SecurityWeek

Blue Coat Systems on Monday announced its plans to acquire Crossbeam Systems to expand its security and network optimization portfolio.

LOS ANGELES - A US judge jailed a computer hacker for 10 years on Monday for breaking into the email accounts of stars, including Scarlett Johansson, naked pictures of whom were leaked online. A federal judge in Los Angeles also ordered 36-year-old Christopher Chaney, from Florida, to pay a total of $76,000 to Johansson, Christina Aguilera and Renee Olstead, who were among dozens of other people he hacked.

Cloud-based Internet security provider Zscaler on Monday released an early version of HTTPS Everywhere for Internet Explorer, a free tool that forces the Web browser to use HTTPS connection requests whenever possible. ZScaler’s new tool is based on the original HTTPS Everywhere browser extension for Chrome and Firefox developed by The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Microsoft fired back at a report of an attack that allows people to track the position of a user's mouse cursor. The situation was publicized by web analytics company Spider.io, which revealed that – using a few lines of JavaScript – hackers can monitor the position of a target's cursor when they are using Internet Explorer. Microsoft and others however have argued that the the firm is exaggerating the threat the situation poses.

A new vulnerability in Exynos 4-powered devices, which include the Samsung’s Galaxy S2 and Galaxy S3 devices, was discovered by a XDA forum developer while recently rooting his Android phone. The flaw affects to both Android tablets and handheld devices running different versions of Android including 2.x, 4.0, and 4.1.

Evidence Indicates that Project Blitzkrieg Would not be a Massive Attack, But Rather a More Selective One Going After Specific Fargets...Security firm McAfee released a report on Thursday confirming the operators behind a massive cyber-fraud campaign against U.S. financial institutions is still moving forward with their plans.

Researchers at Symantec and Kaspersky Lab have confirmed the existence of malware that does nothing more than wipe the drive of the host where it is installed. Circulating in low numbers, the malware, named Batchwiper by Symantec, has only been seen in Iran thus far, but does not appear to be related to Stuxnet, Duqu, or Flame. According to Iran’s CERT, which first reported the threat, the malware wipes files on different drives in various predefined times.

A vulnerability (or unintended function) in WordPress that was dismissed six years ago as a something not worth bothering with, has been given a second glance now that the issue has been exposed to a wider audience. The problem revolves around the pingback function being used as a means to map remote hosts, which can have problematic results for organizations using blogging platform.

It’s no surprise to anyone practicing security today that the threat landscape has grown increasingly complex. Modern attacks weave together exploits, malware, applications and evasions into long, ongoing attacks that can last days, months or even years. To respond, security teams have begun to take a more integrated overall approach to threat prevention in which multiple technologies work together and are evaluated in context of the user and application.

WASHINGTON - The freewheeling, unregulated Internet seemed to survive a push for new rules at a UN treaty meeting, but the collapse of talks leaves unanswered questions about the Web's future.A total of 89 countries endorsed the global treaty on telecom regulations at the UN's International Telecommunication Union gathering in Dubai on Friday, but the United States and dozens of others refused to sign, saying it opened the door to regulating the Internet.

LONDON - British prosecutors said Friday that Gary McKinnon, a hacker wanted in the United States for breaking into military computer systems, will face no further criminal charges in Britain.

VMware on Thursday fixed a critical directory traversal vulnerability (CVE-2012-5978) in its View server products, which if exploited, could enable a remote attacker to access arbitrary files from affected View Servers.

MIAMI - Anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee said Thursday he is flat broke after leaving behind what remains of his fortune in Belize, where he is wanted for questioning over his neighbor's murder. McAfee and 20-year-old girlfriend Sam Vanegas spent more than three weeks on the run in Belize after Gregory Faull's November 11 murder before slipping across the border into Guatemala, where he was arrested on December 5.

Apple has updated the anti-Malware signatures for Mac OS X after a new SMS installer scam was detected online by Russia’s Dr. Web earlier this week. The attack, while not majorly malicious or panic inducing, would have scammed users via mobile subscriptions.

WASHINGTON - The United States is refusing to sign a telecom treaty at a UN gathering in Dubai because it opens the door to governmental regulation of the Internet, the US delegation chief said Thursday. "The United States today announced it cannot sign (the treaty regulations) in their current form," Terry Kramer, head of the US delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications, said in a teleconference from Dubai.

OTTAWA - A US government agency will give Research in Motion's new smartphone a second look after announcing last month it was dumping the BlackBerry and supplying its workforce with iPhones instead. Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM said in a statement the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency would test-run the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones in early 2013.

Facebook has once again updated its privacy controls in the name of simplicity. The changes were announced this week and are expected to roll out by the end of the year. Among them are an easier-to-use Activity Log and shortcuts for managing privacy controls.

Effective Malware Response Requires Visibility and Control Across the Entire IT Environment and Along the Full Threat Lifecycle.In this business we must ask ourselves every day, “Are we prepared in the event of a malware attack?” Many believe the answer is “No.”

Oracle on Wednesday launched Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall, part of the database giant’s answer to help protect Oracle and non-Oracle databases by monitoring network traffic and analyzing audit data. The new Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall product essentially merges its Oracle Audit Vault and Oracle Database Firewall products into one, and expands protection to third party (non-Oracle) databases, and adds other enhancements.