Fahmida Y. Rashid

The hacktivist collective Anonymous will either reorgranize into a cohesive body or disband completely, McAfee researchers said in their security predictions for 2012. Anonymous is a loosely defined collective with no formal hierarchy or set of leaders. Any individual can take part in an Anonymous operation, and anyone start a campaign and encourage supporters to […]

The gang behind the attack on Stratfor over Christmas Eve is still making things difficult for the intelligence analysis firm by sending out malicious emails. Claiming to be part of the Anonymous hacktivist collective, this group breached several Strategic Forecasting servers over Christmas Eve and waltzed off with over 800,000 password hashes belonging to individuals […]

Adobe will release patches addressing several security issues in Adobe Reader and Acrobat as part of its scheduled quarterly update next week. The updates will affect Adobe Reader and Acrobat versions X and earlier on both the Windows and Mac OS X platforms, Adobe said in its advance notification announcement on Jan. 6. Adobe is […]

Symantec has confirmed that a group of hackers has stolen source code to two Symantec products, but downplayed the possible impact on users as a result of the theft. The attackers stole source code for two older Symantec products for enterprise customers, and not on the consumer-focused Norton product line as had been previously reported, […]

OpenSSL has fixed six security vulnerabilities and updated both 1.0.0 and 0.9.8 versions of the open-source implementation of the Secure Sockets Layer protocol. The vulnerabilities fixed in versions 1.0.0.f and 0.9.8s include a plain text recovery attack that is publicly known, policy check failures and problems with buffers not being cleared before being reused, according […]

A group of hackers has claimed that it has stolen the source code to Symantec’s flagship antivirus product, according to a Pastebin post. This may just be an antivirus company’s worst nightmare come true. The group, named Lords of Dharmaraja, claimed to have breached an Indian military server and stolen several documents and files, according […]

A new variant of the Ramnit worm has managed to steal log-in credentials for several thousand Facebook accounts, according to researchers at Seculert. The latest Ramnit variant stole more than 45,000 Facebook passwords and tried compromising other accounts belonging to the victims, such as virtual private networks, emails and other Web services, Seculert researchers wrote […]

Microsoft plans to ship seven patches closing security holes in the Windows operating system and Microsoft developer tools and software in its first Patch Tuesday release of 2012. The company fixed vulnerabilities in all versions of the Windows operating system, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, according to Microsoft’s advance notification announcement released […]

A lack of standards and increasingly aggressive attackers will pose some challenges to electric utilities trying to monitor and secure smart grids, according to a recent report. Critical infrastructure operators are monitoring and managing automated systems and grids that are becoming more complex, according to a report released Jan. 4 from Pike Research. IT teams […]

Russian investigators have uncovered chat logs between the botmaster in charge of the “Cutwail” botnet and a founder of a fake pharmaceutical spam operation that hint at the botmaster’s identity.The chat logs were discovered by Russian law enforcement on a computer belonging to Dmitry Stupin, a co-founder of “SpamIt,” according to Brian Krebs, a security […]

Facebook users who checked out Timeline and decided they hate it are being targeted by scammers on the social networking site, according to a report on Inside Facebook. Searching for “remove Timeline” or “disable Timeline” on Facebook returns more than a dozen pages and groups that claim to have instructions on how to disable the […]

Fujitsu is reportedly working on a cyber-weapon for the Japanese government designed to track and disable the sources of cyber-attacks, according to a Japanese newspaper. Japan’s Defense Ministry has commissioned Fujitsu to develop a virus capable of tracking, identifying and disabling the systems being used by cyber-attackers, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported Jan. 3. The Defense […]