Adobe released an urgent fix on Thursday for recent versions of Flash Player, citing ongoing attacks against both Windows, Apple Mac, Linux and Android systems. Adobe released the security updates to fix a vulnerability, CVE-2013-0633 in Flash Player, noting that the vulnerability is being exploited “in the wild” (that is: on the public Internet) in targeted attacks. The attacks involve both web based attacks via malicious or compromised web sites and e-mail based attacks. The web based attacks use malicious Flash (SWF-format) content and target vulnerable versions of the Flash Player for the Firefox and Safari web browsers. The e-mail attacks use a malicious Microsoft Word document delivered as an e-mail attachment. The document contains malicious Flash (SWF) content and the email tries to trick the recipient into opening it. The vulnerability in question, CVE-2013-0633 is described as a buffer overflow in Adobe Flash Player that “allows remote attackers to execute […]
Microsoft
Wealthy Countries Better At Protecting Citizens…From Malware
To paraphrase a quote attributed to the great American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald: ‘Rich countries aren’t like you and me. They have less malware.’ That’s the conclusion of a special Security Intelligence Report released by Microsoft on Wednesday, which found that the rate of malware infections was relatively lower in countries that were wealthy than those with lower gross income per capita. The study, “Linking Cybersecurity Policy and Performance” investigated the links between rates of computer infections and a range of national characteristics including the relative wealth of a nation, observance of the rule of law and the rate of software piracy. The conclusion: wealthier nations, especially in Europe, do a better job preventing malware infections than poorer and developing nations. The report marks an effort by Microsoft to dig into some of the underlying causes of cyber insecurity globally. Using data gathered from its Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) […]
Microsoft Rushes Fix for IE Hole Used in Attacks on DC’s Elite
Microsoft issued an emergency fix for its Internet Explorer web browser on Monday, just days after security researchers reported finding a previously unknown (zero day) vulnerability in IE that was being used in targeted attacks against members of Washington D.C.’s media, government and policy elite. Microsoft’s Security Response Center (MSRC) released the fix for IE versions 6, 7 and 8 on Monday following reports of sophisticated and targeted attacks using the vulnerability were detected on the web site of the Council of Foreign Relations, a leading think tank whose members include senior government officials. In a Security Advisory (#2794220), Microsoft described the flaw as a “remote code execution vulnerability” in code that governs the way that “Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or (improperly) allocated.” The vulnerability could allow a malicious attacker to create a malicious web page that would exploit the vulnerability to corrupt memory in […]
Citing Facebook, Mobile Devices, FTC Updates Online Protections for Kids
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission issued updated rules on Wednesday that will ban online advertisers from tracking the online behavior of children without explicit consent from their parents. In a press conference in Washington D.C, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz announced new guidelines for implementing the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Among other things, the changes expand the list of information that cannot be collected from children without parental consent to include photographs, videos and audio recordings of children and geo-location information. “Unless you get parental consent, you may not track children and use their information to build massive profiles of online behavior,” said FTC Chairman Leibowitz. The new rules are a major revision to the COPPA rule, which was first passed in 1998. The law is a kind of privacy Bill of Rights and applies to children 13 years old and younger. Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, […]
Questions, Doubts greet Researcher’s Claim to have Chrome Zero Day
Google says that it will wait to see what transpires at a New Delhi hacking conference this week before responding to a researcher’s claim that he has discovered a remotely exploitable vulnerability in its Chrome web browser. Speaking with Security Ledger, Google spokeswoman Jessica Kositz said that the company was aware of claims by Georgian researcher Ucha Gobejishvili that he has discovered a previously unknown (zero day) security hole in Chrome and will demonstrate it at this week’s MalCon hacking conference. Gobejishvili described the security hole in Chrome as a “critical vulnerability.” “It has silent and automatically (sp) download function…and it works on all Windows systems” he told Security Ledger in an online chat session. While the Tbilisi-based researcher won’t say much about the hole, he told Security Ledger that he discovered it in July. The vulnerability is in a DLL (dynamic link library) that is part of the browser […]
