Fahmida Y. Rashid

The Russian government will transition its computer infrastructure from Microsoft Windows to the Linux open-source operating by 2015, according to an order signed by the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. According to a Dec. 27 article in the Russian-language CNews, translated with Google Translate, the shift to Linux is set to begin in the second […]

The FBI raided a Dallas-based server farm and seized servers used in the distributed denial-of-service attack against PayPal earlier this month, according to an affidavit obtained by the Smoking Gun Website. Federal agents are looking for clues as to the identity of the hackers who orchestrated the DDoS attack on PayPal, according to the affidavit. […]

An advanced new Android Trojan has been found in the wild and it displays botnet-like capabilities, said Lookout Mobile Security on Dec. 29. Named Geinimi, it is “the most sophisticated Android malware” so far, but its impact is currently limited as the infected apps are available only on Chinese Android app markets, Lookout said in […]

The widespread outage that crippled Skype on Dec. 22 appears to have been aggravated by a bug in the Windows version of the VOIP client, said Lars Rabbe, the company’s CIO, on Dec. 29. A “confluence of events,” which included overloaded servers, a bug in the Windows client and a shortage of supernodes caused Skype […]

The 4chan message board, a popular discussion forum for the so-called Anonymous activist group that launched a multitude of Denial of Service attacks in retribution for efforts to cut off technical and financial support for WikiLeaks, was itself shut down by a DoS counterattack on Dec. 28 The site’s founder, Christopher Poole, posted the message […]

Another day, another set of usernames published “by accident.” This time, it’s by Mozilla, the developer of popular open source software including Firefox and Thunderbird. A database containing usernames and password hashes were posted publicly on Dec. 22, Mozilla said. About 44,000 users who had registered for an account on addons.mozilla.org were affected by this […]

The Stuxnet Trojan may have knocked out as many as 1,000 centrifuges at Iran’s nuclear facility earlier this year, according to a security paper. Experts said it heralds a new breed of Trojans that will attack more devices that aren’t computers in 2011. “We need to think above and beyond expected targets, which are not […]

Researchers at McAfee Labs predicted on Dec. 28 that cyber-criminals will target the latest and talked about online platforms, including Google TV, Apple’s iPhone, and foursquare, in 2011. Noting that the threats landscape has “changed considerably” in 2010, McAfee Labs’ 2011 Threat Predictions report said criminals will exploit geo-location services, social networking tools, mobile devices […]

After analyzing the malware and online threats of 2010, SonicWALL security researchers said they found that Tuesday was the most threat-heavy day of the week. Monday was a close second for threat-related traffic, Ed Cohen, Sonic Wall’s vice-president of e-mail security, told eWEEK. It wasn’t clear from the analysis why malware activity was the highest […]

The Veteran Affairs Department ordered doctors to immediately stop using a Yahoo Calendar Application to store confidential data. Notifications of a possible security breach have been sent to nearly 900 affected patients, according to VA’s monthly report to Congress on Dec. 22. The report called the breach as a “mishandling of electronic information,” because doctors […]

Administrators of six Websites woke up Christmas morning to discover their sites had been hacked, according to an online newsletter published by the hackers themselves on Dec. 25. In the second issue of “Owned and Exposed,” the attackers listed carders.cc, ettercap, exploit-db, backtrack, inj3ct0r, and free-hack. While free-hack was taken down for being “lame script […]

As people increase their use of smartphones to check e-mail, do their banking and access documents, the wireless industry is addressing mobile device security. There will be a “consumerization of IT,” where more employees will be using their personal mobile devices, including smartphones, laptops and tablets, for work purposes, Chris Knotts, vice president of technology […]