SecurityWeek

The Single Most Important Part of Dealing with a Phishing Attack is Preparing for the Attack Before it Actually Happens.

The Xtreme RAT malware, which has been at the center of several reports of cyber attacks on Israel has expanded, researchers have discovered. This news follows a recent report from Norman ASA, who reported that the attack campaign has been going on now for more than a year.

Romania-based anti-virus firm BitDefender conducted a controlled test on Windows 8, in order to determine how strong the basic defenses were, and attempted to infect the new OS with some of the most common malware on the Web. When all was said and done, Redmond’s latest creation was found to be just as vulnerable to common malware as Windows 7, despite the compensating controls being pitched by the company.

Anonymous Virtually Enters the Gaza Conflict – Maintains Pro-Palestinian Stance

The U.S. Senate has failed once again to move forward on the Cybersecurity Act, raising the question of what is next in the struggle to legislate solutions to threats in cyberspace.  

WASHINGTON - The White House said Thursday it was considering an executive order on cybersecurity after legislation on infrastructure protection failed again in the Senate.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Coined by Benjamin Franklin back in 1736, and applicable to so many aspects of life and business, the phrase even served the IT security industry well for the first quarter of a century. But today this phrase no longer rings true.

According to a report form Forrester, despite their security concerns – and perhaps because most IT managers simply have no other option – as many as one-third of enterprises are placing sensitive data into the cloud.

Researchers from the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC) and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), released their 2013 cyber-threat forecast on Wednesday. The report examines what they think will be the most serious issues online in the next twelve months. The face of cybersecurity has changed over the last year, the report says, as attackers have aligned with national agendas, and taken aim at businesses and governments alike.

WASHINGTON - A US commission on Wednesday urged lawmakers to consider tighter rules on investment by Chinese state-owned firms, warning that they may pose economic as well as security risks. In an annual report to Congress, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission also called for efforts to bring China into arms reduction talks due to Beijing's growing expenditure on opaque weapons programs.

BELIZE CITY - Prime Minister Dean Barrow on Wednesday urged anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee, wanted for questioning in the murder of a neighbor, to turn himself in to Belizean authorities. McAfee, 67, told CNBC television Tuesday that he was moving every four hours to avoid police who want to question him about the murder of fellow American Gregory Faull, a Florida native who was found dead at his home in a pool of blood.

Researchers at ID Analytics estimate there are more than 10,000 criminal rings dealing in identity fraud in the United States. Most of these rings consist of family and friends, not professional criminals, the researchers found.

The nation's space agency is facing a data breach after an employee laptop was stolen from a locked car. The incident may finally force the organization to adopt whole disk encryption to protect sensitive data.

Adobe Confirms Breach on Connectusers.com –  Site Taken OfflineAdobe has confirmed claims made by an Egyptian hacker that a database behind Connectusers.com was breached. The company is still investigating, but cached copies of the forum’s source code show a possible explanation as to the cause – outdated forum software.

Tibetan activists are being targeted by a new variant of the Imuler (Revir) Trojan that was originally discovered in September. The attack is launched via email, and uses images of other pro-Tibetan groups as bait in order to encourage the victim into opening files.