Fahmida Y. Rashid

Sony has settled its lawsuit against GeoHot, the hacker who published the secret key to jailbreak the PlayStation 3 console. George Hotz’s code allowed users to install unofficial firmware and games on the gaming platform. Hotz agreed to stop sharing the offending code and to also drop all future attempts to gain “unauthorized access to […]

The data breach at Epsilon dominated headlines this week, as companies worried about potential phishing attacks. Several reports also highlighted malware and targeted attacks for mobile devices. The week began with EMC announcing its acquisition of network forensics vendor NetWitness. EMC was already a customer, as the RSA Security chairman had disclosed on a conference […]

U.K. police have arrested three alleged members of the SpyEye gang. Security researchers consider SpyEye, a banking Trojan that harvests victims’ personal credentials, the de facto successor to the Zeus Trojan. Two of the men were charged on April 8, but the third man was released on bail on the condition that he return for […]

Koobface, the worm that wreaked havoc on Facebook last year appears to have stopped using the social-networking site to spread its malicious links, security researchers found. The last time Koobface tried to infect users was around February 13, researchers at security firm FireEye noted on its Malware Intelligence Lab blog on April 8. The link […]

Each day, a new company is added to the list of clients affected by the massive data breach at email marketing provider Epsilon. Now, several U.S. senators and House representatives are demanding more details about the magnitude of the breach and how the email thefts are impacting consumers. U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut wrote […]

Microsoft’s massive April Patch Tuesday will tie the record for the most security bulletins released at one time. It is a dramatic contrast to last month’s skimpy Patch Tuesday release, which only contained three security bulletins. On April 12, Microsoft plans to release 17 security bulletins, including nine that are rated “Critical” and eight rated […]

Department of Homeland Security personnel and contractors who work on cyber-security would be considered “essential” employees and would not be furloughed if the government shuts down, according to DHS officials. Federal agencies and departments are trying to determine which employees will have to stay at home when the current stopgap spending expires April 8. Congress […]

Cyber-attackers hacked one of the sites belonging to the U.S. Postal Service to redirect visitors to an attack portal containing Trojans. The attackers used a kit to launch the Javascript attack. The USPS national customer support center, ribbs.usps.gov, was compromised using the Blackhole Exploit Kit, researchers at Zscaler said April 7. Attackers injected malicious Javascript […]

The iPhone Dev-Team released Pwnage Tool 4.2 on April 3, which would allow users to jailbreak their iPhones to version 4.3.1. Apple released 4.3.1 on March 27. While the firmware had been cracked that same day, the team didn’t make the Pwnage Tool available on the Dev-Team’s Web site immediately. The latest PwnageTool update is […]

A security researcher discovered a new cross-site-scripting vulnerability on Facebook, days after the social networking giant patched a different XSS flaw in its mobile API. At least one active scam is exploiting the new bug at this time. “Found another instance of that Facebook app XSS-and it’s a Facebook XSS issue. Do not click links […]

Free smartphone apps may be collecting more personal information than users realize and sharing them with third-party advertising firms, according to an analysis by a security firm. The report followed recent news articles that Pandora and other mobile app vendors had received federal grand jury subpoenas about their data sharing practices. Federal prosecutors in New […]

A flaw in a popular open-source DHCP client software have been found that would allow attackers to remotely execute code. While it may take some time before the bug is fixed in every Linux distribution, there are steps administrators can take to mitigate the effects. The dhclient software does not block commands that contain meta-characters, […]