The virus, named Flame or Skywiper, has been in headlines this week. In good and in bad. Flame came to light when the U.N. International Telecommunications Union (which oversees cyberactivities for the body) received reports of unusual activity. A Russian security firm first identified it, noting that the virus has apparently existed in these networks →
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) article tells that the NSA has become the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever. Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of →
Credit card company Visa has boasted that one of its US data centres possesses the ultimate security features. Many details of the site are reported by USA Today and Fast Company, which both seem to have been invited to the facility, the company’s Operations Centre East (OCE). Also The Register and ABC news have written →
Credit card fraud is a wide-ranging term for theft and fraud committed using a credit card or any similar payment mechanism as a fraudulent source of funds in a transaction. The fraud begins with either the theft of the physical card or the compromise of data associated with the account (card account number and/or verification →
I’m Being Followed: How Google—and 104 Other Companies—Are Tracking Me on the Web is a voyage into the invisible business that funds the web. Who are these companies and what do they want from me? Even if you’re generally familiar with the idea of data collection for targeted advertising, the number and variety of these →
Here is my collection of security trends for 2012 from different sources: Windows XP will be the biggest security threat in 2012 according to Sean Sullivan, security advisor at F-Secure: “People seem to be adding new systems without necessarily abandoning their old XP machines, which is great news for online criminals, as XP continues to →
SCADA systems are used to monitor and control critical installations in oil and gas refineries, water and power distribution plants, manufacturing plants and other industrial facilities. There has been a lot of discussion about malware and security in industrial automation systems after Stuxnet. Widely viewed as the most complex piece of computer malware ever created, →
BUSTED! Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps article tells that Android app developer Trevor Eckhart has published what he says is conclusive proof that millions of smartphones are secretly monitoring the key presses, geographic locations, and received messages of its users. Many Android, Nokia, and BlackBerry smartphones have software called Carrier IQ. →
Outsmarted: Captcha security not much of a gotcha article tells that a team of Stanford University researchers has bad news to report about Captchas, those often unreadable, always annoying distorted letters that you’re required to type in at many a Web site to prove that you’re really a human. Captcha is often used to defend →
Met police using surveillance system to monitor mobile phones article from theguardian magazine article tells that civil liberties group raises concerns over The Metropolitan police purchase of technology to track public handsets over a targeted area. Britain’s largest police force is operating covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network. This allow →