Fahmida Y. Rashid

Researchers have uncovered a sophisticated and decentralized botnet that combines encryption and rootkit capabilities to make it practically invisible to infected machines. The TDL-4 bootkit infects the master boot record on a computer so that it can launch before the operating system even starts, making it invisible to the operating system and antivirus software, Sergey […]

Fox.com The first of its attacks, LulzSec leaked a database of “X-Factor” contestants, attacked the Fox.com Website and obtained several other databases on May 6. The group also defaced 14 LinkedIn accounts belonging to Fox employees. Pointless ATM Information A total of 3,133 individual bank account details were harvested from ATMs in England and posted […]

Apple has pushed out the fixes for the Java remote code vulnerabilities Oracle patched earlier this month, including a “serious” flaw that allowed Java applet code to escape from the sandbox and run as if it were a local, trusted program. Apple pushed out a Mac OS X update patching 11 Java vulnerabilities. Oracle fixed […]

Microsoft has developed technology to secretly intercept, monitor and record communications on voice over IP networks. With Skype soon to join the Microsoft family, it’s likely the technology will play some kind of a role in the VOIP software going forward. Called “Legal Intercept” in the patent application, the technology is designed to silently record […]

An ongoing phishing attack continues to steal login credentials of several thousand users on the social-blogging platform Tumblr. The phishing attack harvests user login credentials for Tumblr accounts from a fake login page, Christopher Boyd and Jovi Umawing, security researchers at GFI Labs, wrote in their analysis of the Tumblr scam June 28. Once user […]

Did hacking group LulzSec go for one last prank before shutting down its operation under the Lulz Security name? That’s what the folks over at StopMalvertising are claiming. When the group announced on Twitter and Pastebin that it was ending its 50-day hacking spree, it linked to a torrent at The Pirate Bay to a […]

Even though both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android smartphone operating systems are pretty secure, they are still susceptible to multiple types of attacks, Symantec said. Android and iOS were designed with mobile security in mind and are superior to traditional desktop operating systems, Symantec researchers wrote in a whitepaper released June 28. However, the security […]

A new rootkit targeting Windows systems currently making the rounds can be removed only by fixing the master boot record, Microsoft said. The “Popureb” Trojan corrupts the hard drive’s master boot record to such an extent that the only way to remove it is to run Windows Recovery Console to rewrite the sectors to a […]

The United States Department of Homeland Security unveiled a detailed guide to help software developers and vendors avoid common security errors in their applications. Homeland Security’s Cyber-Security Division worked with the security training and research organization SANS Institute and the non-profit technology research company Mitre to create a list of common software vulnerabilities along with […]

Myth 1: I Will Know When I Am Infected (93 Percent) Almost all Internet users around the world are convinced they will know when their computer is compromised, when in actuality, modern malware is stealthy and hard to detect. Myth 2: Free Security Software Is as Good as Paid (83 Percent) Most users feel there […]

George Hotz, the programmer who was recently sued by Sony for releasing instructions on how to hack the PlayStation 3, has joined Facebook, according to his status update on the social networking site. It appears that he started in May. It’s not clear what Hotz will be doing at Facebook, although ZDNet speculated that he […]

Organized hackers have been attempting to breach aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman for years to steal sensitive information, according to a Northrop Grumman senior executive at the Gartner security summit. The APTs (advanced persistent threats) are designed to infiltrate networks at companies and government agencies to steal intellectual property or other sensitive information. As […]