Latest Hacking and intrusion prevention News

Rob Rachwald, Director of Security Strategy at Imperva, explains how to stop SQL Injection
posted on 18/01/2012

31st december of 2011, SANS published a story about automated SQL injection attacks affecting 1M plus websites. What will be different with SQL injection in 2012? Nothing. Perhaps more, perhaps some new attack tools. But otherwise, it is "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Since SQL injection continues to be the major tool for data theft, we will try to devote a blog a month to the topic in an effort to eradicate the world of this problem. Our first entry is a summary of a webinar (registration required) we did late in 2011. Today's blog uses what we outlined in this webinar with respect to a mitigation checklist (minus the honey-voiced narration). Here's what any firm that has data flowing in web applications should do in order to protect themselves from SQL injection: Step 1: Dork yourself The first step hackers often take to find vulnerable websites is simply conducting a Google search. In this case, they search for technical snippets unknowingly left inside of... [more]

AlienVault highlights that Chinese are tapping malware to attack US DoD smart card security
posted on 16/01/2012

Evidence of Chinese-originated attacks against the US government agencies including the US Department of Defense (DoD) has been found by AlienVault which use a new strain of the Sykipot malware to compromise DoD smart cards. One of the original versions of Sykipot was a trojan horse application that opened a backdoor into the infected PCs. According to Jaime Blasco AlienVault’s Lab manager, this latest generation of diversified attacks may have been occurring as far back as March of last year, if not longer. “This is the first report of Sykipot being used to compromise smart cards, and this latest version of the malware has been designed specifically to take advantage of smart card readers running ActivClient - the client application of ActivIdentity, whose smart cards are standardised at the DoD and a number of other US government agencies,” he said. “The smart cards are an important facet of security for the Department of Defense – which manages the three main branches of the mil... [more]

ThreatMetrix unifies the cybersecurity landscape acquiring TrustDefender
posted on 11/01/2012

The acquisition of the Australian-based company TrustDefender, a recognized leader of secure browsing technology to stop man-in-the-browser (MitB) attacks and provide malware protection, byThreatMetrix™ was announced yesterday. The combined companies will operate under the ThreatMetrix name with global operations in the United States, Australia and Europe. The corporate headquarters will be located in San Jose, California. “The natural synergies between device identification and secure browsing are very obvious,” said Reed Taussig, president and CEO, ThreatMetrix. “Successful transaction profiling requires sophisticated malware detection and intelligent device identification to determine if the device is compromised or if the transaction is at risk of being fraudulent. While our customers have recognized this for a long time, the only available solution – until now – was to implement multiple products across different vendors. By integrating advanced device identification and secure b... [more]

Alert from Amit Klein, Trusteer's CTO on new SpyEye Trojan post transaction fraud schemes that criminals are using to attack UK and US bank customers
posted on 06/01/2012

Just before the recent holiday season, Trusteer came across a SpyEye configuration which attacks banks in the USA and UK. Instead of intercepting, or diverting, email messages the attack automatically manipulates the bank account transaction webpage the customer views. The attack unfolds over through three major steps: 1. First a man-in-the-browser attack is launched on an online banking session and debit card data is captured; 2. Then the debit card data is used to commit fraud; 3. The next time the customer logs into their online banking site a post transaction attack is launched that hides fraudulent transactions from the victim Amit Klein comments : Many of us tend to spend a little more than we intend during the holiday season and, with all the transactions hitting our accounts, it can be hard to keep track. During the final few weeks of 2011, Trusteer saw fraudsters take advantage of this trend with their latest fraud scheme. Before I go on, let’s just make sure we’... [more]

top nine cyber security trends for 2012 : Imperva predictions
posted on 06/01/2012

Rise in Big Data and Application DDoS Attacks Among Key Concerns Imperva, a pioneer and leader of a new category of data security solutions for high-value business data in the data center, announced yesterday its predictions for the top cyber security trends for 2012. The analysis, compiled by Imperva’s Application Defense Center (ADC), is designed to help companies shield themselves from the threat of hackers and insiders. “Hacking, by nature, is a discipline that relies on innovation,” explained Imperva CTO Amichai Shulman. “Knowing future, potential threats helps security teams fight against the bad guys.” • A detailed white paper is available. • Imperva will host a webinar with CTO Amichai Shulman and registration is available here. Imperva predicts that the top nine cyber security trends for 2012 are: Trend #9: SSL gets hit in the crossfire - Currently, attackers are exploiting vulnerabilities in the various implementations of the SSL protocol. Furthermore, we are se... [more]

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