Oracle

Google Glass POV

Beyond ‘Likes’: CrowdOptic Uses Google Glass To Map Your Focus

Sometimes a technology becomes so ubiquitous and obviously useful that we (humans) cease to think critically about its shortcomings. As an illustration of this, imagine yourself teleported back in time to the island of Manhattan in 1900. You’d find a bustling metropolis, for sure. You might look around and notice that the people dressed differently, or that the skyline was different from what we’re used to. But I bet one of the things you’d notice first was the stench emanating from the piles of horse manure and puddles of urine. As this (great) post at The Daily Kos points out, there were 200,000 horses working in New York City by 1900. Those horses were dropping 4 million pounds of manure and 40,000 gallons of urine on city streets every day. “The ubiquitous street sweepers could only pile the stuff up in vacant lots, occasionally to the height of sixty feet. To […]

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D.C. Insider Site NationalJournal.com Serving Malware

Watering hole -style attacks are all the rage these days, as our recent coverage on the attacks against Facebook and Twitter suggest. That makes us look askance at any report of a web site compromise – especially at a site that’s known to serve an audience that’s of interest to sophisticated, nation-state backed hacking crews.   That’s why it caught our attention this week that the web site for the DC-insider magazine The National Journal (nationaljournal.com) was found serving malware. According to a blog post by Anup Ghosh at the security firm Invincea, The National Journal’s Web site was serving up attacks to visitors of the site on Tuesday. The discovery was surprising, as the magazine acknowledged an earlier compromise on February 28th and said that it had since secured its site. That National Journal, part of The Atlantic Media Company, is widely read within Washington D.C.’s political circles. It […]

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Many Watering Holes, Targets In Hacks That Netted Facebook, Twitter and Apple

The attacks that compromised computer systems at Facebook, Twitter, Apple Corp. and Microsoft were part of a wide-ranging operation that relied on many “watering hole” web sites that attracted employees from prominent firms across the U.S., The Security Ledger has learned. The assailants responsible for the cyber attacks used at least two mobile application development sites as watering holes in addition to the one web site that has been disclosed: iPhoneDevSDK.com. Still other watering hole web sites used in the attack weren’t specific to mobile application developers – or even to software development. Still, they served almost identical attacks to employees of a wide range of target firms, across industries, including prominent auto manufacturers, U.S. government agencies and even a leading candy maker, according to sources with knowledge of the operation. More than a month after the attacks came to light, many details remain under tight wraps. Contacted by The Security […]

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Are Mobile App Developers Prey In A Massive Watering Hole Attack?

Say you’re a “bad guy” and what you really want to do is compromise the systems of some high value targets – like software developers working a prominent, Silicon Valley firms like Facebook and Twitter.   Breaking through the front door isn’t easy – these companies mostly have the technology chops to protect their networks and employees. Phishing e-mails are also a tough sell: the developer community is heavy on Apple Mac systems and – besides – application developers might be harder to phish than your average Fortune 500 executive. A better approach might be to let your prey come to you – attacking them passively by gaining control of a trusted third party web site – a so-called “watering hole.” That’s a scenario that has played out in a number of recent, high profile attacks, such as the so-called “VoHo” attacks documented by Symantec and RSA. It may also be […]

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Rush Job: Oracle Releases Fix For Critical Java Bug

Oracle Corp. has rushed out an update for its Java Standard Edition software after malicious hackers jumped on a security hole in widespread, web-based attacks. Oracle released Java Standard Edition Update 11 on Sunday, less than a week after news first broke that cyber criminals had woven exploit code for the security hole into push button “exploit kits” that are for sale in the cyber underground. The update fixes CVE-20130-0422, and Oracle urged Java users to apply the update as soon as possible. Java technology powers billions of laptop and desktop computers, as well as smart phones and embedded devices. However, the platform has been the subject of repeated, critical security holes. Most recently, in August, Oracle was forced to rush out a similar update – Java Standard Edition Update 10 – in the face of similar attacks on another security hole.  Attacks using the exploit were reported to be […]

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