Early this week, Obama once again made a move that set certain circles a-buzzing. You might have heard of it already – he appointed a cybersecurity chief. President Obama picked Howard Schmidt, who already has a reputation for being good at what he does. He has vast experience both with the government and the IT industry.
This move is no less controversial than others. I guess it’s always like that when you’re a public figure. You can’t please everyone, and you’ll always have various opinions about what you do. According to Richard Waters of Financial Times, the news was welcomed by security experts. He writes:
The appointment of Howard Schmidt, an internet security veteran with experience in both industry and government, was greeted with relief among security experts, where the move was seen as a welcome outcome after a seven-month delay in filling the role.
Like other security industry experts, Mr Silva said that Mr Schmidt’s broad experience and personal contacts in both the public and private sectors would put him in a good position to make the most of the role.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association added that the new official will also be in a position to represent the administration’s position as momentum builds on Capitol Hill for legislation on cybersecurity.
Of course, there remains some skepticism as to just how effective the role will be. It’s not even the person that some are questioning – it is the office and the powers that are associated with it. What do you think?
Tags: Barack Obama, cybersecurity, Howard Schmidt, News
Categories: News, Real-World Issues
The cost for owning LCD monitors today have severely been lowered, putting into peril the usual CRT monitors known as the bulky packaged ones that are usually partnered with a desktop system. While the CRT series have gone as far as widening their screens towards the 19” Flat Screen monitor, from all indications, everyone will be leaning more towards a space consuming and screen optimized LCD monitor regardless of its screen width.
Such was forthcoming. In its initial introduction to the market, a lot of people were hesitant due to the astronomical price that it was pegged at. But like all competing products, once the competition sets in, the need to adjust the price to be competitive in the market is a must. Thus, such a trend can be seen with the large drop in the price of LCD monitors such as Samsung and LG Collins, two players who are not really tagged to be in the line of Viewsonic and AOC.
As it stands, the final decision would be left on the price and the screen resolution as required. For people who are simply wanting to get in with the times, this is certainly welcome news for the lower costing manufacturers who aim to satisfy the need for LCD monitors, regardless if this is just for personal satisfaction or not.
[tags]lcd monitors, samsung, lg collins, crt monitors, desktops[/tags]
Tags: crt-monitors, desktops, lcd-monitors, lg-collins, News, Review, samsung
Categories: News, Review
We are all aware the field of cybernetics has slowly been penetrating the market, especially from the side of Japan. Miniature androids or robots have been seen as the next generation of machines that will aid human in their daily work, both in personal and business aspects. They are programmed to carry out any task as required without complaints since machines are deemed to be objects that do not have feelings.
However, various insights have shared that the eventual robots may come to a point where they would be created to have feelings. Playing god is what people would tag the creators of such a race and should this become a reality, the movies that we are used to seeing such as I-Robot may eventually come true. Although this development may be exciting to most people who love to invest on technology, the question of up to what extent these inventions would be as far as playing god is concerned will still be big question mark that will be in the air of technological breakthroughs for future gains.
[tags]robotics, robots, cybernetics, technology, automation[/tags]
Tags: automation, cybernetics, General, News, Physical Security, Real-World Issues, robotics, robots, technology
Categories: General, News, Physical Security, Real-World Issues
A lot of people have probably heard about now about the earthquake that hit Taiwan during the holiday break. While the natural disaster caused a lot of discomfort to the Taiwanese community, the world has suffered as well in terms of Internet connection speed.
Taiwan is among the chains or gateways to which the Internet also passes through. Similar to that of a hose that allows water to pass through from one point to another; one hole in it will lower the pressure of the amount of water that should be traveling. In the same way, the underground cables to which help transmit Internet connections from one point to another were damaged and thus today, many are experiencing lousy connection speeds. This has thoroughly disrupted the flow of operations, becoming a discomfort that has left surfers and professionals totally helpless.
Natural disasters are hard to predict. The best that technology personnel can do is come up with better cable durability, but this is no promise for disruptions as we are experiencing today. Among the millions that have been damaged by this untimely event, technology based companies and organizations are surely suffering the most for the gapping whole in the entire connection the web provides.
[tags]internet, gateway, connection, fiber optic, cabling[/tags]
Tags: cabling, connection, fiber-optic, gateway, internet, Network Security, News, Operating Systems, Physical Security, Real-World Issues, Wireless Security
Categories: Network Security, News, Operating Systems, Physical Security, Real-World Issues, Wireless Security
I’ve always thought that hackers stick together when it comes to controlling someone’s machine, but apparently they don’t. The Trojan SpamThru comes with its copy of anti-virus software to remove any of its competitors from the machine.
Malware that attempt to block access to anti-virus software updates is pretty common, but this takes a different tack to keep itself ahead of its rivals. How does it work? SpamThru secretly installs a pirated copy of Kaspersky’s anti-virus for Wingate onto your compromised computer from a server controlled by hackers. It then programs to bypass any license signature checks before downloading updates. That means users remain unaware of the hidden anti-virus scanning for any of the other malware and eliminating them. SpamThru also uses P2P to control all of the machines it has infected. Even if the central server gets shut down, the hacker can immediately update his peers in the network to identify a new central server. As long as he controls one peer, his network will remain strong. All this is done so SpamThru’s built in junk mail dispatching client can operate in peace. It can even randomize the height and width of embedded gif files in the spam sent to defeat anti-spam solutions that reject e-mail with static images.
Good thing it’s easy to remove by downloading the latest set of anti-virus updates. This increase in sophistication, comparable with commercially available software out in the market, does raise an interesting question. If the hackers can use anti-virus software to promote their own ends, will security personnel come up with ways to put viruses and Trojans to good use?
[tags]news, trojans, malware[/tags]
Tags: Malware, News, Real-World Issues, trojans
Categories: News, Real-World Issues
October’s turning out to be browsers revamp month with Microsoft’s release of Internet Explorer 7 last week, and Mozilla’s Firefox 2.0 coming out tomorrow. Though Opera isn’t getting a new version, it does give a public advisory concerning a flaw with long link handling, ending with a recommendation to update to Opera 9.02. The improvements to these browsers can spell an increase in popularity, but only if the maintain the interest of their current loyal customers and capture that of their competitor’s.
So far the latest Firefox’s near release candidate has allowed several comparisons to be made with IE 7. Both browsers offer tabbed browsing, feeds support, and an easy way to manage bookmarks. The customizations users can do has increased, now that IE also offer add-ons (the equivalent of Firefox’s extensions) though there are differences in the way they manage them.
The antiphishing features and improved security for both browsers will come as a relief to users who’d had to deal with these phishing attempts for the longest time by using different methods. Though Firefox and IE both check a site’s address against a list of known blacklisted phishing sites, IE also sends a warning if a site is suspicious. IE had increased its default internet security rating to high, and warns if any changes in the settings may endanger your computer. The option to delete your browser’s history, currently available in Firefox 1.5, has been added to IE.
This battle between browsers, especially when it comes to their improved security features, highlights how important this issue has become. But in the end, only the user can decide if he will stay with the old, or change to the new.
[tags]browsers, ie 7, firefox 2.0[/tags]
Tags: browsers, firefox-2.0, ie-7, News
Categories: News
Does your daily routine include deleting the entire contents of your junk folder? Missing out just one day can send them full to overflowing, and there’s no reliable way to stop them. Even e-mail spam filters can’t keep up with the surge, and I occasionally get messages mixed up with the junk.
This week Sophos released a list of the top spam-producing countries in the world. This report named the United States to be the world’s largest producer of junk e-mails, producing 21.6 percent of the total. China ranked second, though they’ve managed to lower the amount they send out by nearly seven percent. The UK managed to drop off the top twelve list, though Israel makes an entrance at the eleventh spot.
- United States (21.6%)
- China (inc. Hong Kong) (13.4%)
- France (6.3%)
- South Korea (6.3%)
- Spain (5.8%)
- Poland (4.8%)
- Brazil (4.7%)
- Italy (4.3%)
- Germany (3.0%)
- Taiwan (2.0%)
- Israel (1.8%)
- Japan (1.7%)
- Others (24.3%)
What caused the increase? Well, there’s SpamThru which came out these past two months. SpamThru’s unique method of infecting and using an antivirus to get rid of any malware in the system guaranteed its survival in the wild. And then there’s been several variants of the Stratio worm that’s been making its way around this quarter. When you think about it, the junk mail you get is just a symptom of the bigger problem of bot infections and network vulnerability. These days they’ve added malware to their bag of tricks to gain your computer. Most junk e-mailers attack unprotected computers and control them without their users knowing. These hackers do it by using vulnerabilities in the computer’s operating system. Until they can be completely stopped, we’ll just have to include deleting spam mail in our daily activities.
[tags]spam, top twelve[/spam]
Tags: Network Security, News, Real-World Issues
Categories: Network Security, News, Real-World Issues
Hackers are now using social engineering to spread their viruses and malware. An entry about a new version of the blaster worm in the German version of the Wikipedia gave a link to a fix for the new variant. They then sent an e-mail directing to a supposedly valid Wikipedia download, except it contained malicious code designed to infect the downloader’s computer. Sophos intercepted these e-mails and reported to the Wikipedia editors, who immediately removed the articles in question.
Wikipedia is an example of how a Web 2.0 site is – an online site composed of people sharing content, mainly unmoderated, and often social interactions. Web 2.0, a buzz word coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2004, is heavily-reliant on a trust system. But that trust system can be exploited in such a way does raise the question: is it time to implement some form of policing in these Web 2.0 sites?
This isn’t the first time Wikipedia went under fire concerning their open policy. After important current events, pages related to the event get vandalized by conflicting reports and what counts as outright fabrications. It’s just too easy to social engineer people to download malware in their belief that these sites are safe. It used to be they limited their actions to Myspace, but it seems they might be migrating to other targets. If that’s the case it may be time to have all the files scanned before they’re uploaded, just like attachments in e-mail. They’d have to rely on scanning that might prove unreliable for catching new malware and viruses. But there’s no easy way to check all of the links leading out of the site. One possible answer would be to moderate any links before they are added to a page, but that means there should be a large group of editors or volunteers willing to monitor the stream of data. But can such a group be accepted by the rest of the community?
[tags]social engineering, wikipedia, malware [/tags]
Tags: Malware, News, Real-World Issues, social-engineering, wikipedia
Categories: News, Real-World Issues
Anecdotes from people are interesting all the time. There is this one person who was using a pirated copy of Microsoft Windows XP. One time, this person tried getting the security updates. Then something happened: this person had a message on the computer that the copy of Microsoft Windows XP is pirated and if the person wanted to keep on using it with security updates and stuff like that, a legal copy must be purchased. Now the thing is that everytime the computer is booted up, it shows that message. The person told me this: the moral lesson for those using pirated software is to not update!
Then again, how could one keep on using software that hasn’t been updated? There are security updates and sometimes they are critical ones. If you can’t get them for your system, you never know what you are exposing your computer to. Think of the MySpace news some time ago. Internet Explorer had a vulnerability. If you are a user who did not update, you would have probably been a victim.
Now we see from this anecdote that it is important to have legal software. We do not just have something we could use without guilt but we also get whatever updates the developers have in store. It would be bad for productivity to keep on dealing with malware and viruses because of the lack of updates.
If you are someone who can not afford legal copies of software because they are expensive, you could always download free and open source software. That way you have legal software and you could secure your system because you would have legal access to the security updates and all that.
Tags: Backups, IT Security Basics, Network Security, News, Privacy-&-Anonymity, Spyware
Categories: Backups, IT Security Basics, Network Security, News, Privacy & Anonymity, Spyware
AOL are planning to charge for emails. Mass mailers will be able to pay for a higher priority delivery, bypassing the AOL spam filters and ensuring that mail is received directly in the end users inbox.
This is, obviously, a bad thing since spammers will be able to pay a small offset to ensure that their messages are delivered direct to the end users inbox, whilst legitimate messages will face the AOL spam filter gauntlet. Programmes such as this will only see a rise in spam, and a fall in the success rate of legitimate mail being successfully delivered.
Tags: News, Privacy-&-Anonymity, Real-World Issues, Security Policies
Categories: News, Privacy & Anonymity, Real-World Issues, Security Policies
