Category: Warnings

Under a more common distributed DoS (DDos) attack, a botnet — a network of compromised PCs being remotely controlled — directly inundates a victim’s Web server, name server or mail server with a multitude of queries. The goal of a DoS attack is to crash the victim’s system or take their Web site offline, as either tries to respond to the requests.

But in this latest spate of DDoS attacks, bots are sending queries to DNS servers with the return address pointed at the targeted victim.

While it is possible to stop a bot-delivered DDoS attack by blocking the bots’ IP addresses, blocking queries from DNS servers would prove more difficult, Silva said.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,39257938,00.htm

In its previous report, Symantec cautioned that malicious code for profit was on the rise, and this trend continued during the second half of 2005.

Malicious code threats that could reveal confidential information rose from 74 percent of the top 50 malicious code samples last period to 80 percent this period.

http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=30685

“And one of our main aims in IP communications is to improve security when we implement voice over internet protocol (VoIP) networks,” he stated. “The other threat is hackers gaining access to the network,” he added.

Karam explained that to combat the threat of viruses Alcatel uses the Linux operating system (OS) which he described as “much more secure than a Windows 0S.” “You never hear about a Linux OS being infected by a virus,” he went on to claim.

Karam said that in the Middle East two other factors are slowing down the growth of IP telephony — government regulations and the reluctance on the part of users to break away from traditional telephony technology.

Alcatel claims to hold 17% of the enterprise market with its IP communications technology in the region.

“Some facts are delaying that growth — regulatory issues in the region are one factor. At present VoIP has not been legalised but we expect this to change and that we will see more growth as a result in the future,” he said.

“Another factor is people’s fear over the move towards IP in voice, namely because they are used to working in a traditional time division multiplexing (TDM) environment,” he added.

However, he described the region as a “booming market” where Alcatel has enjoyed the highest growth in the take up of its IP communications technology.

“We have identified some fast growing markets all over the world and the Middle East is one of the booming markets we are targeting,” he went on to say.

http://www.itp.net/news/details.php?id=19760

Precautions should be taken to protect mobile devices, the organization said.

Although the threats detailed by the NCSA and the report’s coverage in the media likely will cause consumers to take more action to protect themselves against the highlighted risks, enterprises also should take note of the potential for attacks.

http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=100000BN8R9W

Google was the only one of the companies to deny the request and challenge it in court.

“EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google password,” the EFF said in a statement on its Web site on Thursday. “Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google’s search logs, it’s shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers,” EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston wrote.

“For this feature to operate you need to use your Google account, the same one that you use for Gmail, Orkut and the other Google services. This means that if an attacker can obtain your Google login details, he will be able to access your confidential files,” security firm Kaspersky Lab wrote in a blog on its Web site. “The good side is that this feature is an option and is not turned on by default. We advise you to keep it that way.”

A Google spokeswoman said the data is encrypted while in transit and on the server, where it resides only temporarily. Google also automatically excludes from being transferred any password-protected files and secure Web pages, like those containing bank account information, and enables users to exclude any folders or files and to easily clear them from Google’s servers by hitting a button, she said. Privacy “was an important consideration in the development of the feature, and we have taken a number of steps to protect the privacy of users,” she said.

As far as subpoenas, “for the files stored on Google servers we would of course comply with valid legal process, but we provide notice to users when a request for their data is made, unless we are prohibited from doing that,” she said.

http://news.com.com/Google+Desktop+3+criticized/2100-1032_3-6038197.html?tag=nefd.top

Voice-over-IP apps could be used to cloak networks of zombies, used to launch denial of service attacks, a Cambridge professor has warned. Armies of ordinary PCs – “botnets” – that have been infected by a virus and put under malicious control, could be controlled and orchestrated by messages hidden in VoIP traffic generated by programs such as Skype, warned Jon Crowcroft, Marconi professor of communications systems at Cambridge University.

Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks are usually shut down by tracing control messages, normally sent by chat and IM programs.

“There isn’t a protocol you can’t use as a covert signalling channel,” responded Kurt Sauer, director of security operations at Skype. “Some large commercial groupware products have encrypted XML streams – they may not be quite as good at firewall traversal, but that’s still an opaque data stream.”

Some IT managers do not want uncontrolled traffic punching holes in their firewalls, and using bandwidth, and security vendors have launched specific products to block Skype.

Crowcroft would like Skype to publish its routing specifications, so IT managers can work better with the application, tracking it and checking its behaviour. “There are a whole bunch of reasons why obfuscation is not helpful in the long run.” Although Skype still wants its proprietary edge, the issue is up for discussion: “The people who own networks and systems have a right to manage as they see fit,” said Sauer.

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?NewsID=5232&inkc=0%3CBR%3E%3C/P%3E%3CP%3E