Matthew Hines

Much has been written and said about the U.S. government’s need to improve its electronic defenses against the potential for cyber-attacks carried out by foreign nations. The issue was highlighted in 2007, when government officials openly complained about the Chinese government’s (successful?) attempts to hack into computers controlled by the Department of Defense, and even […]

Apparently Saturday Night Live isn’t the only constituency seeking to profit by tying its fortunes to presidential-themed video clips these days. In addition to the highly publicized skits that SNL has produced in the last several weeks that have parodied the presidential and vice presidential candidates and generated a torrent of interest online, cyber-criminals are […]

As noted in a post in this space earlier this week, security researchers have begun publicizing the emergence of a dangerous new online attack model, dubbed clickjacking. For full details click here, but in short the attack technique allows hackers who lure users to malicious or infected URLs to take control of their browsers and […]

Prominent security researchers Robert “RSnake” Hansen and Jeremiah Grossman may have cancelled their scheduled presentation on “clickjacking” — a newly discovered form of browser vulnerability exploitation — at the OWASP NYC AppSec Conference Sept. 22 to 25, but the two experts have begun sharing some details about the attack technique. Hansen and Grossman, who frequently […]

Online attackers have been authoring blog posts for the sake of luring end users into downloading their malware files for some time, but Trend Micro researchers have now discovered entire Web forums that appear to have been created with similar intentions in mind. According to blog posted by Trend researcher Loucif Kharouni on Thursday, the […]

Researchers at Panda Security’s PandaLabs have discovered a set of malware-ridden pharming attacks that aim to lure in users by offering video clips of Apple’s popular iPhone mobile handset. Panda reported Sept. 24 that it found the iPhone-themed campaign circulating the Banker.LKCTrojan attack, a malware program designed to lift users’ personal information once it is […]

An aging hacker with an interesting angle on electronic extortion and a taste for expensive European sports cars is awaiting trial for his crimes after getting busted for pulling off the semi-sophisticated scheme. Bruce Mengler, 60, was arraigned in a San Diego federal court earlier this week after being indicted for computer intrusion and extortion […]

As security pundits have been predicting literally since the dawn of the YouTube era, researchers report that they are now finding rapidly increasing levels of malware hidden in rich content formats, including PDF documents and multimedia files. In a report that traces the advancement of code obfuscation and encryption techniques employed by malware authors over […]

After years of predictions that more enterprises would soon begin ceding management of their IT security responsibilities over to vendors and professional services companies, IDC is reporting steady growth in the managed security services sector, and predicting continued expansion of the market over the next five years. According to a report issued Tuesday, IDC analysts […]

A new report published by Osterman Research and sponsored by e-mail security specialists CertifiedMail contends that many enterprises are still struggling to get sufficient messaging encryption technologies into place, to change internal perceptions about the systems as hard-to-use (and worth buying in the first place), or to make them work efficiently once installed. According to […]