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Millions of German Email Accounts Hacked, says BSI
Germany’s Federal Office for Security (BSI) has recently reported that approximately 16 million email users have had their account details compromised by hackers, according to an article published on the IT Pro website. The article indicated that the attacked computers were infected with software that allowed cyber-criminals to collect “email addresses and passwords” from their individual owners. The report confirmed that the BSI has launched “a website for people to check if their accounts have been compromised.” Unfortunately, the web site has experience a number of crashes due to the “weight of demand by worried users“, according to the article. The BSI realeased a statement – translated from German – which was quoted in the article to say, “In the analysis of botnets…
Security Experts Say Russia Hacked Companies in West, Asia
CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm based in the United States, have compiled evidence showing that the Russian government has been been spying on “hundreds of American, European and Asian companies“, according to an article published by the Chicago Tribune. The article indicates that this is the “first time Moscow has been linked to cyber attacks for alleged economic – rather than political – gains.” In the article, it states that CrowdStrike reported “energy and technology firms” being listed as some of the “victims of the previously unreported cyber espionage campaign.” They note that some of these organizations have reportedly “lost valuable intellectual property“, according to the article. The article states that no specific details about losses or the victims have been released due to “confidentiality…
Internet Outage in China Kicks Millions Offline
The nation of China experienced a major internet outage recently causing “millions of internet users” to be dropped “offline for hours“, according to articles published by both the Web Hosting Industry Review and Network World. The reports indicated – at approximately 3 pm – an undisclosed amount of “domestic service providers” were not able to connect with “China’s Domain Name System servers.” The articles also reported that these outages were caused by “an error with the nation’s generic top level domains (.COM, .INFO, .NET and .ORG) which redirected users to IP address 65.49.2.178” which is an address owned by Sophidea, a web hosting company based in California. According to the WHIR article, this hosting company is reported not to be in business and “has apparently…
Microsoft Blog Site Attacked by Hackers
The Microsoft blog site – dedicated to the Office software suite – was attacked this week by the hacking group called the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), according to an article published both by the GMA Network and Tech Crunch. The GMA article indicates that the attackers defaced the blog site and “boasted about the attack on their Twitter account.” According to the GMA article, soon after Microsoft went public with their redesigned blog site for Office, the SEA “hacked and defaced the site multiple times.” The articles report that the hacking group “promised more attacks on Microsoft” and they delivered. The group posted several articles on the site titled “hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army” and then posted screenshots of the Microsoft Office blog’s administration panel…
Symantec Holds Hack Attack Contest
Anti-virus and cyber-security service provider Symantec will be conducting the “Hack Attack” contest in Israel on January 28th where “Israel’s best hackers” will have the opportunity to take part in a “simulated corporate espionage attack” and attempt, through assorted techniques, discover “who and how the attack took place by counter-hacking other sites and servers“, according to an article published on the Shalom Life website. The contest will be held during the Cybertech International Conference – sponsored by IsraelDefense, the Prime Minister’s National Cyber Bureau, and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Economy – and expects to see approximately fifty individuals participating, according to the report. The article states that during the contest “points will be given for how far they can hack…
Claimed ID of Target Malware Maker Disputed
IntelCrawler, the California-based cyber-security firm, is the target of a recent dispute after claiming that a 17 year old Russian authored the malicious software which was responsible for the recent large “Target data breach“, according to reports from the Washington Post and KSDK News in St. Louis, MO. Internet security blogger and former Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs disputed the firm’s claims during an interview and on Twitter on January 19th, according to the article. It has been claimed by IntelCrawler and reported in the article that a Russian teenager “authored the malicious software and reportedly sold it for about $2,000 to dozens of cyber-criminals in Eastern Europe and other countries.” The article indicates that IntelCrawler reported that the teenager only “authored the…
Botnets: The Standard Tool in Cybercrime
The botnet, a network of “hijacked” computers, is now a “standard tool” used by cyber-criminals to invade machines for attractive, sales-worthy data, according to a recent article published by the BBC News. The article indicates that after the invader attacks the target, it will then use them as “launch platforms for spam and phishing attacks, or to target websites with huge amounts of data.” They have proven to be much harder to eliminate, and, as illustrated in the article, these botnets are like “zombies” who do not know that they are dead and “keep coming back again and again to cause even more trouble.” The BBC reports in the article that some of these larger networks consist of “millions of…
US-CERT Warns of Abusive DDoS Attacks
A warning from the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) announces an increase in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks that “leverage the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to amplify the attack volume“, according to a recent article published by EWeek. US-CERT outlined how DDoS attacks can take multiple shapes as “those who commit them leverage different techniques to drown Websites under a flood of traffic“, as the article indicates. As clarified in the article, “NTP is a widely deployed Internet protocol that is primarily used as a time-keeping technique for clock synchronization” – but according to this report, attackers are not simply “requesting the time from an NTP server to execute DDoS attacks.” The article states that the invaders are “abusing a feature…
Google Acquires Security Startup Impermium
Impermium, the California-based security firm, recently announced that they have joined the Internet giant Google to amplify the icon’s efforts in the battle against “spam and abuse“, according to a recent article published by Network World. Mark Risher, Impermium’s CEO and co-founder, was quoted in the article to say, “By joining Google, our team will merge with some of the best abuse fighters in the world.” Risher’s company is known to have “defended its customers against account hacking, account compromise, and other threats“, according to the report. The article states that “‘acqui-hiring” it is a common practice of some technology firms to “add talented engineers to their staff“. It has not been clarified, according to this report, if this recent acquisition was based…
2014 Security Forecast Not Good Says Cisco
In their annual security report, researchers from the networking equipment manufacturer Cisco, recently predicted an ominous security forecast for 2014 suggesting that the recent security breach at Target was just the beginning of more attacks in the future, according to an article published by ZDNet. The article indicates that “a gap” has appeared over the past few years creating difficulties for “skilled security professionals” to manage the “exponential growth for mobile and cloud technologies.” Cisco’s reports, according to the article, that this gap provides attackers with “unimaginable opportunities.” The current flood of news stories regarding security and the constant reports of “wide-scale attacks” launched on Target and other retailers outlines the reality that the world could be faced with “unprecedented growth…