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Domain: cs.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to cs.com.
Stories · 8
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Study Links Storm Botnet's Growth To Illegal Drugs
talkinsecurity writes "Researchers at IronPort today published a study which claims to have found the 'smoking gun' that links the rapid growth of the Storm botnet to spammers that sell prescription drugs illegally over the Internet. The study shows that more than 80 percent of Storm-generated spam is advertising online pharmacy brands, and further investigation showed that spam templates, credit card processing, product fulfillment and customer support are all being provided by a 'Russian criminal organization' that operates in conjunction with Storm. This criminal organization recruits botnet spamming partners to advertise their illegal pharmacy Websites, which receive a 40 percent commission on sales orders. IronPort went as far as to do pharmacological testing on the products, and found that two-thirds of the drugs contained the wrong dosage of the active ingredient, and the rest were placebos." -
Antivirus Inventor Says Security Pros Are Wasting Time
talkinsecurity writes "Earlier this week Peter Tippett, chief scientist at the ICSA and the inventor of the progam that became Norton Antivirus, had some interesting things to say about the state of the security industry. In a nutshell, Tippett warned that about a third of the work that security departments do today is a waste of time. Tippett goes on to systematically blow holes in a lot of security's current best practices, including vulnerability research/patching, strong passwords, and the product evaluation process. 'If a hacker breaks into the password files of a corporation with 10,000 machines, he only needs to guess one password to penetrate the network, Tippett notes. "In that case, the long passwords might mean that he can only crack 2,000 of the passwords instead of 5,000," he said. "But what did you really gain by implementing them? He only needed one."' Some of his arguments are definitely debatable, but there is a lot of truth to what he's saying as well." -
Contractor Folds After Causing Breaches
talkinsecurity writes "A single contractor, privately-held Verus Inc., has been traced as the source of no less than five hospital security breaches in the past two months — and those breaches have put the company out of business in a matter of weeks. Verus, which managed the websites of as many as 60 of the country's largest hospitals, has folded its entire business within the past few weeks, without a word to anyone. Apparently, a single IT error led to the exposure of at least five hospitals' patient data — at least 100,000 individuals' personal information — and caused Verus' primary investor to pull the plug. The hospitals, which initially reported their breaches separately, were left with no one to sue." -
Many Antivirus Tools Fail in LinuxWorld Test
talkinsecurity writes "In a public, side-by-side test conducted last night at LinuxWorld, ten antivirus products were confronted with 25 known viruses. The results were surprisingly disparate. Only three of the products caught all of the viruses; three only caught 61 percent, and one caught an abysmal 6 percent. The test, which wasn't particularly complicated, proves that there still are wide differences in the effectiveness of AV tools. A lot of people think all AV tools are the same — they're not!" -
Auction Site To Sell Security Vulnerabilities
talkinsecurity writes "A Swiss research lab has built an eBay-like marketplace where hackers and researchers can sell the security vulnerabilities they discover to the highest bidder. WabiSabiLabi could replace the back-room, secret sites where researchers and hackers used to sell their exploits and replace them with a neat, clean way to make money by finding security flaws. Those who have seen the site say they are concerned about how the buyers will be vetted, and how the marketplace will ensure the flaws aren't found through illegal methods." -
Miyazaki's 'Spirited Away' Wins Best Animated Picture
DavidBrown writes "Moments ago, Hayao Miyazaki won the Best Animated Picture award for 'Spirited Away.' It's about time." -
Can We Effectively Scan For E-Mail Viruses?
A couple of questions here, first from DavidBrown: "It occurs to me that with the recent virus/worm/whatever stories, maybe the solution to e-mail viruses isn't to go out and install on every desktop virus software that nobody likes to run - it slows you down, and doesn't feel 'natural'. Maybe we should screen for questionable macros and infected attachments at the ISP mail server level?" but before we screen, we first need effective filters which is the subject of kevin42's question: "I've tried many different filters and strategies for reducing spam that comes into my domain. The problem is I still get a ton of spam, and when I look at what the filtering is catching it's only like 5% of all the spam. A search on freshmeat finds tons of apps and filters, but I've tried a few and none seem to work. Trying them all will take forever, so does anyone have experience with some that will actually work?"David adds: "Yahoo mail seems to do this. Once a new virus is detected, ISP's can install new updates much faster than most users." ISPs are implementing this, just not fast enough for most people. Which ISPs (especially national ones) have hardened their systems against such viruses and, more importantly, who hasn't?
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FCC Staff Back AOL-Time Warner Deal
Donavan writes "Yahoo Finance is reporting that the merger between AOL and Time Warner has been reccomended for approval."