They cite the success of the Stuxnet worm in attacking industrial control systems as a prime example of what to expect in 2011.Other predictions include a rise in sophisticated malware, Wikileaks-style breaches and a focus on mobile.

But Stuxnet type attacks top the list of forthcoming fears after the success it had interfering with Iran's nuclear power generation efforts. In November, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confirmed that Stuxnet had hit its target.

"They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts," Mr Ahmadinejad told a news conference.

'Destruction'

Researchers who have studied Stuxnet say its complexity suggests it could only have been written by a "nation state" in the West, rather than an organized crime group.

Security firm Kaspersky described Stuxnet as "a working and fearsome prototype of a cyber-weapon that will lead to the creation of a new arms race".

Guard at Bushehr nuclear power plant, Iran - 21 August 2010

Iran had denied that the virus had damaged any of its nuclear plants

Art Coviello, president of security firm RSA, agreed with Kaspersky's assessment.

"Stuxnet is the most troubling risk to me when I think about the conflict of cyber warfare," he said.

"I also realize all civilized nations of the world recognize that cyber warfare will escalate to the point of mutually assured destruction," he said.

"I would hope we all recognize that but I worry about [Stuxnet] getting in to the hands of non-state actors," Mr Coviello told BBC News.

Some experts believe that not only will there be more incidents in 2011 involving Stuxnet but there will be attempts to improve it.

"I would love to say that Stuxnet is something that is unique but I don't think that is going to be the case," said Jason Urso, chief technology officer for Honeywell and an expert in the security of manufacturing and industrial plants.

"The publicity surrounding Stuxnet will bring awareness to the fact that these critical infrastructures like power plants, oil refineries and so on are using systems that can be vulnerable if not secured in the right way," he said. "I think there is a real concern for copy-cat style attacks."

Hacks and attacks

Sharing the headlines with Stuxnet were the hack attacks carried out by supporters of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks. In late 2010, Wikileaks began releasing some of a cache of 250,000 leaked US diplomatic cables.

The diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks were the focus of world attention.

Members of a group calling themselves Anonymous attacked Amazon, Mastercard, Visa and PayPal in retaliation for those firms hampering Wikileaks' ability to raise funds.

The attacks took the form of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These involve bombarding a website with data to the point that it is overwhelmed.

Dr Hugh Thompson, a professor of computer science at Columbia University, said these events have changed security for the long term.

"Now we have people who are viewing these types of attacks under the lens of activism and that is a dangerous sort of thing to do when talking about companies," he said.

"It will change some of the elements of enterprise security which has previously centered around worrying about firewalls and data leaks," said Dr Thompson. "Now, if companies fall out of favor for whatever reason, like BP over the oil spill, there is now this other route where people can protest in the future.

"That is scary from an enterprise security perspective," he said.

Net security expert Dan Kaminsky said DDoS attacks were likely to proliferate in 2011 because of their simplicity.

"There is very little technological skill involved in creating a denial of service attack," he said. "They will never go away and the barrier to entry is very low yet their effectiveness is perceived as high and that means we will see more and more of them."

Art Gilliland, a vice president at security giant Symantec, said the Wikileaks debacle underscored the need to shift the focus from securing infrastructure to securing content.

"The level of professionalism in the hacker community is driven by the fact they are going after corporate information whether its credit card details or intellectual property or embarrassing documents.

"If they are able to sell it, like any market it creates a specialization in the market and tools to make the hacker community more sophisticated - whether it's for financial gain or some sort of government nation state priority."

Mr Gilliland said that while DDoS attacks would not go away, the real hackers or criminals will keep their eyes fixed on the financials.

"There is some press value in taking down a website but not a lot of money and that is where the level of investment will go - stealing information because there is money there," he said. "The big pain will come from stealing that content or information and holding that party or organization or government entity to ransom."

Future targets

Another top target in 2011 is likely to mobile phones, which are increasingly being turned into virtual wallets and being used in the workplace.

The M86 Security Labs predicted in its threat report for 2011 that the "exploding smartphone market and growing tablet demand will lead to more mobile malware".

iphone with shots of applications in background

Mobile security is a big worry for 2011 as more people use them for work

Mr Coviello from RSA does not disagree but is more sanguine about the scale of a problem.

"For me mobile is just another end point," he said. "Okay, it's a different end point and there will be new viruses developed to attack it and new pieces of malware but they are the same kinds of things used to attack physical end points today like PC's and the internet as a whole.

"Mobile devices do mean more transactions, more flow of information and the law of averages is that there will be more security problems but they have to be taken in context."

From Symantec, Mr Gilliland agreed.

"It is clear you will see more attacks in this landscape because people are doing more of their lives on these devices but with the proliferation of operating systems there is no one clear target.

"If there starts to become a "winner" in that platform it will become a more attractive target," he said. "For example, if you look at the demographics of who buys the iPhone or iPad, they are usually technically savvy, typically wealthier and therefore maybe that is a richer target landscape."

In April, the Sony Playstation network was shut down after hackers stole the personal data of about 100 million accounts and in May, US defense firm Lockheed Martin said it had come under a significant cyber-attack.

Citibank confirms hacking attack

"While Citi customers aren't likely to have fraudulent charges against their accounts as a result of this breach, they are likely to encounter social engineering attempts to enable further crime," blogged Chester Wisniewski, a consultant for security firm Sophos.

Around 1% of the bank's 21m account holders were affected - around 210,000 individuals.

US defense firm Lockheed Martin said it had come under a significant cyber-attack.

CIA Director Leon Panetta told the US Congress earlier this week that a large-scale cyber attack which would cripple power, finance, security and governmental systems was "a real possibility in today's world".

The most high profile state-sponsored attack to date remains the Stuxnet worm, which targeted Iran's nuclear facilities.

Experts believe the complex malicious code originated from either the Israeli or US governments.

Apple Issues Malware Fix But it's Time for Mac Users to Wake Up

As Microsoft did a number of years ago, Apple needs to admit it has security issues and not only provide technology fixes but also education to help its customers understand that using a Mac, while nice, is not all worry-free.

Larry Magid, 06.03.2011

Technology journalist

Chinese hackers break into Morgan Stanley: Report

March 2nd, 2011

Morgan Stanley experienced a “very sensitive” break-in to its network by the same China-based hackers who attacked Google Inc’s computers more than a year ago, Bloomberg reported, citing leaked emails from an Internet security company.

The emails from the Sacramento, California-based computer security firm HBGary Inc said that Morgan Stanley — the first financial institution identified in the series of attacks — considered details of the intrusion a closely guarded secret, the report said.

Bloomberg quoted Phil Wallisch, a senior security engineer at HBGary, as saying that he read an internal Morgan Stanley report detailing the so-called Aurora attacks.

The HBGary emails don’t indicate what information may have been stolen from Morgan Stanley’s databanks or which of the world’s largest merger adviser’s multinational operations were targeted, according to the report.

Representatives for HBGart were not immediately available for comment

Morgan Stanley spokeswoman declined to comment whether the had been targeted in the Aurora attacks.

“Morgan Stanley invests significantly in IT security and manages a robust program to deal with malware and attempted computer compromises,” spokeswoman Sandra Hernandez said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

Google Plays The China Card -- A Diversion From The Cyber-Threat

Faced with another threat to the personal information that Google is asking us to entrust to its burgeoning cloud, the company has again indulged a reliable formula for changing the subject: Ratcheting up fear of China.

Not for the first time, Google finds itself having to explain how cyber-predators have managed to hack into Gmail accounts, enticing unsuspecting users to give up their passwords through the process known as phishing, then sifting through their emails. The targets include senior U.S. officials, including a Cabinet member, the Washington Post reports.

For anyone who owns a computer and uses a Google product (which is to say pretty much anyone with electricity and a pulse), this is troubling news. The spread of so-called cloud computing -- in which our files reside not on hard drives on our computers, but on the giant servers of the Internet -- involves a considerable leap of faith. We must trust that the people holding our data are able to protect it against myriad dark forces intent on stealing it. The latest attacks on Gmail undermine that faith, delivering an unsettling message: The threats appear to be multiplying. Even the most sophisticated technology companies cannot guarantee safety.

Indeed, this message gained additional reinforcement on Thursday, as hackers claimed to have once again infiltrated a network run by Sony, reportedly tapping customer information from some 1 million accounts.

This is not a message that Google's formidable public relations apparatus would like to see gaining currency in the public eye. Much like politicians who lean on slave-wage Chinese workers as the supposed explanation for their inability to improve the lot of the American middle class, Google is playing the China card.

In an elliptical statement that generates more questions than it answers, Google declares that the campaign of attacks "appears to originate from Jinan, China" -- coincidentally enough, a city that is home to one of a handful of military command centers in the world's most populous country.

China is no doubt home to many a hacker. The state, still ruled by a lone party that is obsessed with how to keep it that way, is deeply invested in cyber-mischief. That makes it entirely plausible that Chinese hackers, perhaps affiliated with the military, have invested time and resources in forging a path to the inboxes of influential American officials.

That said, notice how quickly Google has managed to divert us from the central issue highlighted by its latest brush with hackerdom: the security of our personal information. Let us not ponder the growing evidence that data is insecure in a connected and digital world -- more than a tiny problem for Google's business model and the long-term health of its brand. Let us instead avail ourselves of the opportunity to get angry with China, and fearful of its threat to our way of life.

This is brilliant crisis management at work. Just like that, Google has managed to transform itself from a cloud computing giant with an operational and public relations problem into a victim of Commie-engineered spycraft, valiantly facing off against a totalitarian state.

The Obama administration helped advance that narrative on Thursday, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared that the F.B.I. would probe the alleged Chinese hacks of Gmail accounts.

“We are obviously very concerned about Google’s announcement,” Mrs. Clinton said, according to The New York Times. “These allegations are very serious, we take them seriously, we’re looking into them.”

Google declined to discuss whether it is using China fears to shift the conversation away from the sanctity of its customers' data. But the company said it is intent on providing ample protection, recommending that its users employ countermeasures, such as upping the security features of their accounts.

"We're focused on protecting users and making sure everyone knows how to stay safe on line," spokesman Jay Nancarrow said.

The company refused to spell out how it knows that the latest attacks appear to come from China, or why it opted to disclose their supposed provenance.

Google has been here before, playing the China card just as perfectly. Early last year, Google servers were hacked in attacks traced by investigators to Jiaotong University, an elite institution in Shanghai. Soon thereafter, Google turned off its mainland Chinese search engine, a site that it had been censoring in accordance with Beijing's dictates against discussion of sensitive topics such as Chinese control of Tibet and relations with Taiwan. Google cast that decision as a principled stand against censorship. Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin, reflected publicly on his childhood in the Soviet Union, which he said made him particularly reluctant to participate in curbs on freedom of speech. "It touches me more than other people having been born in a country that was totalitarian and having seen that for the first few years of my life," he said.

What did the hacks into Google's servers have to do with state-enforced censorship? Nothing. Indeed, Google had submitted to Chinese censorship for years, in a straightforward reach for market share, rendering dubious its sudden principled revulsion against curbs on the free flow of information. But this sidestep worked brilliantly: Google managed to turn the conversation away from legitimate questions about the security of its servers and on to a running dialogue about China's systematic repression. In place of talk that Google had left itself vulnerable to being hacked came celebration of its courageous stand against Beijing's might.

"God bless Google," said Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), a longtime China critic. "They have been willing to speak out."

Then as now, Hillary Clinton assumed a starring role. "In an interconnected world, an attack on one nation's networks can be an attack on all," she told reporters. "Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation."

This time, the attack comes via a phishing campaign, a problem that confronts every company with an online presence. As Google emphasized, phishing attacks are in no way exclusive to Gmail.

True enough, but for Google the stakes hanging in the balance are special. Perhaps more than any consumer brand, Google has staked its future on cloud computing, which means it has bet that the pirates can be kept at bay. Any evidence to the contrary is uniquely damaging to the search giant.

Google is seeking to be the uber-cloud, the central repository for damn near everything. It is building an increasingly sophisticated record of our online browsing through its Chrome browser. Through Gmail, the company is amassing a rich archive of interpersonal and business history, the emails and contact information stored by tens of millions of people. Google's Picasa photo archiving system now holds documentary remnants of no end of pivotal moments -- aisles walked down by married couples, first steps taken by babies, last rites conveyed on departed relatives and compromising poses struck by ex-lovers.

More recently, Google has asked us to hand over our music libraries, via the launch of Music Beta, as it arms itself to compete again cloud-based music offerings from Apple and Amazon. Google knows our calendars, our spontaneous purchases, our proclivities and our vices.

And far from a giant electronic attic full of memories and trifles, Google is increasingly intent on serving as the warehouse for commercial items, offering its cloud-based word processing and email services as alternatives to hard drive-based varieties of software. Google has designs on government data and commercial transactions. It seeks to be the storage house for vital secrets.

All of which makes the China card seem like a handy diversion from a conversation that could determine the nature of cloud computing, its sustainability and who gets the spoils.

Who cares whether the cyber-threat lurks in China, Russia, or in the person of the disaffected youth down the block? The real question is whether data is safe in a connected age in which people in China enjoy the same proximity to your inbox as your neighbor's kid. And that's a question that will not be answered by ginning up fears of faraway spies.

Scammers Use Osama Bin Laden's Death To Spread Malware On Facebook, Google

With the news of Osama Bin Laden's death commanding the Web today, it's no surprise that spammers have been exploiting the news for hours. It's pretty much the standard scheme these days; scammers latch onto any big news events in order to get unsuspecting victims to fall for scams.

VentureBeat reports that the Osama malware is already flourishing online. Cloud security firm Zscaler highlights a malicious site that shows a "purported photo of a murdered Osama bin Laden" with a call to download a copy of the VLC video player in order to view video of the video of his death. Of course, this downloads a malicious file called XvidSetup.exe.

Kaspersky's David Jacoby found malware spreading on Google Images already, and stumbled on Facebook pages offering "FREE Subway" and "2 Southwest Plane Tickets" to celebrate Osama's death. The message and malicious link will then spread via the victims' wall.

Symantec told SC Magazine that it expects to see "in excess of 100 million spam emails" related to Bin Laden, and The Daily Mail explains that terms like "Osama Bin Laden Dead," "Al Qaeda" and "Obama Address" are already being targeted by scammers.

As usual, make sure your security software is up to date, and be mindful of where you're reading news and commentary.

IMF hit by ‘very major’ cyber security attack June 2011

IMF hit by 'very major' cyber security attack

A loosely aligned group of computer hackers calling themselves Lulz Security said they broke into the U.S. Senate's computer network today.

There was no immediate comment by the Senate Sergeant at Arms Office, which oversees the chamber's security.

Lulz Security, who have hacked into Sony's website and the Public Broadcasting System, posted online a list of files that appear not to be sensitive but indicate the hackers had been into the Senate's computer network.

The news came as CIA director Leon Panetta warned a large-scale cyber attack that could take down power, finance, security and governmental systems is a ‘real possibility’.

Stewart Baker, a former cyber official at the Department of Homeland Security, said of the hackers: 'They certainly demonstrated that they were in and they found the file server.'

'It's not clear from the file names that there's anything sensitive here. The hackers may have done the equivalent of burglarising the Senate and bragging because they managed to steal a bunch of souvenirs from the gift shop,' said Baker, now a partner at Steptoe and Johnson LLP.

John Bumgarner, of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, said the break-in would cause red faces at the Senate.

'They're all valid directories,' he said after looking at data posted online.

'It's very embarrassing that this happened that this was a government site that belonged to the Senate and was compromised.

'They probably also got user names and passwords,' he said.

The group has also hit web sites owned by Sony Corp. It has also claimed responsibility for defacing the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service network websites, and for posting today data from PBS servers to protest a 'Front Line' documentary about WikiLeaks.

It has also claimed credit for breaking into a Fox.com website and publishing data about contestants for the upcoming Fox TV talent show, X Factor. Fox is a unit of News Corp.

The break-in comes on the heels of a warning from CIA director Leon Panetta, who said today that a large-scale cyber attack that could take down power, finance, security and governmental systems is a ‘real possibility’.

Appearing before Congress in a confirmation hearing for his appointment as secretary of defense, Mr Panetta said that the U.S. could face cyber warfare.

The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems,’ said Mr Panetta.

This is a real possibility in today’s world,’ he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

‘As a result, I think we have to aggressively be able to counter that. It is going to take both defensive measures as well as aggressive measures to deal with it.’

Mr. Panetta is due to take over from Robert Gates as secretary of defense at the end of the month.

His comments came after the Pentagon said that the U.S. could treat cyber attacks originating from foreign countries to be the equivalent to acts of war.

The International Monetary Fund became the latest high-profile institution to admit that it had been targeted by sophisticated cyber attackers at the weekends.

Officials refused to give many details but said the attack, which happened earlier this year, had been ‘a very major breach’.

The IMF, which has sensitive information on the economies of many nations, was hit during the last several months by what computer experts described as a large and sophisticated cyber attack.

Internal IMF memos warned employees to be on their guard.

‘Last week we detected some suspicious file transfers, and the subsequent investigation established that a Fund desktop computer had been compromised and used to access some Fund systems,’ said an email to employees from Chief Information Officer Jonathan Palmer sent on June 8.

‘The fund is fully functional,’ said IMF spokesman David Hawley. ‘I can confirm that we are investigating an incident. I am not in a position to elaborate further on the extent of the cyber security incident.’

The IMF's computer system was attacked by hackers ‘believed to be connected to a foreign government, resulting in the loss of e-mails and other documents,’ reported Bloomberg.

The attack occurred before the arrest of former IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges on May 14. It did not identify a suspect government.

The IMF is seeking a new head following the resignation of Strauss-Kahn after he was charged with the sexual assault of a New York hotel maid.

Now that the hackers around the globe have more sophisticated Hack tools under their belt, spoofing your identity has become even more easier than ever.

Mature hackers, unlike script kiddies, will always think twice before trying to break in a target system. They only fear what could happen if at all they get caught. “Law enforcement relies on the corporate sector and citizens to report when they encounter on-line suspicious activity so these schemes can be investigated and criminals can be arrested,” stated Peter Trahon, Section Chief of the FBI's Cyber Division. Unless its reported, hackers enjoy their freedom because their crime is hidden and so are they. This would not only encourage hackers to do more crime but will also give them the power to experiment on thier targets without any fear of getting caught.

I know by now there is a question on everybody's mind that "Why would someone not report cyber attacks". Well, there are many reasons which again favors the hackers to remain hidden.

It impacts the financial market. The stock market may react negatively to security breach announcement.

Negative publicity of the reporting firm may harm its reputation or brand and can even cause its customers to lose confidence resulting in giving a competitive advantage to commercial rivals.

Litigation concerns may come into the picture. Investors, customers or stakeholders may move to the court to seek recovery of damages caused by the organization reporting the security breach.

It violates the statement of confidentiality and liability. Officials of a firm or organization may face sanctions under federal laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLBA), or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2003, which require institutions to meet various standards for safeguarding customer and patient records.

Public disclosure of a security breach would alert other hackers around the globe that the reporting firm is weak in its cyber-defense and may inspire more attacks.

IT personals, especially those responsible for IT Security may fear having to lose their job following a security breach, as a result they would seek to conceal the breach from top level management.

Lets take a look at some statistics:

Its evident from the above figure that online crime complaints increased substantially once again last year. The figure shows statistics for complaints that were filed, but we do not know how many complaints were not reported. Needless to say that its impossible to come up with a statistic that would show all those breaches that are not reported and the total loss associated to it. It could probably be way beyond our imagination.

If we take a peek in the past and look at the history of hacking by the world's most famous hackers, then in my opinion, they are famous not because they were "successful" to break in, but because they were "unsuccessful" to hide or clear their tracks before they got caught. Organizations following a strict policy, compliance standards and having implemented the most powerful anti-virus/IDS/IPS solutions tend to assume that they are very secure, but they also realize that 100% security can never exist not can it be achieved. Forensic technology has progressed immensely in the recent past which helps uncover the root cause of a security incident and probably leading to evidence that may aid to get hold of the culprit.

Now, its possible to detect promiscuous NICs on the network, review firewall logs and identify suspicious activity, trace the attacker's IP address to locate and bring them to justice, use forensic tools to dig through the hard drive and catch the perpetrator red handed and to make you feel a little more better, the government of most countries have made some serious laws with regards to cyber crime such as Cyber security Act (S 773).

There is one such organization called "The Honeynet Project" which deploys honey nets all around the world that capture attacks in the wild, analyze this information and share their findings to raise awareness about Internet security and the most common threats. With this technology we can come to know who is attacking our systems and how. Its a sneaky idea to prove that your competitors have hired hackers to shut your organization down.

Unless an organization have really thought about security from a proactive standpoint, its very easy for a hacker to break in your house, steal your stuff, damage your property, degrade your reputation and still go scott free without even being noticed.

What Makes a Password Stronger

by Stu Woo

Friday, June 24, 2011

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