Category: News

Windows Vista is due out to consumers at the end of January 2007, and incorporates several security technologies including PatchGuard, which prevents third parties from modifying the core system software.

“With antitrust concerns temporarily satisfied, Microsoft may feel less pressure to make kernel modifications quickly,” MacDonald wrote.

A number of security companies have taken Microsoft to task for its PatchGuard protections, because it limits their ability to offer enhanced security for 64-bit computer systems, which are being quickly adopted by consumers and corporations.

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/335

“Your problem is no longer how do I avoid being attacked, but how do I find where I’ve been compromised.”

Last year, computer emergency response groups in the U.K., Canada and Australia warned of such attacks. While the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) did not issue a warning, security firms confirmed at the time that U.S government agencies and companies had already been targeted by such malicious software.

A major problem for large companies, government agencies and other potential targets is that antivirus software is not good at stopping low-volume attacks aimed at single companies. Traditional antivirus programs detect widespread attacks based on matching to a known pattern and do not fare well against low-volume Trojans. “There is no value whatsoever in having signature-based antivirus when facing a targeted attack,” said Joshua Corman, host protection architect for Internet Security Systems (ISS).

Military agencies, human rights organizations and pharmaceutical companies are some of the types of groups that are being targeted by specifically aimed attacks.
timate programs as potential threats.

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11418

Businesses need to look at integrated security solutions under a single console which deliver protection against a full range of threats while at the same time being cost effective and easy to manage,” said McAfee’s European director of system security Aminah Gianfrancesco.

One of the main difficulties for businesses with multiple software solutions from a variety of vendors is keeping the whole security shebang up-to-date, and this means managing the deployment of patches.

Italian businesses are the biggest patchers with 67 per cent admitting to deploying patches at least once a day, closely followed by German businesses. Regardless of multiple IT security systems, only 23 per cent of respondents said they are completely satisfied with the level of security across their systems and network.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/02/eu_biz_security_confusion/

Security firms such as McAfee and Symantec believe Microsoft’s actions around security for Vista amounts to a similar anti-competitive stance.

Last month the European Union competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, accused Microsoft of orchestrating a “co-ordinated campaign” to discredit her. It added: “If Microsoft wants to make Vista more secure, it should provide equal access to the platform that its own developers have to ensure that security vendors can continue to innovate on the platform, and to ensure that consumers and manufacturers can continue to choose the best security solutions for the platform.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5399534.stm

Virtualized IPS acts as a filter scanning network traffic for known vulnerabilities and virus signatures and blocks them from the virtual machine level before they reach the physical operating environment, he said. The Virtual Security Solution will enable IT to keep vital security processes isolated from potential problems with the main operating system, giving IT managers better control of endpoint security. Malicious disabling or reconfiguring of security safeguards are becoming more prevalent among targeted attacks, said Gregory Bryant, general manager, digital office platform at Intel.

A recent survey of Canadian IT security managers and personnel revealed that between 63 per cent and 79 per cent are concerned about the disabling or misconfiguring of security systems by hackers and Trojans, by employees or by operating system and application patches. According to the report, IT managers’ concern about employees disabling system defences is rising among 27 per cent of Canadian respondents.

http://www.itworldcanada.com/Pages/Docbase/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=idgml-580e3312-4e56-4ff3-bcff-3c3f483c9bc9

“If they are able to stay active longer, they make more money,” said Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering with the security response team at Symantec Corp., a software vendor that issued its twice-annual state-of-security report Monday.

Not too long ago, he said, a single person took control of as many as 400,000 computers at once with the help of malicious programs. Today, the average is less than 1,000, making such networks more difficult to track and shut down.

Huger said spammers have been compiling e-mail lists specific to geographic areas, by targeting a single Internet service provider that serves a particular region or by combing mailing lists devoted to a city’s happenings. Messages sent to those lists can be used for scams or the spread of malicious programs, such as those for stealing data.

Virus writers have also judiciously used Web sites with software vulnerabilities allowing for the spread of malicious code, Huger said. They will remove the malicious programs once enough users are infected and restore the malware later, he said. “They are very careful about the spread,” he said.

Many of the newer viruses spread primarily through social engineering — tricking a user into opening an e-mail attachment by making a message appear legitimate. Although virus writers have long used that technique, many had been trying to overcome delays inherent with the need for any user intervention, taking advantage of system flaws to automatically spread their programs.

Network worms such as 2004’s “Sasser” exploited flaws in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system, automatically scanning the Internet for computers with the vulnerability and sending copies of themselves there. But the rapid spread also triggered rapid-response alerts among security vendors and prompted network operators to prioritize applying fixes to the Windows flaws.

High-profile threats, often more an annoyance than an effort to set up armies of rogue computers, are typically contained within a day or two. By contrast, botnet computers can stay active for months.

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp?feed=AP&Date=20060925&ID=6050838