun and that Distributed Denial of Service
Attacks — which render a web server useless to real users by
overwhelming the server with fake requests, are commonplace on the net.
DDoS attacks are usually carried out using a zombie army of infected
Windows computers known as a botnet, where the controller tells the
infected computers what site to bombard with requests.
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Biometric Security |
08/23/2009
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The
Department of Homeland Security is expanding a pilot project that uses
fingerprint scanners and kiosks to speed travelers headed overseas
through airport security.
On August 24th, the Global Entry Trusted Traveler program will be
available at 13 additional airports in the United States and Puerto
Rico, bringing the total number of airports equipped with the
technology to 20.
The program is also available at airports in the Netherlands through a partnership.
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Climate Change is a Security Issue |
08/21/2009
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Climate
change threatens to undermine global stability and security because of
its human consequences, including widespread hunger, water shortages,
forced migration, conflict over scarce resources and disease. Those
facing the most extreme risk are the poorest with the fewest resources
and the least capacity to cope, despite contributing the least to the
crisis.
Climate change legislation must urgently and aggressively reduce our
emissions. But because of the damage already caused, some consequences
are now unavoidable.
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CyberSecurity Wiki |
08/20/2009
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The
Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies will use the
platform to share operational information on cybersecurity threats and
best practices.
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Secret Company Data |
08/19/2009
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Telecommunications
providers will not have to give the government sensitive revenue and
Internet speed data for a program to map broadband use in U.S. homes
and bring high-speed Internet service to more people.
The U.S. Commerce Department said on Friday that companies such as
Verizon Communications Inc, Comcast Corp and AT&T Inc do not have
to share how much money they make from each Internet subscriber. Nor
must they say how fast their Internet connections typically run.
Instead, they will provide data by the block, usually about a dozen
homes depending on the size of the block. They also will share the
speed of Internet service that they advertise.
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Iowa Lottery Checks |
08/19/2009
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Iowa
Lottery officials says they have completed another round of unannounced
security checks at retail locations across the state.
Lottery officials said Thursday that investigators visited 217 random
locations and presented large prize tickets to store personnel to test
security procedures. Officials said all the tickets, totaling $1.5
million in prizes, were handled properly by store employees.
Iowa Lottery spokeswoman Mary Neubauer said the security checks were
initiated in February after the agency received customer complaints.
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Apple
fixed 18 security flaws in the latest update to its Mac OS X operating
system. Several of the bugs are tied to the handling of images.
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Tracking Online Censorship |
08/17/2009
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When
Shanghai blogger Isaac Mao tried to watch a YouTube clip of Chinese
police beating Tibetans, all he got was an error message.
Mao thought the error — just after the one-year anniversary of a
crackdown on Tibetan protesters in China — was too suspicious to be
coincidental, so he reported it on a new Harvard-based Web site that
tracks online censorship.
Meanwhile, more than 100 other people in China did the same thing. The
spike in reports on Herdict.org in March pointed to government
interference rather than a run-of-the-mill technical glitch, even
before Google Inc. confirmed China was blocking its YouTube
video-sharing site.
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As
the first day of classes approaches for some districts, school and
health officials in several states are preparing for the possibility of
wider outbreaks of the H1N1 virus.
Swine flu, which disproportionately targets teenagers and young adults,
is expected to begin spreading more rapidly when students return to the
close quarters of classrooms and dormitories, county and state health
officials say. They expect greater-than-usual numbers of students to
seek inoculations because of widespread publicity about H1N1.
complete article
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Game Ban in China |
08/16/2009
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China
has banned online games featuring sinister mafiosi and knife-wielding
street gangs, accusing the software of promoting anti-social behaviour
and harming youth, state media said Tuesday.
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Web Host Security |
08/14/2009
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Current technology news is rife with stories of compromised Internet security. Consider these recent examples:
Twitter Gets Hacked...Bad - Back in April a hacker broke into the
popular micro blogging service Twitter. At the time Twitter's
co-founder Biz Stone wrote about the incident on Twitter's official
blog. The truly distressing part of the hack was that it was executed
with such stealth that Twitter did not even realize until weeks later
the full extent of the hack. Sensitive company information including
financial projections, employee credit card information, confidential
contracts, and internal executive strategic meeting reports were all
taken from the company. The writers over at TechCrunch have discussed
the Twitter hack at length with someone who claims to be the actual
hacker and created a great debrief of the incident entitled, The
Anatomy Of The Twitter Attack. It's a bit long, but well worth reading.
FOX News Gets Hacked - Dave Briggs, a FOX and Friends Weekend co-host,
had his Hotmail email account hijacked when hackers were able to guess
either his password or his qualifying question. According to published
reports, the attackers first locked Mr. Briggs out of his own account.
They then spammed all of his email contacts with a phony email that
appeared to be written by Mr. Briggs himself. The fraudulent email
claimed that he was trapped in Malaysia and further asked that someone
help him by wiring money via Western Union.
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Smart Phones Dumb People |
08/13/2009
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The
smarter your phone, the dumber criminals need to be to exploit it. That
is the message from the annual BlackHat security conference.
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Hacker Security Flaw |
08/12/2009
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A powerful new type of internet attack works like a telephone tap, but it operates between computers and websites they trust.
Hackers at the Black Hat and DefCon security conferences have revealed
a serious flaw in the way web browsers weed out untrustworthy sites and
block anybody from seeing them.
If a criminal infiltrates a network, he can set up a secret
eavesdropping post and capture credit card numbers, passwords and other
sensitive data flowing between computers on that network and sites
their browsers have deemed safe.
complete article
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Homeland Security Issue |
08/11/2009
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The
Department of Homeland Security is investigating whether one of its
employees used a government e-mail account to post racially insensitive
comments on a newspaper Web site in western New York.
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Antivirus Software Problems |
08/10/2009
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Antivirus
software cuts two ways. It is great at blocking known viruses, but it
can sometimes misfire, mistakenly flagging clean files as malicious.
That sends a computer into a tailspin trying to clean up stuff that is
supposed to be on there.
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Mobile Internet Usage Up |
08/09/2009
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More
than half 56% of Americans have accessed the Internet using wireless
mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops, according to a new
report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The most popular way people go online via wireless is with a laptop as 39 percent of Internet users have done this.
One-third of Americans 32% have used a cell phone or a smartphone to
access the Internet for emailing, instant messaging, or searching for
information. The amount of mobile Internet usage is up by one-third
since December 2007, when 24 percent of Americans had gone online via a
mobile device.
On an average day 19 percent of Americans use the Internet on a mobile
device, up significantly from 11 percent in December 2007. That's a
growth of 73 percent in the 16 month time period between reports.
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Free Antivirus Leads to False Sense of Security |
08/08/2009
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Reports show that Free Antivirus Leads to False Sense of Security in users.
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The
U.S.-based agency that regulates Internet addresses, facing criticism
that it is too America-centric, remains the best guardian of a single, unified, global Internet, according its new chief executive.
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Congress
pressed officials with the Homeland Security Department and Social
Security Administration on Thursday for assurances that an individuals
personal information would remain secure during expansion of the system
used to verify work eligibility.
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Adobe Flash Security |
08/06/2009
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Adobe
on Wednesday issued a security advisory about a critical zero-day
vulnerability that affects its Flash Player, Reader, and Acrobat
software across all major operating systems.
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Businesses Going Green |
08/05/2009
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A
business that makes the decision to be environmentally-conscious will
often promote goodwill among potential customers, while making the
world a better place for future generations. Many businesses hesitate
to adopt green practices because they fear it will hurt their bottom
line and negatively impact profits. But many eco-conscious businesses
discover that they can actually save money and bring in new customers
who specifically patronize companies that actively make an effort to be
environmentally friendly. Many customers may even be willing to pay a
bit more for a product or service from a company that is green.
Many businesses already do things that are eco-friendly, not
necessarily because they are sensitive to green living, but simply to
save money. That does not, however, diminish the value of their green
efforts. The trick for businesses is to be eco-friendly without
compromising profitability.
Business Going Green
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Preventing Software Piracy |
08/04/2009
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Software
piracy is an ever-present problem for software developers, and
unfortunately there is no way to entirely prevent it. Software
developers can employ tactics such as hardware dongles, registration
codes, passwords, online activation, separate downloads for licensed
versions, etc, but the fact remains that none of the protection schemes
are absolutely foolproof or failsafe. All software protection measures
can ultimately be circumvented if someone is persistent and determined
enough.
Preventing Software Piracy
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Security Pressure |
08/03/2009
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Following
yesterdays news that a Chinese engineer committed suicide after
misplacing a 4G iPhone prototype, a security officer involved in the
death has been suspended from his job, and his case has been turned
over to Chinese authorities.
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Security as a Strategy |
08/02/2009
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McAfee
outlined details of its Security-as-a-Service strategy, designed to
provide consumers, SMBs and large enterprises with security products
delivered as a service in the cloud.
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Days
after the government said it was planning to introduce genetically
modified food crops in the country in three years, US secretary of
state Hillary Clinton gave a clear indication of the US administrations
approval of deploying cutting-edge technology to raise crop yields.
During her first visit to India as secretary of state, which included a
strategic stop at the countrys premier agriculture institute, Indian
Agricultural Research Institute, Clinton was vocal about the need to
address the root
of the problem of world hunger: crop productivity. And helping increase
crop yield would be cutting-edge technology, she claimed.
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Real ID is a Real Pain |
07/31/2009
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With
no debate, the Senate in 2005 approved the Real ID Act:h.r.00418: --
which had been inserted into must-pass legislation authorizing funds
for the Iraq war. That may have been the only way to get the deeply
controversial law through the upper house, because of all the
heightened security measures passed following 9-11, none will have as
dramatic and intrusive an effect on the lives of everyday Americans as
Real ID.
The law mandates a tamper-proof card that would become the only
acceptable form of identification for federal purposes, such as
boarding a commercial airliner or entering a federal building. It was
clumsily drafted in a way that imposes multibillion-dollar expenses on
state governments, enhances opportunities for identity theft, turns
state motor vehicle departments into arms of U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement and will almost certainly lead to harassment of
immigrants, legal or otherwise.
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Twitter Security Lessons |
07/30/2009
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Twitter's
latest security hole has less to do with its users than it does with
its staff, but lessons can be learned on both sides.
In the case of Jason Goldman, who is currently Twitters director of
product management, the simplicity of Yahoo's password recovery system
was enough to let a hacker get in and gain information from a number of
other sites, including access to other Twitter staff's personal
accounts.
The aftermath of the hack, which took place in May, is just now coming
to fruition. Documents that a hacker by the alias of Hacker Croll
recovered from Goldmans account and others including Twitter co-founder
Evan Williams could be a treasure trove of inside information about the
company and its plans.
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Terror Alert System Reviewed |
07/29/2009
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The
multicolored terror alert system that was created after the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks could be getting an overhaul — or could be eliminated
entirely.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is expected to appoint a
panel Tuesday to reevaluate the system, a senior administration
official said.
The five-tiered system that goes from green, which signals a low danger
of attack, to red, which signals a severe threat of attack, has proven
to be confusing at times, and critics say the different colors are too
vague to deliver enough information to be useful.
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Border Security |
07/29/2009
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A
report by the Brookings Institution scheduled to be unveiled Tuesday in
Detroit found that federal officials now treat security at Canadian and
Mexican crossings into the U.S. the same, despite the differences
between its southern and northern neighbors.
The Washington-D.C.-based research group began work on the study last
year with the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce as the Detroit and
Windsor, Ontario, is the busiest Canadian-U.S. corridor. It sees about
400,000 people each day and about 16 million cars, trucks and buses
going back and forth each year.
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