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The Honan Affair and the Cloud's Dark Lining August 13, 2012 
The attack last week on journalist Mat Honan's iCloud account has the potential to strip the silver lining from the cybernimbus. Honan had his digital life destroyed when hackers, in a convoluted effort to hijack his Twitter account, ended up trashing everything connected to his Apple iCloud account.
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Flame Malware Ignites Gauss in Lebanon August 10, 2012 
The fallout from the Flame malware that was identified in May continues. Ongoing research into the malware has led antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab to discover a new malware platform, which it has named "Gauss." This platform has several similarities to Flame, Kaspersky said.
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Can the Cloud Shield Google Wallet From Pickpockets? August 06, 2012 
Some folks' answer to wallet security is chaining it to their belts. Google's is to chain it to the cloud. The Search Giant added some security features to its Google Wallet product last week intended to make it safer for consumers to use. For example, credit card information no longer resides in the Google Wallet mobile app.
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NSA to Hackers: A Little Help? July 30, 2012 
United States National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander has urged hackers to contribute to securing cyberspace. Speaking at the DEFCON 2012 security conference, Alexander said the hacker community and the U.S. government cybercommunity share some core values. "At DEFCON 20, Gen. Alexander discussed shared challenges and shared responsibilities in cyberspace," NSA spokesperson Vanee Vines said.
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Siemens Patch Aims to Thwart Stuxnet Offspring July 30, 2012 
Siemens, which made the industrial controllers targeted by the Stuxnet cyberweapon, announced last week that it was releasing some patches aimed at foiling attacks on its hardware similar to those mounted by the now-famous worm. Previous versions of the controllers used in SCADA systems allowed DLL files to be loaded into the devices without validation.
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The Case Of The Android Botnet July 23, 2012 
Microsoft security researcher Terry Zink pulled the pin on a virtual grenade when he aired his belief that he'd discovered a botnet manned by Android zombies. After examining some spam, Zink found suggestions that the junk mail was being generated from Android smartphones with access to Yahoo mail accounts.
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Band of Botnet Busters Grounds Grum July 19, 2012 
A joint effort by antimalware company FireEye, law enforcement authorities and other antispam activists has taken down Grum, believed to be the world's third-largest botnet, accounting for nearly 20 percent of worldwide spam. After three days of work, all of Grum's known command and control servers are now dead, according to FireEye's Atif Mushtaq.
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Middle East's Latest Malware Malady Does It Old-School July 19, 2012 
Security researchers have discovered yet another piece of malware that appears to be targeting computer systems in the Middle East. Dubbed "Mahdi," it was discovered about one and a half months after researchers found the Flame malware, which also hit computers in that region.
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Skype IMs Go Rogue July 17, 2012 
Some users of Microsoft's Skype service are having problems with their text messages, as detailed in the Skype support network. Skype instant messaging contacts are getting messages originally addressed to others. A few users who got messages from one Skype contact found those messages were somehow sent from their accounts to yet other Skype contacts without their knowledge.
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DNSChanger: Just a Dress Rehearsal July 16, 2012
Despite dire warnings, the Internet didn't break last week when the FBI pulled the plug on the server controlling the DNSChanger botnet. An estimated 300,000 computers are still infected by the malware that ties them to the botnet, which was designed for large-scale click fraud.
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Stuxnet Is Dead, Long Live Stuxnet July 09, 2012 
Those who follow the exploits of Stuxnet will remember June 24, 2012, as Big Sleep day for the infamous malware. On that day, it stopped replicating. "It's more like neutered, rather than dead," said Eric Byres, CTO and vice president for engineering at Tofino Security Products.
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A Bunch of Unused PCs Won't Be Able to Go Online Monday July 06, 2012 
Anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 computers worldwide may lose Web access Monday morning if their users don't manage to remove malware called "DNSChanger" from their machines. A massive public information campaign has been undertaken over the last several months to inform people about the virus and how to remove it, but thousands of computers remain infected.
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Android Botnet May Be Spewing Spam July 05, 2012 
An international botnet could be using infected Android handsets to send out massive amounts of spam, said Microsoft antispam engineer Terry Zink. He reportedly identified the botnet and its Google Android connection by examining the headers of spam that included the signature "Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android."
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RSA Encryption 'Crack' Rattles Infosec Industry July 02, 2012
Claims by a team of international cyrptographic researchers that they've "cracked" the RSA encryption used on a number of smartcards and secure tokens has set off a tempest in security circles. The scientists from France, Italy, Norway and the United States have found a method for compromising the code in as little as 13 minutes.
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Apple Changes Its OS X Security Tune June 27, 2012 
Apple has changed the wording on its website regarding the security of its OS X operating system. The company used to boast that OS X didn't get the "thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers." Recently, however, that was changed to read "It's built to be safe." The site then outlines some of the ways in which its newest version of the operating system is designed to combat attacks.
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Watchdogs Get a Whiff of Google's Government Privacy Policy June 18, 2012 
There's evidence that Google's consumer privacy policy is being extended to government contracts for its software services, according to SafeGov.org. Citing contracts in Texas, Illinois and California, the group contends that Google's privacy policy is the "minimum standard" for handling customer data under the contracts.
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Japanese Hackers Spread a Different Kind of STD June 18, 2012 
Today in international tech news: Six men are arrested in Japan for propagating a virus that spread via a porn site and allegedly netted them more than $250,000. Also: Google releases a report detailing removal requests from governments around the world, and there's a MacBook Pro shortage in the UK.
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Flame Self-Snuffs June 11, 2012
The Flame malware has reportedly begun to self-destruct. Some command-and-control servers for the malware sent an order recently that completely removes it from infected systems, according to Symantec. Why the self-destruct command was sent is not clear, although it could be that the malware's creators were afraid of detection.
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Spam Flies Fast and Furious in the Wake of the LinkedIn Breach June 11, 2012 
The deluge of spam dropped on members of LinkedIn last week perhaps could have been expected after a data breach at the site exposed 6.5 million of their passwords. Those messages, though, are more likely to harm members unaffected by the breach than those victimized by it. That's because members who had their passwords compromised also had them wiped by LinkedIn.
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Flame Singes Microsoft Security Certificates June 04, 2012 
Microsoft issued a security advisory over the weekend after it was discovered that the Flame malware has been spoofing its digital certificates to launch attacks. The company also shut down three affected certificates and stopped its Terminal Server Licensing Service from issuing certificates that allows code to be signed.
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