There’s an interesting post over on Symantec’s blog about a shift noted in the behavior of the Kelihos botnet in recent days. According to Symantec, Kelihos operators have turned their attention to Apple customers, launching a phishing email campaign aimed at Apple iCloud users and Apple ID’s and passwords. According to the post, Symantec has observed Kelihos (also known as Waledac) being used to send spam emails purporting to be from Apple, informing the victim that a purchase has been made using their account on the iTunes Store. Samples of the emails discovered by Symantec bear the subject line “Pending Authorisation Notification.” The body of the phishing email says that the victim’s account has been used to purchase the film “Lane Splitter” on a computer or device that hadn’t previously been linked to their Apple ID. The email gives an IP address that was used to make the alleged purchase and […]
Tag: reports
What Hollywood Can Teach Us: Passwords Matter More Than Ever
Andrey Belenko had what you might call a ‘brush with infamy’ earlier this week after a presentation he took part in on the security of Apple’s iCloud became a set piece in the news media scramble to identify the source of a huge trove of leaked celebrity photos – many depicting Hollywood A-List stars in various states of undress. “It’s not the kind of attention you want to receive,” said Belenko, a security researcher with the firm ViaForensics. “It’s all really creepy stuff.” Belenko’s link to the celebrity hacking scandal was a matter of happenstance. He was scheduled to give a presentation at a small, St. Petersburg multi-media conference, Chaos Constructions, over the weekend. Belenko was presenting research he had conducted a year earlier on the security of Apple’s KeyChain technology and iCloud – a talk he had given twice before in the last year. Prior to his talk, Belenko […]
Report: Home Depot A Common Thread Linking Trove Of Stolen Credit Cards
Home Depot said it is investigating “some unusual activity” on its networks and working with “banking partners and law enforcement,” after security blogger Brian Krebs named the company as a common thread connecting a trove of stolen credit card accounts that have appeared in underground forums. Krebs reported on Tuesday that “multiple banks” see evidence that Home Depot stores are the source of a “massive new batch” of stolen credit and debit cards that went on sale this morning in underground “carding” forums. The breach is believed to have affected Home Depot stores throughout North America – around 2,500 stores in total. The company has held off from confirming a breach, so far. And as of early Wednesday, Home Depot’s home page made no mention of the incident. In a statement to Reuters, spokesperson Paula Drake said that the company is holding off pending an internal investigation, and is working with law enforcement. […]
ICREACH: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google -The Intercept
The online publication The Intercept has a fascinating story on the National Security Agency’s “Google-like” search engine, which was created to chew through almost a trillion records containing “metadata:” the cell phone calls, email messages, geo-location data and other online communications the agency has harvested. The story exposes a tool called ICREACH. Author Ryan Gallagher cites classified documents obtained by The Intercept that provide what he calls hard evidence that the NSA has, through ICREACH “made massive amounts of surveillance data directly accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies” including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Read more via The Intercept with: ICREACH: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google -The Intercept.
Securing Networks in the Internet of Things Era | Help Net
Cricket Liu, the CIO of Infoblox has an interesting editorial over at Help Net Security today that looks at the challenge of securing the Internet of Things. Among other things, he reveals the results of a commissioned survey of 400 network professionals in the UK and US that revealed that 78 percent already have precursor IoT devices on their networks – including badge readers, networked cash registers, vending machines and so on. Seventy three percent of those surveyed acknowledged using connected surveillance gear like CCTV on their networks. That shouldn’t be surprising. What is surprising is that a strong majority of respondents – 63 percent – also saw those devices and IoT in general as a threat to network security. So: IoT adoption is gaining speed, and worries about IoT security are gaining traction. The survey suggests that few IT organisations have deployed IoT-specific infrastructure, such as dedicated networks for IoT devices or management […]