A lot of naysayers out there are spewing venom about Apple lately, the most recent being CEO of Kaspersky Lab Eugene Kaspersky. The head of the security firm believes that the Cupertino computer company is headed for rough times, at least as far as computer security is concerned.

Kaspersky, who spoke to Computer Business Review at the Info Security 2012 show in Las Vegas this past week, stated that in terms of security, “Apple’s Mac platform is a decade behind Microsoft’s, and it has got some things to learn from its rival.”

Kaspersky went on to say, “They will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had 10 or 12 years ago. They will have to make changes in terms of the life cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software.”

“That’s what Microsoft did in the past after so many incidents like Blaster and the more complicated worms that infected millions of computers in a short time,” Kaspersky added. “They had to do a lot of work to check the code to find mistakes and vulnerabilities. Now it’s time for Apple to do the same.”

Not surprisingly, this news comes fresh on the heels of the recent Flashback malware attack that was plaguing MacBooks not too long ago. The malware infected over 600,000 Macs when it was in full force and most recent figures put its current infection at somewhere below 185,000 devices worldwide.

Apple did manage to patch the vulnerability that the malware was using and also released a removal tool for infected machines. However, the company did receive a fair bit of criticism for not fixing the problem sooner. Security companies, like Kaspersky, didn’t help the matter either by offering their very own detection and removal tools ahead of an official fix from Apple.

Even though Apple has buffed up Mac OS X against hackers and is planning on releasing tools and software too in the near future for added protection, Kaspersky believes that the growing success of the company makes Apple a much more desirable target to hackers and viruses. According to Kaspersky, “Cyber criminals have now recognized that Mac is an interesting area. Now we have more malware, it’s not just Flashback or Flashfake. Welcome to Microsoft’s world, Mac. It’s full of malware.”

Source: CNET – Kaspersky: Mac security is ’10 years behind Microsoft’

If you are an internet pirate in Sweden, you had better watch out because the European Court of Justice has just issued a new law interpretation that could have some serious impact on the prosecution of discovered and convicted internet pirates in the Northern European country.

The European Court of Justice stated that this new law doesn’t provide any barriers for Internet Service Providers to hand over the data of alleged pirates when rightsholders request it. This could potentially make it possible for Sweden’s highest court to force ISPs to hand over user data as requested whenever a person is suspected of pirating things like music, movies, e-books or any other form of online entertainment.

Individuals on both sides of the argument have debated if this sharing of IP addresses with copyright holders is technically legal since 2009 when the IPRED law went into effect. That law provides for ISPs to reveal a person’s IP address whenever that person is charged with pirating multimedia. Under that law, a court must decide if the IP address should or shouldn’t be released, which can only happen if rightsholders go to court and argue their case.

This law also became controversial almost immediately when ePhone, a Swedish ISP, decided against providing information to five book publishers who went to court and successfully convinced a judge that some of the ISP’s subscribers were pirating their content. This occurred in 2009 as well.

After taking the case to the Sweden Court of Appeals, ePhone received a stay on the order, eventually leading the case to the highest court in the country. That court then quickly bumped the case up to the European Court of Justice, which just made its ruling this week.

However, this isn’t necessarily the end for ePhone. The European high court only made an interpretation and has sent the case back down to the Sweden Supreme Court. As it stands at the moment, it is now the responsibility of that court to determine a final ruling on the subject.

Source: CNET – Europe’s high court says ISPs can hand over alleged pirate data

Just two days after Apple promised customers that it would decontaminate Mac computers plagued by the Flashback malware the company has finally delivered. Apple just released its newest Mac OS X Java update yesterday, an update that includes a tool that will, as an Apple advisory states, “remove the most common variants of the Flashback malware.”

Apple just acknowledged the malware as of Tuesday, which exploited a vulnerability in Java to infect hundreds of thousands of Mac computers. Apple on Tuesday also vowed to craft a detect-and-delete tool that would clean compromised Macs of the Flashback attack code.

This fix comes way faster than the last time Apple had to make a tool to fix malware. The last tool was designed to take out the MacDefender fake security software virus. Apple promised a fix to the bug that was tricking users all across the internet but didn’t deliver until an entire week later.

This new update also disables automatic execution of Java applets in the Java browser plug-in. The exploit that Flashback uses was hidden inside a malicious Java applet that was hosted on compromised websites. Flashback was able to infect so many Macs because the Java plug-in automatically ran the offered applet. This move by Apple brings them one step closer to disabling Java altogether, something that most security experts suggest users do already.

However, you can get around the auto-off default setting if you want to. All you have to do is manually configure Java’s settings, though Apple will still step in to stop you. According to the company, “As a security hardening measure, the Java browser plug-in and Java Web Start are deactivated if they are unused for 35 days.”

Source: Computer World – Apple delivers Flashback malware hunter-killer

International British conglomerate News Corporation, headed by Rupert Murdoch, is still under the shroud of a recent phone-hacking scandal as it faces even more hacking allegations in Australia. According to the Australian Financial Review, internal documents and emails supposedly show that a “secret unit” inside News Corporation committed acts of corporate espionage against rival pay-TV services, resulting in the collapse of one company.

Editors for the Australian Financial Review, as a part of the substantial proof they have presented, have posted over 14,400 internal documents that belonged to News Corporation on the internet. If these allegations prove correct then News Corporation would face a second significant scandal.

The reputation of the company, as well as Rupert Murdoch, has already been tarnished by the revelation that reporters at News of the World, which is owned by News Corporation, hacked the voicemail of multiple public workers, celebrities and Milly Dowler, a teenage girl who had recently been kidnapped and murdered.

These new allegations involve a unit within the NDS, also owned by News Corporation, which is accused of hiring people to hack smartcard codes issued by rivals to the company’s pay-TV service. Smartcards are basically the same as pass keys and are inserted into set-top boxes and decrypt broadcast signals.

These hired hackers allegedly distributed the codes via the internet, allowing viewers to access their competitors’ transmissions without paying for them. One company is even said to have been driven out of business as a result of the hacks. News Corporation and NDS, both of which were recently acquired by Cisco Systems, have issued denials of wrongdoing with the newspaper reporting that Australia’s federal police have launched an investigation. If all that’s been said is true, News Corporation will probably be in too deep to survive.

Source: CNET – News Corporation faces new hacking allegations involving pay TV

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It’s happened to all of us. We’re waiting on a certain email from somebody. We wait and wait and wait only to find out that when it was delivered…it went in your spam folder. But why is it that certain emails over others get dumped into your spam folder? Even ones from trusted senders? Well, if you’re using Gmail, then be thankful because Google has decided to let you in on why this happens.

Starting yesterday, Google has updated Gmail to allow users to select any email thrown into your spam folder and see a message from Google explaining why this particular message was classified as spam by Gmail. In addition to that, the “Why is this message Spam” note will also be accompanied by a “Learn More” link to a specific page describing all the many reasons some emails are considered to be spam.

Some of the messages you may find stating why a certain email is spam consist of things like “our systems couldn’t verify that this message was really sent by (insert sender here).” Some messages could be marked as spam because an increased number of Gmail users received the same message and marked it so. For this you will get a message like “many people marked similar messages as phishing scams, so this might contain unsafe content.”

Other messages could be labeled as junk because “similar messages were used to steal people’s personal information” or because they are “similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters.” Overall, Gmail does a pretty decent job of separating spam from other legitimate messages. Regardless, these helpful messages from Google could be helpful in alerting you to specific unwanted emails and tell you what to do when you do get spam.

Source: CNET – Gmail: That’s spam, and here’s why

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Microsoft announced last week that it would ship six security updates this week to patch seven different vulnerabilities in Windows as well as a pair of for-developers-only programs. Microsoft also added that only one of the security updates was critical. Patch Tuesday for March of this year sees three more updates and three more patches than the previous year but will also fix fewer bugs than the releases of March ’08, ’09 and ’10.

As I mentioned above, only one of the updates was marked as “critical”, the highest threat ranking Microsoft issues, with four marked as “important” and the final one marked as “moderate”. One of the four important updates, as well as the critical one, will patch bugs that Microsoft has confirmed could be exploited by attackers to compromise PCs and plant malware on victimized computers.

Andrew Storms, Director of Security Operations at nCircle Security,  discovered, based on the information disclosed by Microsoft about the updates, that “Bulletin 1″, which is the only critical update, should be the one most users should apply first.

According to Storm, “It’s rare to find a bulletin that transcends all versions of Windows. Either it’s a serious bug in code that was never touched during all the reworks from XP all the way to Windows 7, or what we’ve got here is a bulletin with multiple bugs grouped together. It could be one vulnerability affecting older versions and another for the newer versions.”

Microsoft also noted that Bulletin 3 also affects all versions of Windows, even though the underlying flaw could be used by skilled hackers to obtain additional rights. These “elevation of privilege” vulnerabilities are typically used by hackers along with other exploits to gain more access to a computer or the network it is attached to.

Aside from the four Windows updates, Microsoft also issued bulletins that targeted bugs in Visual Studio 2008 and 2010, as well as in Expression Design. Microsoft released all six updates yesterday at 1 p.m. In addition to Windows, Mozilla announced an update to Firefox 11 yesterday as well.

Source: PC World – March Windows Patches includes One Critical Bug

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There is nothing sweeter than poetic justice. Somebody getting what is coming to them is really one of the best things somebody else can witness. It can be great if the person getting what they deserve is getting something good, or it can just be flat out ironic. Such is the case with Anonymous, the infamous “hacktivist” group that has been plaguing criminals, bank managers and politicians for months now.

If reports from Symantec are true, then members of Anonymous were tricked into downloading a Zeus Trojan that release all of their banking details and other personal information. Symantec described on its blog how, on January 20 members of Anonymous used their own personal computers to participate in DDoS attacks.

The attacks were launched against a plethora of different targets, like the Recording Industry Association of America and the Federal Bureau of Investigation itself. However, it appears as if some crafty hacker was able to insert a Zeus Trojan into the Slowloris attack tool, the same tool that many DDoS hackers are fond of using.

As soon as members of Anonymous downloaded this tool, all of their banking information was exposed and sent to a remote server. Anonymous, however, is none too happy about the allegations that (arguably) the world’s greatest hackers were indeed hacked themselves.

On the group’s Twitter feed a post read, “This post from @Symantec about @YourAnonNews’s spreading the DDOS hijacking trojan is wrong & libelous to say the least http://goo.gl/MUVxD.” A Tweet immediately following that one read, “Dear @Symantec – @YourAnonNews NEVER posted the DDOS hijacker nor did we attempt to trick people; instead we WARNED of it.” A third and final Tweet went up saying, “Also, @Symantec – maybe if you paid attention to more details and did proper due diligence, your source code wouldn’t have been stolen. SMH.”

It stands to reason that a “member” of Anonymous is indeed responsible for the hack. After all, it is assumed that almost all of its members have never met in person and that all contact is initiated via the internet. All it takes is one guy to come in and spoil the party.

Source: CNET – Anonymous hacked?

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I don’t know about you, but when my internet goes down, I go into a rage. Everything I do revolves around my internet. My job, Xbox, my PC, Facebook, it’s like a bad dream, and I’m just a 22-year old guy from Ohio. I imagine that when the internet goes down at a place like, oh, say, The Pentagon, things are a lot worse. I mean, it is the center of our nation’s defense and all.

The United States military’s Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) recently shut down access to the internet and Blackberry service while work was being conducted to fix an unspecified problem. The shutdown occurred sometime around 10:00 a.m. local time yesterday which meant that not a single person in the Pentagon had access to the internet. In addition to that, a lot of military, including combatant commands, did not have internet access either.

According to its website, DISA is a Defense Department agency that provides command and control support to national-level leaders and joint-war fighters across the full spectrum of operations. DISA sent out a network-wide notification Thursday morning by way of email explaining that “users are experiencing problems browsing the internet due to a DISA-wide outage.” The email also noted that, as a result, “ALL Blackberry, email web-browsing, and VPN services are affected.”

Interestingly enough, Pentagon workers did report that their email services were still up and running just fine, they just weren’t able to access the internet. One Pentagon official familiar with network security stated that the shutdown was not in response to some kind of cyber attack. The official noted that if it were an attack, “we’d all know about it and DISA would have done a blanket protocol, shutting down all sorts of access until they isolated the source of the attack.”

A DISA spokesman told FOX that “there is no indication of an attack” and it is expected that the internet will come back online slowly. Techs in the military are currently working to resolve the problem, which could be affecting nearly 20,000 military and civilian personnel in the Pentagon alone.

Source: Hearld Sun – Internet and Blackberry services shut down at Pentagon

I’ve got some good news that is immediately followed by some bad news. The good news is that spam is continuing to decrease with the bad news being that cybercriminals are still hard at work creating intricate and sophisticated computer hacks and launching them on helplessly unsuspecting victims according to a recent Threats Report from McAfee.

The final quarter of 2011 had McAfee discovering that spam (not the food) has reached its lowest level in years, especially in high spam countries like the U.K., Brazil, Argentina and South Korea. However, the United States, as well as Germany, had spam levels that increased, if only slightly.

Despite the fact that spam has decreased, junk mail is still a persistent danger due to the increase of more targeted attacks. Spammers of the golden age used to send their attacks to a bunch of random email addresses, hoping that some poor sap would get trapped. However, address lists of today are much more accurate according to McAfee.

November and December of 2011 saw an influx of botnet computers, which surprisingly followed a decrease witnessed in August. In addition to that, a handful of countries saw a decline in botnet activity, though most of countries experienced a significant increase.

Aside from an increase in botnets, the number of identified malicious websites also increased in Q4 2011 from 6,500 to 9,300. One in every four hundred URLs tracked were found to be malicious, on average, according to McAfee’s report, though that number did get as high as one in every two hundred at its peak. A majority of these sites were located in the United States, with North America home to the largest percentage of servers with malicious content at 73%.

The good news is that malware itself actually decreased in Q4 2011 and is also a lot lower than it was the same time one year prior. Unfortunately, the total number of unique malware samples recorded by McAfee surpassed 75 million in 2011, a number significantly higher than the company had anticipated.

According to McAfee Labs Senior Vice President Vincent Weafer, “The threat landscape continued to evolve in 2011, and we saw a significant shift in motivation for cyber attacks. Increasingly, we’ve seen that no organization, platform or device is immune to the increasingly sophisticated and targeted threats. On a global basis, we are conducting more of our personal and business transactions through mobile devices, and this is creating new security risks and challenges in how we safeguard our commercial and personal data.”

Source: CNET – Spam continues to dip but malware marches merrily on

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Senators discussed on Tuesday the prospect of getting a jump on recent efforts to increase U.S. computer security with an all new bill. This new bill would require private companies operating critical infrastructures to meet certain security requirements. This is only the latest attempt by the Senate to combine competing proposals on the subject and has the best chance of actually becoming a law.

However, the bill still faces tough odds at installation during this election year and also comes up against significant opposition from the private industry. In addition to that, seven senior Republican Senators asked that the bill not be brought to the Senate floor and to allow more time for debate and congressional hearings. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid planned to bring the bill to the floor in March.

This new bill would require companies that operate things like power plants, oil pipelines and other vital services to meet certain security standards. These standards would be developed by federal officials in consultation with the private industry so that everybody has a say in what the standards would be.

The measure would also create a mechanism for industry to share information about cyberthreats more quickly with the government. However, that would in turn come with liability protection for companies that provide the data to the government.

Industry groups are opposing the proposed bill and its central component, which they perceive as a new regulation that will only put an unnecessary burden on them. The United States Chamber of Commerce also added that “rushing forward with the bill will be a major mistake”.

However, lawmakers are trying desperately to get it through. Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia who chairs the Senate Committee, stated, “We are on the brink of what could be a calamity. We should act now to prevent a cyber disaster.”

Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins added, “Out nation’s vulnerability has already been demonstrated by the daily attempts by nation-states, cyber criminals and hackers to penetrate our systems. Our bill is needed to achieve the goal of improving the security of critical cyber systems and protecting our national and economic security.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal – Senators Push Bill on Digital Security

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