SANS Newsbites
Attacks Against Defense Dept. Systems On the Rise (November 20 & 23, 2009)
According to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission's annual report to Congress, US Defense Department (DoD) computer systems have been the target of cyber incidents 43,785 times in the first half of 2009; if the trend continues, cyber attacks against DoD systems will increase 60 percent over last year.......
Pump-and-Dump Spammers Sentenced to Prison (November 23, 2009)
A US District judge in Detroit today handed down prison sentences ranging from 32 months to 51 months to four men involved in a spamming stock fraud scheme.......
Climate Research Documents Stolen and Posted to Internet (November 20 & 21, 2009)
Attackers broke into computers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain and stole thousands of emails and other documents which they then posted to the Internet.......
Cross-Site Scripting Flaw in IE 8 (November 23, 2009)
A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability can be exploited to allow attacks on web pages that are otherwise safe.......
Zero-Day Flaw in Internet Explorer 6 and 7 (November 22 & 23, 2009)
Microsoft has acknowledged the existence of a zero-day flaw in older versions of Internet Explorer (IE).......
iPhone Worm Steals Banking Data, Enlists Devices in Botnet (November 23, 2009)
A worm targeting jailbroken iPhones is designed to steal online banking login credentials.......
Hancock Fabrics Customers Reporting ATM Fraud (November 23, 2009)
A rash of fraudulent ATM withdrawals is believed to be connected to victims' previous transactions at Hancock Fabrics stores in California, Wisconsin and Missouri.......
New Version of Opera Browser Addresses Serious Security Issue (November 23, 2009)
Opera has released version 10.......
Accident Victim Data Leaked From Las Vegas Hospital (November 21, 2009)
The FBI is looking into an alleged breach of privacy law at University Medical Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.......
SANS 2009
House Science & Technology Committee Passes Cybersecurity Enhancement Act (November 19, 2009)
The US House Committee on Science and Technology has passed the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2009, which "is based on the concept that in order to improve the security of our networked systems .......
NSA Helping to Harden Operating Systems (November 7, 18 & 19, 2009)
In testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, National Security Agency (NSA) information assurance director Richard Schaeffer said that his agency helped Microsoft harden Windows 7 and that it is also helping Apple, Sun Microsystems, and Red Hat with similar endeavors.......
Proposed Legislation Prohibits P2P Use in Government and Contractor Computers (November 17 & 18, 2009)
A bill introduced in the US House of Representatives would prohibit the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing technology in government computers and those used by government contractors except in cases where its use has been officially approved.......
Lost Hard Drive Holds Seven Years of Health Net Patient Data (November 19, 2009)
A hard drive containing personal and medical information of 1.......
Three Charged in Comcast Redirect Attack (November 19, 2009)
Three men have been charged in connection with a redirection attack on Comcast's website.......
One Year Prison Sentence for Scientology DDoS (November 18 & 19, 2009)
A 19-year old man from New Jersey has been sentenced to one year in federal prison for his role in a distributed denial-of-service DDoS attack against the Church of Scientology website that took place in January 2008.......
Banks Reissuing Credit Cards Following Report of Breach at Spanish Payment Company (November 18 & 19, 2009)
A German bank has recalled 60,000 credit cards after learning that the card numbers may have been compromised in a security breach at a Spanish payment company.......
Secondhand ATMs Pose Security Risk (November 18, 2009)
A security consultant who purchased an ATM secondhand through Craigslist found that it still held a log of hundreds of transaction details.......
UK Police Charge Two in Connection With Zeus Trojan (November 18, 2009)
Police in the UK have charged two people in connection with using the Zeus Trojan horse program.......
T-Mobile Customer Records Stolen and Sold (November 17 & 18, 2009)
T-Mobile has acknowledged that an employee stole customer records and sold them to data brokers who in turn sold the information to T-Mobile competitors.......